Add a human approval step to an AI workflow

List what the workflow does, then circle the step that changes something outside your team: sending a message, editing a customer record, deleting data, or spending money. n8n's documentation names those same kinds of actions as the ones that most need a person's approval. That circled step is where the pause goes.

Write down one reviewer and one backup. An approval step with no clear owner just becomes a queue nobody checks. In Zapier, reviewers can be members of your account or, under a newer option, anyone you choose. Zapier's help page also says every reviewer needs a Zapier account, that on a Pro account you can only send requests to yourself, and that you must share the Zap with your reviewers so they can open it.

In Zapier, add a Human in the Loop step and choose the Request Approval action; Zapier's help page says this is a premium app that needs a paid account. In n8n, open the Tools connector on an AI Agent node and add a human review step, which can send the request to Slack, Teams, email, or n8n's own chat.

Zapier lets you choose whether a declined request stops or continues the run, and what happens on a timeout. Set both to stop for anything customer-facing. In n8n, a denied tool call is canceled and the AI is told it was rejected, so tell the agent in its instructions what to do next.

Check: You tested one decline and one timeout, and neither sent anything.

Put the full draft, the recipient, and the record being changed into the approval message. n8n can include the tool's name and the values the AI chose. If the reviewer has to open three tabs to understand the request, they'll start clicking Approve without reading.