A human review item is a structured action included in an Evidence Pack that indicates a person must make a judgment call. It is distinct from a risk flag, which is a data-level discrepancy that an agent might route or log automatically. A human review item explicitly signals that the decision cannot be delegated to the agent or resolved by querying another source.
What triggers a human review item
Human review items arise when:
- A risk flag is present and the correct response depends on business context the agent does not have (for example, a known prior security interest that has been verbally discharged but not yet removed from the PPSR)
- Source data is inconclusive or temporarily unavailable, and the workflow cannot continue without a verification result
- The transaction type has a regulatory requirement for human sign-off regardless of source check results
- Conflicting source data cannot be resolved by querying additional sources
What a human review item contains
- Item type: the category of action required (for example, confirm identity, verify discharge, review discrepancy)
- Description: what the reviewer needs to check or decide
- Related risk flags: which risk flags, if any, prompted the item
- Source references: which source checks are relevant to the review
- Priority: whether the item blocks the workflow or is advisory
Why agents need this
Agents need a clear signal that a workflow should pause for human input, rather than attempting to continue or making an autonomous decision on a matter that requires judgment. A human review item provides that signal in a structured form that an agent can use to: pause a workflow, generate a notification for a human reviewer, include relevant context in an escalation, and record that human review was required before proceeding.
Hoist does not tell agents to block or approve transactions. It tells agents what source data says and whether a human needs to weigh in. That boundary is intentional: source checks are evidence, not decisions.
How Hoist uses this
Human review items appear in tool-specific verification responses, including the human_review_items field where documented. Available source-backed workflows generate them from checks that actually ran or from explicit unavailability. The separate Evidence Pack export includes fixture-derived sample review items for workflow testing. Hoist PPSR preview and paid search are currently unavailable; current PPSR-shaped items are sample/fixture or unavailability notices, not a live check.
Hoist provides source-cited verification responses for supported checks. It does not guarantee that a transaction is safe, legal, compliant, or financeable. Human review items make that boundary explicit without turning the separate sample Evidence Pack into source evidence.
What Hoist does not infer
A human review item is not a decline recommendation. It does not mean the transaction cannot proceed; it means a person must decide. Hoist does not know the operator's risk appetite, credit policy, or regulatory obligations. It does not know whether a risk flag is material to a specific transaction. The human reviewer uses the tool-specific source-cited response, including its source checks and risk flags, to make that call. A sample Evidence Pack cannot support that decision.
Related terms
- Evidence Pack: the current owner-bound prelaunch sample export; its review items are fixture-derived workflow examples.
- Risk flag: a data-level discrepancy that may trigger a human review item in a supported verification response.
- Source check: the individual verification step that provides the evidence a reviewer uses to make a judgment.
- AI agent: the agent runtime that receives human review items and routes them to reviewers.
- PPSR: future Hoist contract; current preview and paid-search calls are unavailable and produce no live encumbrance data.
- NPII: AFSA's National Personal Insolvency Index, a separate person-insolvency register that is not currently enabled as a Hoist source.