Before an AI worker touches your codebase — and again after it finishes — guardrails run automated safety checks to catch problems early. They act as gatekeepers: a guardrail can warn you about a potential issue or block a dispatch entirely.
Not every change should be merged without a human looking at it first. Human-in-the-loop (HITL) adds approval gates to the agent workflow — high-risk work items pause after the merge request is created and wait for a human to review and approve before proceeding.