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Approval Methods

When a policy requires user approval, Tollgate supports multiple ways to present the approval request.

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Terminal (Default)

The terminal approval method prompts directly in your terminal. Best for local development when you’re actively watching the output. 
tollgate start -s postgres
# or
tollgate wrap npx mcp-server-postgres
When an approval is needed: 
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  TOLLGATE: Agent requesting action
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Server:  postgres
  Tool:    query
  Risk:    write

  INSERT INTO users (name) VALUES ('Alice')

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Allow? [y]es once / [5]min / [15]min / [s]ession / [N]o

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Terminal Shortcuts

KeyAction
yApprove once (no session grant)
5Approve and grant for 5 minutes
15Approve and grant for 15 minutes
30Approve and grant for 30 minutes
sApprove for entire session
n or EnterDeny

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Advanced Syntax

Specify scope with duration: 
> tool:15min    # Grant for this tool for 15 minutes
> server:5min   # Grant for all tools on this server for 5 minutes
> exact:session # Grant for this exact tool+args for session

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Interactive (Web UI)

The interactive approval method serves a web UI where you can review and approve requests from your browser. Useful when:
  • You’re not actively watching the terminal
  • You want a more visual approval experience
  • You’re running Tollgate in the background

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Starting with Interactive Mode

# Use the web UI for approvals
tollgate start -s postgres --approval interactive

# Custom port
tollgate start -s postgres --approval interactive --approval-port 3000

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Using the Web UI

  1. Open http://localhost:9847 in your browser
  2. Pending approvals appear in real-time
  3. Review the request details (server, tool, arguments, risk level)
  4. Click an approval button:
    • Deny - Reject the request
    • Allow Once - Approve without session grant
    • Allow 5 min - Approve with 5-minute session grant
    • Allow 15 min - Approve with 15-minute session grant
    • Allow Session - Approve for entire session

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Web UI Features

  • Real-time updates via Server-Sent Events
  • Risk-level coloring (safe=green, read=blue, write=yellow, destructive/dangerous=red)
  • Countdown timer showing time until auto-deny
  • Full argument display for reviewing exactly what the agent wants to do

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Configuration

Set the approval method in tollgate.yaml: 
approval:
  method: interactive  # or 'terminal'
  port: 9847          # for interactive mode
  timeout: 60000      # approval timeout in ms

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Comparison

FeatureTerminalInteractive
Requires terminal focusYesNo
Browser requiredNoYes
Keyboard shortcutsYesNo
Visual risk indicatorsColor-coded textColor-coded badges
Multiple pending requestsOne at a timeQueue visible
Best forActive developmentBackground operation

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Timeout Behavior

Both methods have a configurable timeout (default: 60 seconds). If no response is received within the timeout, the request is automatically denied. 
# Set 2-minute timeout
tollgate start -s postgres --timeout 120000