TanStack AI 1.0: Approval-Gated Agents in Plain Node

TanStack AI shipped 1.0 this week. The npm tag for @tanstack/ai moved to 1.0.0 on October 22, news coverage says it stabilized 76 packages, and the release is all over dev feeds today. Most of the chatter is about the React hooks. I think the more useful part is quieter: the way a tool call can now pause an agent, hand a decision to a human or a policy, and resume with the decision applied.

This guide builds that from scratch with no frontend, no HTTP route and no API key. You will write a small refund-desk agent in plain Node. One tool is read-only. One tool moves money, so it is marked needsApproval. Your code will approve small refunds, rewrite medium ones, and deny large ones, and the agent will carry on with whatever was decided.