How to Use Approval Jobs in CircleCI

An approval job pauses a workflow until someone clicks Approve in the UI, turning a deploy into a gated manual action.

Add a job with type: approval and make the deploy job requires: it. The workflow halts at the approval until a user approves, then continues.

Gate deploy behind approval

The hold job waits for a click; only then does deploy run.

version: 2.1
workflows:
  release:
    jobs:
      - build
      - hold:
          type: approval
          requires: [build]
      - deploy:
          requires: [hold]
          filters:
            branches:
              only: main

Gotchas

• An approval job has no steps:; it is purely a gate.
• Restrict who can approve via project or org permissions for production safety.
• Combine with a context so the approved deploy job gains production secrets only after sign-off.

Key takeaways

• type: approval pauses a workflow for a manual click.
• Downstream jobs requires: the approval job to gate them.
• Limit approvers with permissions for production deploys.

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