Why is a payment awaiting approval, and how do I resume it?

Understand why an Agent payment needs administrator approval and safely resume its original method, URL, body, quote, and Intent without paying twice.

awaiting_approval means the payment is eligible for human approval but has not reached its required quorum. Save the returned Intent ID and original exact resource URL, let the required number of organization administrators decide the locked payment details, then resume that same Intent with resumeX402Purchase after its approval status becomes approved.

Do not create a replacement Intent while approval is pending.

Why approval was required

A new Payment Agent starts conservatively: its automatic-payment threshold is zero, so every payment requires approval until an operator creates and activates an explicit policy version.

After that, the active policy produces one of three outcomes:

Policy result	Payment outcome
Origin and recipient are allowed, and the amount is at or below the automatic threshold and all other limits	Automatically approved
Unknown origin, unknown recipient, or amount above the automatic threshold but within the per-payment limit	Awaits the approval quorum selected by the matching `approvalTiers` entry
Amount above a hard policy or platform limit, unsupported payment details, exhausted budget, or failed risk gate	Rejected; approval cannot override it

An approval of an unknown origin or recipient applies only to this Intent. It does not add that value to the policy allowlist, so a later purchase from the same unknown target can require approval again.

What the administrator approves

The approval locks a snapshot of the organization, environment, Agent, wallet, HTTP method, redacted resource URL, full URL hash, request-body digest, content type, origin, recipient, network, asset contract, maximum amount, x402 requirement, policy version, and expiry time. StableOps does not store the request body itself.

An administrator can approve or reject that snapshot but cannot edit the recipient, asset, network, or amount and then approve the modified payment. Management API Keys may read the approval queue, but each decision requires a short-lived session for an administrator in the current organization. Prefer the Agent Payments approvals page.

The active policy's approvalTiers selects the highest matching minimumAmountAtomic and can require one to five distinct administrators. Approval responses expose requiredApprovals, approvedCount, and rejectedCount so an operator can display progress. One administrator cannot vote twice. Until enough distinct approvals are recorded, the approval and Intent remain pending. Any rejection immediately rejects the approval and Intent, even if other administrators already approved.

Safe resume flow

Keep the result from the first request:

const result = await agent.x402Fetch(resourceUrl, {
  method: 'POST',
  body: requestBody,
  contentType: 'application/json',
  idempotencyKey: 'research-task-284:market-report:v1',
})

if (result.status === 'awaiting_approval') {
  await savePendingPayment({
    intentId: result.intentId,
    approvalId: result.approvalId,
    approvalExpiresAt: result.approvalExpiresAt,
  })
}

Wait until the approval is actually approved, then load the saved Intent ID and resume it:

const pending = await loadPendingPayment()

const resumed = await agent.resumeX402Purchase(pending.intentId, resourceUrl, {
  method: 'POST',
  body: requestBody,
  contentType: 'application/json',
})

Resuming does not reuse the old remote 402 response. The SDK repeats the original method, URL, body, and content type, then compares the refreshed payment requirement with the approved Intent. The Control API verifies the method, URL hash, body digest, and content type before issuing an execution grant.

If the x402 requirement changed

The old approval cannot authorize a materially different payment:

a different HTTP method, full URL, request body, content type, origin, recipient, network, or asset invalidates the approval.
an amount above the approved maximum invalidates the approval; and
an unchanged or lower amount may continue only when every other locked field still matches.

This protects against a seller changing the charge between the human decision and signing. Do not bypass a mismatch by calling the signer directly or by changing the Intent payload.

If approval expires or is rejected

An expired or rejected approval cannot be resumed. StableOps releases its uncommitted budget reservation. If the business still wants to attempt the purchase, treat it as a new, deliberate purchase after checking the current resource quote and policy; do not try to revive the terminal Intent.

Approval is valid for 30 minutes by default. Once an execution grant has already been issued, the grant's own short validity and nonce state determine what happens next; approval expiry does not cancel a possibly submitted payment.