ADR-003 — Human approval remains part of critical workflows
Context
Submitting a proposal, approving a data change or acting on a compliance conclusion is a business decision with an accountable owner. A system that acts autonomously on such decisions concentrates risk and erodes the trust that makes the rest of the system useful. Fluent output is not the same as trustworthy output.
Decision
The system recommends; humans approve. Every recommendation explains why, where it came from, and which evidence supports it, so approval is informed rather than ceremonial. Autonomy is deliberately sacrificed to earn organisational trust.
Consequences
- Positive: accountability stays with people; adoption is easier because the system augments departments instead of replacing them; errors are caught where they are cheapest to catch.
- Negative: the system is slower than a fully autonomous one. This is accepted: a slower answer with evidence beats a fast answer that must be re-verified by hand. The pressure to reverse this decision will grow as the system proves itself. This record exists so that reversal is a conscious decision, not drift.