Human decisions

North Star treats human judgment as part of the system, not as an exception after automation fails.

When the system stops

The current posture stops for decisions that can materially change:

public visibility or release semantics
access for another person or organization
credentials, authentication, or security policy
destructive or difficult-to-recover data changes
meaningful uncapped spend
product direction when the available evidence does not support one path

The AI can gather evidence, compare options, and prepare a recommended action. It should not hide the decision inside technical language.

What a decision request should say

A clear request includes:

the choice in plain language
why the system stopped
the expected consequence of each option
the evidence already collected
the default safe state while waiting

The dashboard uses Needs your decision rather than the implementation term gate. The result should be understandable even when the operator is not a software engineer.

Approval is scoped

Approving one action does not grant permanent authority for unrelated work. The permission belongs to the named project, objective, and protected change.

Next: Limits and recovery