Human-in-the-Loop

In a traditional workflow a person is in the loop almost by default, because they perform every step. Once an autonomous agent does the work, that implicit oversight disappears, and it has to be put back deliberately. Human-in-the-loop is how: defined points where the agent's work pauses for human judgment before it can advance. It is the principle; governance gates are the mechanism that holds the work until a person, or an automated check, signs off.

Keeping a human in the loop is not all-or-nothing. There is a spectrum. A person can be in the loop, approving each action before it happens; on the loop, letting the agent run while they monitor and step in on exceptions; or out of the loop, with oversight reduced to after-the-fact auditing. Each trades control for speed and scale. The governing rule is simple: the higher the risk and the harder it is to reverse, the closer the human should stay. In Overcut's model, this is what lets humans move up the stack. They stop operating every tool and start governing intent, deciding which points need sign-off and reviewing outcomes rather than raw data, while agents handle the work in between.

A failing build triggers a workflow. An agent reads the logs, finds the cause, writes the fix, runs the tests, and pushes the change to the pull request branch, all on its own. Then it stops. Merging to main is the decision that carries risk, so it is a human-in-the-loop gate: a person reviews the change and the agent's summary and approves the merge before anything ships. For a low-risk lint fix on a throwaway branch, the same team keeps a human on the loop instead, notified of the change with the ability to override, so it merges without waiting. The level of involvement matches the stakes, and either way the autonomy never runs past human judgment.