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Not everything runs untouched. CelerFlow has a few points where it stops and waits for a human before continuing. These aren’t friction — they’re guardrails that keep workflows from running with missing credentials, wrong targets, or paywalled content the system shouldn’t grab on its own. There are two kinds of human-in-the-loop (HITL): build-time gates that pause while you’re authoring, and run-time handoffs that pause a live run.

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Build-time gates

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1. Connection gate

If a workflow step needs an app that isn’t connected to your team, the Planner pauses before deploying and surfaces a connection card directly in the chat. Connect the app in place and the build resumes. A run is never queued until all required connections are present. See Connections.

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2. Delivery target selection

Before a workflow that writes to a destination like Notion is deployed, the Planner asks which database or page to write into. You must supply a real target — placeholder IDs are validated and rejected, and the Planner asks again until a valid target is confirmed. This prevents workflows from deploying with an unresolved destination. See Integrations — Notion.

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Run-time handoff

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3. Browser handoff (institutional access)

The one place a live run pauses for you is the BioMed browser handoff. When a workflow needs a PDF that sits behind a paywall or institutional login, the institutional_access_agent creates a handoff session and waits. You capture the PDF in your own already-authenticated browser via the CelerFlow extension, and the run resumes automatically. CelerFlow never bypasses a publisher’s access controls — the capture happens in your session, on your authority. See Browser extension.
General node-level pause / resume — stopping mid-run for arbitrary step approval — is not available yet. If a run fails, you re-run it from the detail page. The browser handoff above is the only online run-time HITL path today.

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Who can approve

Approval actions are scoped by team role. Only members with a sufficient role can build, deploy, or resolve a gated workflow. See Teams & roles for the full role matrix.