Add human approval to Claude Code with Impri

Give Claude Code a way to pause on risky actions — a deploy, an email, a database write, a payment — and wait for your yes before it proceeds with any of them.

60-second install

bash

claude mcp add impri \
  -e IMPRI_API_KEY=im_your_key_here \
  -e IMPRI_BASE_URL=https://api.impri.dev \
  -- npx @impri/mcp

IMPRI_BASE_URL defaults to http://localhost:8484 (self-hosted), so it must be set explicitly for the cloud API — leave it out only if you're actually running docker compose up -d locally.

Get an API key at impri.dev, or self-host with docker compose up -d (see self-hosting). Verify it loaded:

/mcp

You should see impri listed with 8 tools.

Tell Claude Code to use it

Add three lines to your project's CLAUDE.md (or a global ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md):

markdown

## Human approval
Before running any command with a real side effect — sending an email, pushing to a
remote branch, running a database write, calling a paid API — call impri_push_action
with a clear preview, then impri_await_decision before proceeding. Never skip this.

What you see

A card lands in your Impri inbox (web, or pushed to Telegram/Slack/ntfy if you've set up a notification channel) with the action's title and preview, and Approve / Reject buttons. Approving a diff-style preview lets you edit the text before it goes back to the agent.

Real example call

Claude Code calls the tool directly — no code required on your side:

impri_push_action({
  kind: "git.push",
  title: "Push branch fix/retry-backoff to origin",
  preview: { format: "diff", body: "3 files changed, 41 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)" },
  editable: []
})

Response:

json

{
  "action_id": "act_7g2k...",
  "status": "pending",
  "inbox_url": "https://app.impri.dev/inbox/act_7g2k..."
}

Claude Code then calls impri_await_decision({ action_id: "act_7g2k...", timeout_s: 600 }) and blocks until you decide.

Troubleshooting

/mcp doesn't list impri — check claude mcp list for a startup error; the most common cause is a missing or malformed IMPRI_API_KEY.
Tool calls fail with "IMPRI_API_KEY is not set" — the env var wasn't passed through; re-run the claude mcp add command with -e IMPRI_API_KEY=... rather than exporting it in the shell that starts Claude Code.
Self-hosted server unreachable — confirm IMPRI_BASE_URL has no trailing /v1 (the client appends it) and that docker compose up -d is actually running on that port.

Try the human approval pattern end to end, or see it applied to a coding-agent-specific use case.