Human-in-the-Loop: Guiding the AI During Development
By Fouad A.
14 April . 2026
Master Syntera's approval checkpoints, plan editing, and follow-up messages to steer AI development exactly where you want it.
Getting Started
Syntera is designed to work with you, not instead of you. Human-in-the-loop (HITL) checkpoints are built into every workflow so you can review, edit, and redirect the AI at critical moments.
You approve before anything ships
Syntera pauses at every major decision point - requirements, plan, and final output - giving you full control over what gets built. Start building
"Review the plan, edit what doesn't fit, and approve when you're satisfied. Syntera doesn't proceed without your go-ahead."
Requirements Approval
The first checkpoint is the BRD/SRS review. Syntera generates requirements documents and pauses for your approval:
- • Business Requirements Document (BRD) - what the product should do
- • System Requirements Specification (SRS) - how it should be built
- • You can approve as-is, request changes, or rewrite sections
- • Version history tracks every revision
If the requirements miss something, tell Syntera in plain English. It regenerates the documents with your feedback incorporated.
Plan Review
After requirements, Syntera produces a step-by-step implementation plan. This is your second checkpoint:
- • Review the ordered task list
- • Edit individual plan items
- • Delete tasks you don't want
- • Reorder priorities
- • Add tasks Syntera missed
Plan Review Options: ✔ Approve → Start building immediately ✎ Edit → Modify tasks, then re-approve ✖ Reject → Regenerate with new direction
Plan revisions are tracked with revision indexes, so you can always see what changed between versions.
Mid-Execution Feedback
While Syntera is building, you can send follow-up messages to steer the work:
- • Request changes to components already generated
- • Add requirements that came up during development
- • Ask for different approaches to specific problems
- • Request the agent to pause and explain its decisions
Syntera treats follow-up messages as priority input. It pauses current work, incorporates your feedback, and continues with the updated direction.
Requesting Human Help
Sometimes Syntera needs your input to proceed. When it encounters ambiguity or needs a decision, it uses the request_human_help tool to pause and ask you directly.
- • API key or credential requirements
- • Design decisions with multiple valid approaches
- • Business logic clarification
- • Third-party service configuration
- • Ambiguous requirements resolution
Time Travel and Rerun
If a task went in the wrong direction, Syntera supports time-travel: rolling back to a previous state and rerunning with different instructions.
- • Roll back to any previous plan revision
- • Reset the sandbox to match a specific commit
- • Edit the original request and rerun
- • Preserve work from other tasks while reverting one
Time travel uses Git history and state snapshots, so it is a clean rollback - not a messy undo.
Conclusion
Human-in-the-loop is not a safety net - it is how Syntera is designed to work. The best results come from reviewing requirements, editing plans, and sending follow-ups when something needs adjustment. You are the product owner; Syntera is your engineering team.
Related Guides
A Full SaaS in 2 Hours with Syntera
In this guide, you'll learn how to turn a simple idea into a fully deployed SaaS product using Syntera. We'll go through planning, building core features, adding authentication, enabling payments, and deploying - all powered by AI.
Writing Better Task Descriptions
Learn how to write clear, effective task descriptions that help Syntera's AI produce better plans and cleaner code on the first try.
Automating a React Component Library
How our team used Syntera to generate 40+ reusable React components with tests, Storybook stories, and full documentation in one afternoon.