Respond to a Feedback Request

When an agent reaches an action that needs a human decision (for example, stopping a production line, sending a customer-facing message, deleting records), it raises a feedback request and waits for you. This request is the human-in-the-loop (HITL) part of Act. It is the second half of the loop you set up in Set Human Oversight: there you decide which actions need approval; here you act on the requests they raise. This page shows you how to find and answer those requests.

Where Feedback Appears

Because Act is integrated into the HiveMQ Platform, the platform shows feedback on the deployed agent that raised it. There is no separate inbox to watch. You see a pending request in two places:

  • On the Deployed Agents tab, the Awaiting Your Decision summary card counts how many agents are holding an action for you, so you can see quickly that something needs attention.

  • On the agent’s own detail page, the pending request appears in a banner at the top of the page (the same place you monitor the agent’s cycles and health).

What a request does while it waits depends on the agent’s autonomy setting. A controlled action blocks and waits for your response before it runs. A supervised action runs immediately and asks for feedback only so the agent can learn from your answer. See Set Human Oversight for the difference.

Before You Start

  • You have a deployed agent with at least one controlled or supervised action. See Set Human Oversight.

  • You are logged in to the HiveMQ Platform.

Step 1: Open the Agent with a Pending Request

In the Act tab, open Deployed Agents. The Awaiting Your Decision card shows how many agents are waiting on you. Select the agent that needs a decision to open its detail page.

The pending feedback request is displayed at the top of the agent’s page.

Step 2: Read the Request

The request gives you everything you need to decide without leaving the page:

  • Question: What the agent is asking, with the live values filled in (for example, "Approve emergency line stop? Defect rate is 12% on line 1.").

  • Context: The action the agent wants to take, its target, and its parameters.

  • Agent confidence: How confident the agent was in this decision.

  • Time remaining: How long until the request times out, and what happens on timeout.

Step 3: Respond

  1. Select the option that reflects your decision. The agent defines the options, commonly Approve / Reject, sometimes with a third choice such as Modify or Investigate. An option can carry a risk badge (low, medium, high, critical) to flag the consequence of the choice.

  2. Optionally add a note. The platform stores your response, and the agent can use it when it learns from the decision.

  3. Submit your response.

The agent receives your answer within seconds:

  • For a controlled action, the agent now executes or skips the action, based on your choice.

  • For a supervised action, the action has already run. The platform records your answer so the agent can calibrate future decisions.

What Happens If You Do Not Respond

Every request has a timeout and a default action. If the timeout passes with no response, the agent applies the default:

Default Action On Timeout

reject

Skip the action and record a refusal (typical for controlled actions).

skip

Skip the action and do not record a refusal.

continue

Run the action anyway (use when delay is riskier than the action, typical for supervised actions).

The platform records the timeout outcome too, so the agent can learn from patterns such as "requests sent when no operator is available." You set the timeout and default action per action when you configure oversight. See Set Human Oversight.

Get Notified When a Request Arrives

You configure notifications per network, not globally. There is no account-wide notifications page and no browser push. On a network’s detail page, open the Feedback Notifications section:

  1. Turn on Enable notifications.

  2. Under Notification channels, click Add channel.

  3. Choose a channel Type (either Webhook or Email), give it a Name, and fill in the type-specific field (a Webhook URL, or an email address).

  4. Add the channel.

Every agent on that network then sends feedback notifications through the channels you defined. To notify different teams for different sites, configure the channels on each site’s network separately. See Create a Network.

How Your Answer Feeds Back into the Agent

Your responses do more than gate decisions. Each response is also a training signal. After a cycle completes, the agent’s Reflect stage receives the feedback collected that cycle: the option you chose, any note, and whether you responded or it timed out. The agent uses this feedback to calibrate future decisions. See Reflect on Agent Execution.

Next Steps