Approving Stella's Actions

When Stella wants to take an action that needs a human’s sign-off — for example, creating a Jira ticket, sending an email, or another tool that’s marked approval-required — it doesn’t just run it. Instead, it shows an approval card inline in the chat so you can review exactly what it intends to do and decide. This also applies to tools from third-party MCP servers and API Tools that your admin has enabled for Stella under Settings → Config → Admin → Stella AI → MCP Servers and API Tools. Stella pauses the tools set to Needs approval in that setting and runs the ones set to Always allow. These settings apply to Stella only and override the server’s policy on the Integrations page. See Stella’s external tools.

​

What you’ll see

When Stella pauses for approval, a card appears in the conversation:

• “Stella wants to run a tool that needs your approval” (or “Stella wants to run N tools that need your approval” when several are bundled together).
• Each proposed action shows what Stella intends to do and the details it will use, so nothing runs sight-unseen.

​

Approving or rejecting

• Click Approve to let the action run (the button shows Approving… while it works). Stella carries on with the result.
• Click Reject to decline it (Rejecting… while it processes). Stella won’t run it and continues without it.
• When several actions are bundled in one card, you can act on them individually.
• If an action needs a detail filled in first, Stella prompts “Fix the highlighted fields before approving.” — complete the highlighted fields, then approve.

Once you decide, the card updates to confirm “You approved the tool call(s)” or “You rejected the tool call(s)”, so there’s a clear record of what you allowed.

​

Approvals in Slack and Microsoft Teams

When you ask Stella something in Slack or Microsoft Teams and it needs approval for an action, Stella posts an approval card in the same thread or direct message.

• The card is titled Stella needs your approval to continue. It lists each action Stella wants to run and the details it will use.
• Text details appear as editable fields prefilled with Stella’s values. Edit them before you click Approve to run the action with your changes.
• Click Approve to run the action or Reject to decline it. Stella then posts its follow-up reply in the same thread.
• If Stella needs approval for another action later in the same task, it posts a new card.
• Only the person who asked Stella can approve or reject. The card says who that is. Anyone else who clicks sees Only the person who asked Stella can approve or reject this.
• After a decision, the card updates to Approved by or Rejected by the person who decided, and the buttons are removed.
• If the request was already decided, Stella replies This request was already approved or rejected. If the request can no longer be found, Stella replies This approval request is no longer available.

​

Follow-up questions in threads

In a Slack or Teams channel, Stella treats each thread as one conversation. When you @mention Stella again in the same thread, it remembers the earlier messages in that thread. Start a new thread to start a new conversation. Stella conversations from Slack and Teams don’t appear in your web chat history.

​

Related