iProov Publishes Experimental Protocol for Human Approval of AI Agent Actions

iProov has released an experimental open specification for proving that a human approved a particular action proposed by an artificial intelligence agent. The Human Approval and Presence Specification, or HAPS, is designed for workflows in which software acting on a person’s behalf must obtain explicit approval before completing a sensitive task.

The protocol lets an organization pause an agent, present the proposed action to a person, obtain evidence of genuine human presence and approval, and check that the evidence refers to the same action. Organizations decide which operations require that step, rather than requiring approval for every task an agent performs.

HAPS uses a signed consent credential that binds approval to information about the intended action and its presentation. The credential also includes controls for the intended recipient, a challenge, an expiration time and a single-use identifier. Those fields allow a verifier to check the scope and freshness of the approval and reject reuse.

The specification is independent of the technology used to establish human presence. iProov has tested an example using its biometric liveness service, but the protocol does not require that product or a particular biometric method. It is intended to supplement existing authentication and authorization systems, including OAuth, OpenID Connect and WebAuthn.

Founder and CEO Andrew Bud has previously described proof of human presence as a requirement for agentic workflows, including checks that an agent has an accountable owner and that a person genuinely participates when approval is required.

Other developers are also adding explicit human authorization to automated tasks. World and Vercel have introduced cryptographic human-in-the-loop approval for agent workflows, while enterprise identity providers are developing controls for the software identities that execute those tasks.

iProov has made HAPS available under the Apache 2.0 license, together with test vectors and a partial Rust reference implementation. The project is an experimental draft for review and development, not a production-ready authorization service. Implementations must apply the relevant approval policy and maintain the state needed to prevent credentials being replayed.

The company is inviting independent review and alternative implementations, with Bud presenting the work at AGNTCon and MCPCon Europe in Amsterdam.

Sources: iProov, GitHub

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team