The Inbox is your workspace’s queue of items that agents have surfaced for human attention. Instead of operating entirely autonomously, an agent can be configured to pause at key decision points and send an item to the Inbox — waiting for a human to approve, reject, comment on, or reassign it before proceeding. This makes the Inbox the central hub for human-in-the-loop workflows, giving your team visibility and control over what your agents do without requiring you to monitor every step of every run.
The Inbox is the recommended pattern for any agent action with significant real-world consequences — sending an email to a customer, modifying a financial record, or triggering an external API. Route these actions through the Inbox so a human can verify the output before it takes effect.
Types of Inbox Items
Approval Requests
Escalations
Notifications
Task Completions
An Approval Request is raised when an agent reaches a step that requires explicit human sign-off before it can continue. The agent pauses, sends the item to the Inbox, and waits. The item includes the agent’s proposed action, the context that led to it, and any relevant data from the current run.Common examples:
- Approving a draft email before it is sent to a customer
- Confirming a data write that will update a large number of records
- Authorizing a payment or financial action initiated by the agent
Once you approve the item, the agent resumes from the paused step. If you reject it, the agent takes the rejection path defined in its workflow (or stops, if no rejection path is configured). An Escalation is raised when an agent encounters a situation it cannot resolve on its own — for example, a customer question outside its knowledge base, a conflict in the data it was given, or an ambiguous instruction.Escalations differ from approvals in that the agent is not proposing a specific action — it is asking a human to take over or provide guidance. You can:
- Reply with instructions that the agent will use to continue
- Resolve the escalation manually yourself (outside of the agent workflow)
- Reassign the escalation to a teammate better positioned to handle it
After you respond to an escalation, you choose whether to send the agent your reply so it can resume, or to mark the escalation as resolved without the agent taking further action. A Notification is an informational item — the agent is not waiting for a response, but it wants to make sure a human is aware of something. Notifications are one-way: read them, optionally add a comment for your records, and mark them as done.Common examples:
- An agent completed a long-running task and is reporting the outcome
- An agent detected an anomaly in the data it was processing
- A scheduled agent run finished with warnings
Notifications do not block agent execution. The agent continues immediately after sending the notification to the Inbox. A Task Completion item signals that an agent has finished a multi-step workflow and is presenting the final output for human review before the results are considered official. Unlike a notification, a task completion may require you to confirm or sign off that the results are acceptable.Common examples:
- An agent that drafted a weekly report is submitting it for editorial review
- A data enrichment agent has finished processing a batch of records and is presenting a summary
- A research agent has compiled its findings and is asking you to confirm they are ready to share
Approve the task completion to mark the workflow as successfully completed. Reject it to send the agent back to rework its output. Reviewing and Acting on Inbox Items
To open the Inbox, click Inbox in the left sidebar. Items are listed in reverse chronological order by default.
Click any item to open its detail view. The detail view shows:
- Item type (approval, escalation, notification, or task completion)
- Agent that created the item
- Created at timestamp
- Context — a summary of what the agent was doing and why it raised the item
- Proposed action or output — what the agent wants to do, or what it has done
- Linked objects or data — any collection records, files, or conversation excerpts relevant to the item
Actions you can take:
After you take an action, the item moves to the Resolved tab. The agent’s run log records your decision and the timestamp.
Filtering and Sorting the Inbox
Use the controls at the top of the Inbox to find items quickly:
- Filter by agent — show only items raised by a specific agent
- Filter by type — show only approvals, escalations, notifications, or task completions
- Filter by status — switch between Pending (awaiting action), Resolved, and All
- Filter by assignee — show only items assigned to you or to a specific teammate
- Sort by date — switch between newest first and oldest first
- Search — search item titles and context text for a keyword
Combine filters to create a focused view, such as “pending approval requests from the Customer Onboarding agent assigned to me.”
Setting Up Agents to Send Items to the Inbox
Configure your agent to route items to the Inbox by adding Inbox steps to its workflow. In the agent editor, you can add an Inbox: Request Approval, Inbox: Escalate, or Inbox: Notify step anywhere in the workflow.
For each Inbox step, configure:
- Title — a clear subject line for the inbox item, e.g.,
"Approve outreach email for {{contact.name}}"
- Context message — instructions for the reviewer explaining what to look at and what decision to make
- Assignee — a specific user, a team role, or leave blank for any team member
- On Approve / On Reject paths — the workflow branches the agent should follow after each outcome
You can also set conditions that trigger an Inbox step automatically. For example:
This lets agents handle routine cases autonomously and only escalate when they are genuinely uncertain or when the stakes are high.
Inbox Notifications
Layest notifies you when new items arrive in your Inbox so you can act promptly.
In-app notifications — a badge appears on the Inbox icon in the sidebar. Click the bell icon in the top-right corner to see a summary of new items without leaving your current page.
Email notifications — Layest sends an email digest when new items are assigned to you. Configure your notification preferences in Settings → Notifications:
- Immediately — receive an email as soon as an item is assigned to you (recommended for approval requests)
- Hourly digest — receive a summary of all new items once per hour
- Daily digest — receive a single daily summary
- Off — disable email notifications entirely (in-app notifications remain active)
Team admins can set a workspace-level default notification cadence that applies to all members unless they configure their own preference. 
