Keep Humans in the Loop, Not in the Way

Posted 2 days ago by Dino Cajic

 

AI can draft faster than teams can review. Work piles up behind approvals, editors copy‑paste fixes that never make it back into prompts, and throughput drops. You end up with two bad options: ship unreviewed content, or slow everything to a crawl.

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There’s a third path: fast, lightweight human‑in‑the‑loop (HITL) that uses Slack or email for approvals, records edits as training data, and relies on quick fallbacks to keep things moving when people are busy.

What good looks like

  • Reviews happen where people already are. Approvals in Slack or via a short email reply, no new tools for reviewers to learn.
  • Edits feed the machine. Every human change is diffed, labeled, and stored to improve prompts and policies.
  • Throughput stays high. If nobody responds within the SLA, the system follows a safe fallback path you’ve already approved.
  • Risk is contextual. Low‑risk tasks can auto‑publish after timeout; high‑risk tasks remain blocked until approved.

A simple architecture

  • Orchestrator: Runs the workflow and enforces SLAs and fallbacks.
  • Reviewer endpoints: Slack bot and managed email inbox for approvals and inline edits.
  • Review store: Captures the model’s output, the human’s edits, metadata, and the decision.
  • Prompt registry: Versioned prompts with automatic suggestions based on edit patterns.
  • Policy engine: Decides whether a step is auto‑approve, soft‑block, or hard‑block.

Slack approvals that take seconds

Trigger: When an item reaches “review,” post a compact card into a channel or DM the assigned reviewer.

Slack message template

New draft: Product Update Email — Q3 Promo
Risk: Low | SLA: 15 min | Fallback: Ship V1 template
Preview:
[snippet of 6–8 lines]
Actions:
✅ Approve
✏️ Send back with edits (reply in thread)
⛔ Block (reason required)
  • Approve: Orchestrator marks as approved and continues.
  • Send back with edits: Reviewer replies in-thread. The bot extracts the edited text, diff‑tags it, updates the draft, and stores training data.
  • Block: Requires a short reason; item moves to a blocked queue.

Email approvals for folks outside Slack

Subject:Approve? Product Update Email: Q3 Promo [SLA 15m]

Body: Short summary, 6–8 line preview, and three bold one‑click options:

  • Reply with #approve
  • Reply with edits inline
  • Reply with #block and reason

Capture edits and improve prompts

Every change is a learning opportunity. Store:

  • Original model output and final human version.
  • Diffs with tags like “tone soften,” “added disclaimer,” “brand name fix.”
  • Context such as product line, persona, channel, and reviewer.
  • Outcome including approve/return/block and time to decision.

Use this to:

  • Propose prompt tweaks when the same edit recurs.
  • Surface style snippets reviewers keep adding, and graduate them into your base prompt.
  • Run A/B tests on prompt variants and retire underperformers.

Guardrails

  • Redaction: Strip PII from previews and logs where possible.
  • Auditability: Log who approved, what changed, and when.
  • Access control: DM sensitive drafts to reviewers; don’t post them in public channels.
  • Prompt versioning: Always record which prompt produced the draft.

SLAs and metrics

  • Time to first human touch (how long drafts wait).
  • Approval latency (creation -> decision).
  • Edit rate (what % of drafts need changes).
  • Edit magnitude (characters changed; aim to trend down).
  • Fallback rate (how often timeouts triggered).
  • Defect escape rate (post‑publish fixes…keep this near zero).

Starter policy

Task: Marketing email (promo)
Risk: Medium
SLA: 30 minutes
Primary reviewer: Campaign owner (Slack DM)
Secondary reviewer: Marketing lead (escalate at 20 minutes)
Fallback at SLA: Publish pre-approved template with variable slots only
Edit capture: Required; label tone/brand/disclaimer
Logging: Reviewer, decision, edits, prompt_version, time_to_decision

Templates

Slack intro for reviewers

You’ll get compact approval cards with Approve, Edit, or Block. If you do nothing inside the SLA, we’ll use the safe fallback. Reply in thread to edit. Your changes train the system so you see fewer fixes next time.

Email intro for external approvers

Quick reviews, no portal. Reply with #approve, make inline edits, or reply #block with a reason. If we don’t hear back by the SLA, we’ll ship the pre‑approved version.

Bottom line

Human‑in‑the‑loop doesn’t have to mean human‑in‑the‑way. Meet reviewers where they live, learn from every edit, and keep work moving with smart fallbacks. You get oversight and speed.

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