The fastest way to lose trust in an agent is to let it send something you would not have sent. So Orchestra agents stop.
What a gate is
A gate is a pause in the middle of a run. The agent has done the work — drafted the reply, prepared the invoice, staged the deploy — and now it needs a human to say yes. The run holds, the context stays warm, and you get a notification with the exact payload waiting for approval.
- Nothing leaves your account until someone approves it.
- The full run is logged — inputs, tool calls, and who approved what.
- A rejection is feedback: the agent revises instead of failing.
Where they fire
Sending mail, spending money, touching production, and writing to any external system all pass through a gate by default. Everything else runs straight through, because approving a search result would be theatre.
Autonomy is not the goal. Leverage is. A gate is what makes leverage safe.
Turn gates on per agent from the portal, or leave the defaults alone — they are already where you would put them.