Approval Gate. A control boundary that prevents consequential work from crossing into external effect until the required authority, evidence, policy result, and human-only decision are present. An approval gate is architecture only when it is enforced outside the actor requesting action and records the approval as a truth fact.
The gate becomes enforceable through an approval binding: the approval fact must be tied to the specific action, connector, payload, descriptor, risk tier, and evidence it authorizes. The approval mode tells the gate whether this action can proceed automatically, requires review, escalates, or must be denied.