Approvals require a human

What it means

Approvals are decided by a person at the keyboard, never by a key or an agent.

Common causes

• An API key or a service account called :approve or :reject.
• The token came from a sign-in that was not interactive.

What to do

Do not retry. A person decides the approval on the dashboard’s Approvals page. See Approvals.

Retry: only after a fix. The same request fails the same way until you change the request, the credential or the resource.

Over MCP, the same failure is a tool result with isError: true, the code approvals_require_human and retryable: false.

Example

A response body for this problem. The detail and instance vary with the request.

{
  "type": "https://api.tobie.team/problems/approvals_require_human",
  "title": "Approvals require a human",
  "status": 403,
  "detail": "Approvals must be decided by a human",
  "code": "approvals_require_human",
  "instance": "/v1/approvals/01JC0S7Z5F3X9QK2M4N6P8R0TV:approve",
  "requestId": "01JC0S7Z5F3X9QK2M4N6P8R0TV"
}