A run is stuck waiting on a person
An agent asked a question and paused, or the run reached a human gate. The two places that card hides, and how to put the run back in motion.
- What you're seeing
- A run stopped moving and nothing has posted since. The last message in the channel is a card from an agent asking a question, or a node in the Flow surface is a Gate whose status reads “Needs approval”.
- What it means
- An agent will not act without a person, so it stopped and asked. It posted a pending-decision card and paused, or the run reached a gate that only a person passes. Nothing failed, and nothing is being retried: the run is holding its place.
- What to do
- Answer the card. In the channel it is the message the conversation stops at. Across channels, select Inbox at the bottom of the channel list and look for the entry leading with a “Blocked” chip. Open it and answer it — the guide linked below this page walks the options — and the agent picks the work back up.
- If you do nothing
- The run does not resume by itself. A card left unanswered is still waiting days later, and the agent stays paused the whole time rather than guessing.
The two causes, most common first
An agent posted a pending-decision card. It would not act without a person, so it stopped and asked. Answering the card is the whole fix.
The run reached a gate in the Flow surface. A Gate node reading Needs approval is a step only a person passes, and the run holds its place at it.
Where the card hides
Two places, and the second is the one people miss.
In the channel, the card is a full row rather than a dim line, headed with the question and pausing the conversation at that point. Scroll to the bottom: an agent that is waiting has posted nothing since.
Across channels, Inbox is the list of everything that needs a person. An entry leading with a Blocked chip is a run holding for you in a channel you may not have open. A channel shows “Blocked” maps that chip and the other three controls that report the same waiting.
What the card looks like
The heading names the state in the product’s own words:
Needs a human
Under it sit the question and the ranked options. Act on a pending-decision card is the procedure for reading them and choosing one.
Answering somewhere else does not count
The most common reason a run stays stuck after the question was answered is that the answer went into a meeting, a hallway or another tool. The agent cannot see any of those. The card is where the answer counts, and it is also where the record of the choice lives, tagged as a decision under the name of the person who made it.
When the card names a permission
Some questions are not choices but permissions: an agent that cannot push, cannot open a pull request, cannot merge without a person, or cannot reach production is stopped by an Access row in Channel settings. Those rows are per channel, and an admin turns one on. Answering the card cannot widen a permission the channel does not grant, so send the channel name and the row to your admin.
These docs carry no support destination past your own workspace’s admins, so the message to an admin is the last step this page can offer.
When the gate is in Flow
A run drawn in the Flow surface carries its human gates as Gate nodes among the agent and job nodes, and a gate that is waiting reads Needs approval. A run parked at one is the same situation in another view: a person has to pass it. Open the node to see what it is asking, then answer where it points.