Task Approval Gates

Task Approval Gates let you pause a task at any step and require a designated person to approve before the workflow continues. Use them when a task involves a decision that needs human judgment — sending a report, deploying a change, or kicking off a process that's hard to undo.

What is an approval gate?

An approval gate is a checkpoint you can attach to any step in a task. When the task run reaches that step, it stops and waits. Nothing executes until a designated approver (or anyone, if you don't specify one) clicks Approve. If they reject it instead, you control what happens next: the task can abort, retry the step, or jump to a different step entirely.

Approval gates are useful any time a workflow involves a decision that needs human judgment, such as sending a report, deploying a change, or kicking off a process that's hard to undo.

Adding an approval gate to a task step

Before you add a gate, make sure the task itself is set up. If you haven't created a task yet, see Creating Tasks first.

1. Open the task you want to edit. The task card appears in the chat thread where it was created.

2. Click the Edit button on the task card. The task editor opens with your list of steps.

3. Find the step where you want the workflow to pause. Below the step's text, click Advanced. A panel expands with three optional sections: Gate, Condition, and Output schema.

4. In the Gate row, click Add gate. A gate configuration form appears.

5. In the Gate type dropdown, select Approval.

6. Click in the Approvers field and start typing a name or email address to search your workspace members. Select a person from the results and they appear as a pill in the field. Repeat to add additional approvers. If you leave this field empty, any workspace member can approve.

7. Optionally, enter a number in the Timeout (minutes, optional) field. If set, the gate auto-approves after that many minutes if no one has acted.

8. In the On reject dropdown, choose what happens if the approver rejects:

   • Retry step: the gate reappears and the approver gets another chance. After one retry, the task fails if rejected again.
   • Abort task: the task run ends immediately and is marked failed.
   • Route to step: execution jumps to a specific step you select. A Route to step dropdown appears when you choose this option.

9. Click Save changes on the task card. The gate is now attached to that step.

Tip: You can see at a glance that a step has a gate configured. The Advanced toggle shows a small badge with the word "gate" next to it.

How approval notifications work

When a task run reaches a gated step, an Approval Required card appears directly in the chat thread for that task run. The card shows the task name, step name, and Approve and Reject buttons. Obvious also sends each designated approver a notification. Depending on what they've configured in Settings → Notifications, that notification may arrive in the notification center, as an email, via Slack, or as a mobile push. Clicking the notification takes them directly to the task's thread.

Note: If no specific approvers are listed on the gate, Obvious doesn't send targeted notifications. Anyone with access to the project can open the thread and act on the card.

Approving or rejecting

When a task run reaches a gated step, the Approval Required card appears in the chat thread for that task run. If you're one of the designated approvers (or if the gate has no specific approvers), you'll see Approve and Reject buttons directly in the card.

If multiple approvers are listed, any one of them can reject the gate immediately. To approve, all listed approvers must give their approval before the task continues.

To approve:

1. Open the thread containing the task run. You can get there from the notification or by navigating to the project directly.

2. Find the Approval Required card in the chat.

3. Click Approve. The card updates to show Gate Approved, and the task continues running the next step automatically.

To reject:

1. Find the Approval Required card in the chat.

2. Click Reject. A text area appears where you can enter an optional reason.

3. Click Confirm Reject. The card updates to show Gate Rejected, and the task follows whatever On reject behavior you configured when you set up the gate.

If you're not one of the designated approvers, the Approve and Reject buttons won't appear. You'll see the card but can't act on it.

Timeout gates

If you need a gate that resolves itself automatically instead of waiting indefinitely for a human, you can use a Timeout gate type. Select Timeout from the Gate type dropdown when configuring the gate. The Timeout (minutes, required) field becomes required. Enter how many minutes before the gate auto-approves and the task continues.

Timeout gates follow the same On reject configuration as approval gates, which applies if the timeout expires before the auto-approval kicks in. Use this for time-boxed review windows where the default is to proceed unless someone actively stops it.

Tip: You can combine timeout with an approval gate. On an Approval gate, the timeout field is optional. If you set one, the gate auto-approves after the timeout even if no one has explicitly clicked Approve.