When more than one person can approve AI agent work, the problem is usually not permission. It is routing.
Claude Code or Codex can ask for approval at the right moment, but that still leaves a human decision: which person should see the request, how much context they need, and whether the approval belongs to the repo owner, the on-call developer, or someone watching a shared production surface.
If that routing is vague, approvals get slow, duplicated, or rubber-stamped. That is how a workflow becomes both noisy and unsafe.
What Routing Is For
Approval routing is the rule that decides who gets the decision.
It matters because not every action should reach the same approver:
- a small file edit in a familiar repo can go to the person already watching the session,
- a destructive command should go to someone who understands the blast radius,
- a shared-state change should reach the person responsible for the branch or environment,
- and an after-hours approval should go to the person who can actually answer quickly.
Junction is useful here because it keeps the run visible while the work stays on the local machine. That means the approver can see output, diff context, and session state instead of making a decision from a vague chat notification.
Build An Approver Map
The simplest approver map is a short matrix you can keep in your head or write down in repo instructions.
| Action class | Best approver | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Read-only inspection | No approval or the session owner | Low risk, mostly informational |
| Small local edit | Repo owner or session owner | Fast feedback, low blast radius |
| Shared branch change | Branch owner or reviewer of record | Prevents surprise changes |
| Destructive command | Human who understands the recovery path | Command may not be reversible |
| External side effect | On-call owner or service owner | Impact reaches beyond the repo |
That matrix is not a policy artifact for its own sake. It is a way to stop the same question from being re-litigated every time the agent asks for permission.
Route By Risk, Not By Convenience
The wrong approval model is "who is online."
That seems efficient until the wrong person approves a command they do not fully understand. A better model is to route by risk and ownership:
- Determine whether the action is read, edit, command, or external side effect.
- Determine whether the target is local, shared, or remote.
- Determine who owns the repository, branch, or service.
- Route the approval to the person who can answer with context, not just speed.
This lines up with Junction's approval workflow. The product already exposes the action, the session, and the change surface. The routing rule decides who should see that information first.
Use Time And Context Together
Time zone alone is not enough, but it matters.
If a session is running while the repo owner is asleep, a second person may need to approve or block the work. That does not mean the second person should become the default approver for everything. It means the routing rule should acknowledge off-hours operations and make the fallback explicit.
That is the same reason How to Build an After-Hours Approval Routine for Agent Runs works better when it names the class of action instead of treating every prompt the same way.
The practical version is:
- during working hours, route to the repo owner or session owner,
- after hours, route to the designated fallback owner,
- for shared systems, route to the service owner regardless of time,
- for risky commands, require the person who can explain the recovery plan.
A Concrete Routing Pattern
Say an agent wants to do three things in one run:
- update a test,
- edit a shared config file,
- and run a command that changes a deployed setting.
Those do not belong to the same approver path.
- The test update can go to the session owner.
- The shared config file should go to the repo or branch owner.
- The deployed setting change should go to the service owner or on-call human.
If you approve all three from the same notification, the workflow is too coarse.
This is where Junction's real-time output and diff review matter. The approver can see that the agent moved from a harmless edit into shared state or an external effect before the wrong thing is approved.
Make The Routing Rules Visible
People do better with simple rules they can actually remember.
Good routing rules are short:
- one owner per repo path,
- one fallback owner per off-hours window,
- one named approver for destructive or external actions,
- one place to read the session transcript,
- one place to review the final diff.
If the rules need a spreadsheet to decode, they will not survive busy days.
You can reinforce the rules in repo instructions, in CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md guidance, and in the way you set up daemons across machines. When people know which machine owns which repo or service, approval routing becomes much easier.
What Not To Do
Do not route by whoever taps the notification first.
Do not let low-stakes edits train the team to approve everything automatically.
Do not make the fallback approver answer for systems they do not own unless they have the full context to make the decision.
Do not hide risky actions behind a generic approval label. If the agent wants to touch a branch, a deployment, or shared state, the prompt should say so plainly.
Where Junction Fits
Junction helps because approval routing is only useful when the decision surface is readable.
The daemon keeps execution local, the browser or phone shows the run, and the app makes it possible to review output, diffs, and state before answering. That is a cleaner place to make approval decisions than a terminal prompt buried in scrollback.
If your team wants a lightweight setup first, start with the Junction setup guide. If you need more than one daemon or more open chats, compare pricing before you start routing approvals across more machines.