Approval names the exact object, authority, scope, evidence, and action being accepted.

Review and approval are different

A reviewer checks an asset against a defined standard. An approver has authority to accept the identified version and permit a stated downstream action.

Passing editorial QA does not authorise legal publication, deploy code, spend money, or bind a client.

Approval object

The record must identify the exact page, file, package, code version, dataset, policy, or release candidate. A title or shared document link is not enough when the content can change.

Use a version, checksum, immutable export, timestamp, or controlled revision.

Approval authority

Written-draft hard gate

The complete visible draft must receive explicit approval before final publishable structured data or final publishing authorization.

Candidate types, properties, cues, and placeholders may be prepared earlier, but they are not the final graph.

Specialist review

Legal, privacy, security, accessibility, product, commercial, technical, medical, financial, employment, or other specialist subjects require an approver with suitable authority and competence.

A general editor cannot approve a specialist claim merely because the wording is clear.

Approval scope and exclusions

Record the sections, claims, assets, links, countries, languages, devices, environments, and actions covered. List any held claim, untested function, unresolved source, or excluded route.

An approval with an exclusion must remain visibly qualified through the handoff.

Decision states

The approver may accept, accept with qualification, return for repair, request evidence, require specialist review, block, reject, or defer until evidence can exist.

A module, model, writer, or reviewer cannot self-approve a failed validation.

Reapproval triggers

A material change to a fact, source, price, offer, product, provider, policy, law, entity, link, code, structured data, environment, or page role reopens affected approvals.

Minor spelling or formatting changes do not automatically reopen unrelated decisions.

Release authorization

Publication requires an authorised person, target environment, rollback snapshot, route-conflict check, asset check, rendered QA, and a post-release verification plan.

A draft-import package or CMS success message is not publication approval.

Approval record

Store the approver, authority, date, version, scope, evidence, conditions, exclusions, decision, and next action. Preserve a history when a later decision supersedes the approval.