The gates that always apply
autonomous means Connect does not stop to ask. It does not mean nothing can stop it. A suppressed or blocked recipient, a spent daily allowance, an address there is no evidence for, a provider that cannot carry the message and the workspace boundary itself all refuse regardless of the mode — and each refusal is written to the decision log with its reason.
The gates, and what each one refuses#
| Gate | What it stops | Where it is set or cleared |
|---|---|---|
| Suppression and do-not-contact | Any outbound to that recipient on that channel | Compliance records; a do-not-contact entry is not cleared casually, and the Connect Assistant cannot clear one at all |
| A block on a contact | Every channel, not just the one it was set on | A memory entry tagged block:<channel> against the contact |
| SMS STOP | Further SMS to a number that replied STOP | The recipient sets it; the workspace does not override it |
| The daily allowance | Further sends once the day's ledger is spent | The plan; it resets |
| Cost metering on a call | A call the workspace's AI budget cannot cover | Plan and usage |
| No evidence for an address | Sending to an address nobody supplied or verified | Not configurable — Connect never guesses an email address |
| Provider capability | An action the configured provider cannot perform | The integration, not the autonomy screen |
| The workspace boundary | Reading or writing anything belonging to another workspace | Not configurable at any level |
Why they sit outside the mode#
A mode is a statement about how much a business trusts Connect's judgement. The gates are statements about things judgement does not settle: a person who asked not to be contacted has not made a request that gets weighed against a good reason, and a workspace's data is not more available to a confident agent than a cautious one. Putting them inside the mode would mean the strongest promise a business can make to its customers could be undone by a dropdown.
Blocks travel further than people expect#
A block is not a column on the contact record. It is a memory entry carrying the tag block:<channel>, and Connect's directive lookup reads only the tag list — never the body of the note. Two consequences follow, and both are the point of building it that way.
- It holds across channels. Blocking somebody on email is visible to the code deciding whether to place a call, because both are reading the same contact-level memory.
- It holds across future conversations. A new thread from the same person months later resolves to the same contact and finds the same directive.
- Writing "do not contact" in the body of a note does nothing. The tag is the mechanism; prose beside it is for the humans reading later.
What is not a gate#
Two things get mistaken for gates because they also stop work, and neither belongs on the list above.
- The runtime switch
- Turning Connect off stops the engine picking up work at all. That is not a refusal against a rule; nothing is evaluated, so nothing is refused. See Turning Connect on and off.
- An unfinished integration
- A mailbox whose credentials have gone stale, or a channel with no provider configured, produces an operational problem in Needs You rather than a compliance refusal. The distinction matters when you are reading the decision log for an audit.
One further limit is worth stating plainly because it is not a setting either: the Connect Assistant's rights are narrower than a person's. It cannot quote pricing and it cannot clear a do-not-contact entry, and no autonomy mode widens that.
Questions#
Can I override a suppression for one important message?
Not from the autonomy screen, and not by raising the mode. Suppression is cleared where it was recorded, and only where clearing it is legitimate — a do-not-contact entry is deliberately not casual to remove, and the Connect Assistant cannot remove one at all.
Does an autonomous channel still record refusals?
Yes, and they are the most useful part of the log on such a channel. A refusal carries the rule that caused it and what happened next, which is how you tell a compliance stop from a spent allowance without opening every conversation.
Is call recording or a human transfer something autonomy can enable?
No. Call recording is not enabled on the live carrier, and a call cannot be transferred to a human there either. Both exist as foundation in the code and depend on what the provider can do; no autonomy mode changes that.