What is a review queue?

A review queue is the place where an agent's held actions wait for people to decide them. Each item shows what the agent proposes, the facts it relied on and where each came from, the bound that caused the hold, and who it is waiting for. Reviewers work through the queue, approving, correcting or declining, and every decision is filed.

Why is the review queue so important?

Because it is where human oversight actually happens. Policies, certificates and approval rules all describe oversight; the review queue is where a person looks at a specific action and decides. If the queue is well run, the agent's authority is bounded in practice. If it is backlogged, poorly staffed or worked by people who do not understand what they are looking at, oversight exists only on paper.

The queue is also the richest source of learning about the agent. What it holds, how often reviewers correct it, and why they decline: all of that is visible in one place.

How does a review queue work?

Items arrive as the agent produces held verdicts. Each is routed by type to reviewers with standing for it: a held payment to someone entitled to approve payments at that depth, a held letter to someone who can approve customer communications. The reviewer opens the item, reads the agent's draft and its sources, checks the provenance of the facts that matter, and decides.

Good queues show three things clearly: how long each item has waited against its response-time target, which items are near red lines, and which reviewers are available. A daily check keeps it honest; the held queue daily review checklist gives a format.

An example

Take a hypothetical property management firm. Its agent handles tenant requests, drafts repair orders and holds any repair above a set cost, any rent arrangement and any notice to a tenant. On a typical morning the queue holds twenty items: twelve repair orders, five rent arrangements, three notices. Two reviewers work it. The repair orders go quickly. One rent arrangement mentions a tenant's illness, so the reviewer routes it to the senior manager. One notice cites the wrong clause of the tenancy, so the reviewer corrects it and notes the reason for the agent owner.

How is a review queue different from a work queue?

A work queue holds tasks waiting to be done: incoming requests, cases to process. A review queue holds work already done by the agent, waiting for a decision. In a work queue, people do the work. In a review queue, they judge it. The skills differ. A fast processor may be a weak reviewer, because reviewing means asking whether something done by someone else is right, which takes a different kind of attention.

In practice, many teams run both: a work queue for cases the agent refuses or cannot take, and a review queue for cases it has prepared.

How do you staff it?

From the volume the agent will hold, the time each decision takes and the response-time targets for each type. Then add cover. The method is in how do you staff an AI agent review queue, with a rota format in the review queue rota template, and targets in how to set response-time targets for an AI agent review queue. The guide to AI agent skills by role covers who should be on it.

Where the Academy fits

Working a review queue is what Pryme Intelligence Academy's Operator track prepares people for. Its eight modules include human review, reading the workspace and running the rhythm, and the practicum is two weeks of real review decisions on a live queue, signed off by a Pryme assessor.