How do I get someone to sign off on an HTML report?

Publish the report on Comma and share the link with the reviewer as a commenter. Next to the report they see two buttons, Approve and Request changes, plus an optional one-line note. The verdict is recorded against the exact version they looked at, and you see a summary like '2 approved' in the report header.

What happens to an approval when the report changes?

It goes stale instead of disappearing. Comma pins every verdict to a snapshot of the content the reviewer saw. If the HTML changes afterwards, the approval is shown as 'approved an earlier version' and no longer counts toward the approved total, the same way a pull request review goes stale after a new push.

Can the share link show only the approved version?

Yes. Turn on 'Viewers see the last approved revision' in the share dialog. View-only audiences on the link then get the newest revision a reviewer approved, while reviewers keep seeing the latest draft. The URL never changes, so you can keep editing without the people reading it seeing unreviewed work.

Who is allowed to approve a report?

Anyone with comment permission on the report: invited reviewers, teammates when the report is filed under a team, or link visitors when the link permission is set to comment. View-only visitors cannot submit a verdict. Reviewers sign in (free) so the verdict carries a name.

Can an AI agent check approvals before it ships a report?

Yes. The Comma MCP server has get_report_signoffs and set_report_signoff, and the REST API has GET, POST and DELETE on /api/v1/reports/:id/signoffs. Each verdict comes back with is_stale, so an agent can refuse to distribute a report whose only approval was for an older version.

Can I get notified when someone approves?

Yes. Every verdict emits a signoff.submitted event. Point a notification webhook at Slack, Discord or any JSON endpoint and you get a message each time a reviewer approves or requests changes.

How to get sign-off on an HTML report

Code gets reviewed on a pull request: someone reads the diff, clicks Approve or Request changes, and if you push again the approval goes stale. Everyone understands the model.

Reports rarely get that. The weekly metrics page, the incident write-up, the client deliverable, the HTML your agent generated overnight — they get a thumbs-up emoji in Slack, and nobody can say later which version was approved.

Comma gives an HTML report the pull-request model. This page shows how it works and how to set it up.

The short version

Publish the report — paste, upload, or let an agent call create_report.
Share the link with your reviewers as commenters.
Reviewers click Approve or Request changes, optionally with a note.
Edit freely. Any approval for the old content is marked stale, so you know who still needs to look again.
Optional: have the share link serve only the last approved version.

What a verdict is

A verdict is one of two values, approved or changes_requested, with an optional one-line note. Each reviewer has one current verdict per report; clicking again replaces it, and clicking the active verdict retracts it.

The part that matters: every verdict is pinned to the content the reviewer saw. Comma snapshots that revision when the verdict is submitted. The header chip only counts verdicts whose snapshot matches the current content.

State in the header	Meaning
`2 approved`	Two reviewers approved the content that is live right now
`1 changes requested`	At least one current verdict asks for changes
`Review stale`	Verdicts exist, but all of them were for an earlier version
(per reviewer)	"approved · earlier version" when that person saw old content

This is the difference between sign-off and a thumbs-up. A thumbs-up on Monday says nothing about the numbers you re-ran on Tuesday. A stale verdict says so out loud.

Comments and sign-off do different jobs

Anchored comments are for "this number looks wrong" — pinned to the exact paragraph or table cell, threaded, resolvable. Sign-off is for "this is good to send." Most reviews use both: comments until the threads are resolved, then an approval on the version that came out the other side.

Staged publishing: the link only shows approved work

Sometimes the people reading a report should never see a draft — a client, leadership, a public status page. Comma handles that without a second URL.

In the share dialog, turn on Viewers see the last approved revision. From then on:

View-only audiences on the share link get the newest revision a reviewer approved.
Reviewers and editors keep seeing the latest draft, so they can keep reviewing it.
The URL stays the same. When the next draft gets approved, readers move to it automatically.

That turns one link into a lightweight release process: edit, review, approve, and only then does the audience see it.

Who can approve

Anyone with comment permission on the report can submit a verdict:

people you invite as reviewers,
your team, when the report is filed under a team,
link visitors, when the link permission is set to comment.

View-only visitors can read but not vote. Reviewers sign in (free, on every plan) so each verdict carries a name, and reviewer emails are only shown to people who own or edit the report.

Sign-off for agent-generated reports

This is where pinned verdicts earn their keep. An agent that regenerates a report every morning changes the content every morning — so yesterday's approval should not vouch for today's output, and it doesn't.

Over MCP, an agent can read and write verdicts:

get_report_signoffs(report_id: "6f1c…")
→ { signoffs: [{ verdict: "approved", is_stale: true, reviewer: {…} }],
    head_revision_id: "…", approved_revision_id: "…" }

set_report_signoff(
  report_id: "6f1c…",
  verdict: "changes_requested",
  note: "Q3 totals don't match the warehouse export",
)

A sensible agent rule: only post the link to the wider channel when at least one approval has is_stale: false. The same data is on the REST API at /api/v1/reports/:id/signoffs (GET to list, POST to submit, DELETE to retract) under a scoped comma_sk_… token — see the API docs.

Get pinged when someone signs off

Each verdict emits a signoff.submitted event. Add a notification webhook (from the notifications panel in the app, or with the create_notification MCP tool) and pick Slack, Discord or plain JSON. You get a message the moment a reviewer approves or asks for changes, with their note.

When to use this

Client deliverables — the client approves the exact version you invoice for.
Weekly or monthly reports — a lead approves before it goes to the wider list; staged publishing keeps the draft out of sight.
Incident and post-mortem write-ups — record who signed off on the final timeline.
AI-generated reports — a human approves before the agent distributes, and a regenerated report needs a fresh look.
Test, coverage and security reports — QA or security signs off on the run that gates a release.

Try it

Paste any HTML report, share it with one reviewer as a commenter, and ask them to click Approve. Then change one number and watch the approval go stale.

Create a report →