What Is Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) in AI? A Practical Guide (opens in new tab)

Human-in-the-loop (HITL) in AI means keeping a person involved in an automated system's decisions — approving, editing, or interrupting what an AI does — instead of letting it run fully on its own. For AI agents, human-in-the-loop is the practice of pausing the agent at chosen points so a human can review or steer an action before it takes effect. The hard part isn't adding a human; it's making sure that human can actually catch the mistakes that matter. This guide explains what human-in-the-...