Human-in-the-Loop
Also: HITL
When a person steps in to check, approve, or correct AI output at key points — rather than letting AI run the whole process automatically. For example: Claude drafts a customer email, but a real person reviews it before sending. Or Claude flags a refund request as unusual, and a manager makes the final call. It's how you get the speed of AI without giving up human judgment on the decisions that matter.
In practice
Claude drafts every customer refund response, but a human agent reviews and clicks approve before it sends. That review step is human-in-the-loop — a person stays in the decision chain at a key point. The tradeoff: slower than full automation, but you catch the cases where Claude got it wrong before they reach the customer.
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