> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.thread.app/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # External approvals > Send an approval to someone outside Thread with a no-login link, and see the decision flow back into your Inbox. Not every decision belongs to someone with a Thread login. The account executive who owns the relationship, a partner, a stakeholder on the customer's side — sometimes they're the right person to approve a draft. External approvals let them decide from a link, verified by a one-time code, with no account and no sign-in. There are two ways an approval reaches an outside person: * **You send it from the Inbox** — any approval you could decide yourself can be routed out. * **An agent requests it directly** — an agent can be instructed to seek an outside approver as part of its work, delivered by email or as a Slack DM. Either way, the link and code are minted server-side and the decision commits through the same path as an in-app approval. ## Sending an approval from the Inbox Find the approval in your Inbox and open its **···** menu (on the row or in the detail pane). A dialog asks for the approver's email and, optionally, their name. Typing the address is the deliberate gate — this mints a live approval link to someone outside your org, so it can't fire by accident. Thread emails them a no-login approval link plus a one-time verification code. Your inbox row slides into the Waiting on external section, showing who it's waiting on. Sending doesn't hand the decision away. The item stays in your Inbox and you can still decide it yourself at any time, or pick a different approver via Change external approver…. Whoever decides first, decides. ## What the external approver sees The link opens a branded approval page — no Thread login, no account creation: 1. **Verify identity.** The page asks for the one-time code from the message (or sends a fresh one to the approver's email — codes are short-lived, and a resend is one click). Only the address the approval was sent to can pass the gate. 2. **Review the item as drafted.** The page renders the full draft read-only — the email body, the proposed action, the calendar event. There is no edit surface for external approvers: the choice is approve as drafted or reject. 3. **Decide.** **Approve**, or **Reject** with a reason that goes back to the agent. Once decided, revisiting the link shows a calm "already decided" page — a link can never commit the same decision twice. ## Slack DM delivery When an agent is set up to deliver an external approval over Slack, the approver gets a DM instead of an email. For straightforward decisions — drafted emails, stage advances, proposed agent actions, calendar events — the DM carries **Approve** and **Reject** buttons right in Slack, plus an **Open in Thread** button to the full approval page. Richer items (CRM record writes, long-form documents) always route through the link, so nobody approves a complex change from a two-line card. Slack delivery resolves the recipient by exact email match against your connected Slack workspace. If the person can't be found there, the request fails visibly — it never silently falls back to a different recipient. ## The pending-items page An external approver with several open items doesn't have to dig through old emails. From any approval page, a verified approver can open their **pending items** page: every open, still-actionable item addressed to their email in your org, with the one they clicked from listed first. The page is read-only — each item links through to its own approval page to act. The session is scoped to that verified email and expires; when it does, the approver simply verifies again. If your org has invited them to become a full Thread user, the page mentions the pending invite. ## How the decision flows back The external decision commits through the same trust boundary as an in-app decision — nothing about the outcome is different because it came from outside: * **On approve**, the paused agent resumes and carries out the work as drafted. * **On reject**, the agent receives the reason and adjusts or escalates, exactly as if you had rejected it in the Inbox. * Your inbox row leaves **Waiting on external** and resolves into your history shelves on its own — there's nothing to tidy up. If an approval expires undecided, the link stops working and the item re-surfaces in your Inbox as an **exception**, so a stalled outside approver becomes your problem to solve rather than a silent gap. ## Related pages Deciding approvals in place, and the Waiting on external section. Per-action autonomy and how agents request approvals in the first place.