# Autonomy and approval

**Autonomy** is policy: a per-channel mode, set at one of four scopes, deciding what Connect may do without asking. An **approval** is an instance: one specific action held, waiting for a person to say yes or no. Approving something settles that action and changes no rule; changing the rule settles no action already waiting.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/autonomy, #/approvals, #/needs-you
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/compare/autonomy-vs-approval/

## Policy and instance

|  | Autonomy | Approval |
|---|---|---|
| Is | A standing rule | One held action |
| Set at | Workspace, channel, endpoint or contact — narrowest wins | Nothing; it is produced by the rule |
| Answered by | A configuration change | A person saying yes or no, once |
| Lives on | The autonomy screen | Needs You and the approvals queue |
| Changing it affects | What happens next time | This message only |

The four modes are `off` (the channel is disabled), `draft_only` (prepare, never send, and do not even ask), `ask_before_send` (every outbound needs a human yes) and `autonomous` (act within the gates). Only one of those four produces approvals at all.

## The confusion that produces a support question

`draft_only` and `ask_before_send` look almost identical from a conversation screen and are not the same thing. `ask_before_send` puts the reply in front of a person. `draft_only` writes it and stops, on purpose — it does not even ask — so **nothing appears in the approvals queue**, and somebody watching that queue concludes the engine has stopped working.

The mode exists so that a workspace can watch what Connect *would* say without anybody having to keep saying no. If you are in it and waiting for something to approve, you will wait forever, and the fix is a setting rather than a ticket.

> **Note** Scope is the other half. A rule set against one contact overrides the channel's, because the narrowest applicable scope wins. That is the usual way to slow down one account where every word matters without slowing down the whole channel.

## What the queue actually contains

**Needs You** is not only approvals. It is the queue of decisions, approvals and operational problems for a person, ranked rather than chronological, and its entries **drain by themselves as their cause clears**. Voice line health escalates into it, rendered from one place for both audiences.

- An item that is a held send needs a yes or a no from you.
- An item that is an operational problem — a mailbox that stopped, a line at capacity, an allowance spent — clears when the condition does, and approving nothing is the correct response.
- Ranking exists because a held first reply to a new enquiry is a different kind of debt from a held reply on a week-old thread.
- Every decision, including a refusal, goes to the audit trail with the rule that applied.

## Choosing the right lever

**Too many approvals** — A policy problem. Move the channel to `autonomous`, or narrow the caution to the contacts and endpoints that need it.
**This one message must not go** — An instance problem. Reject it. The channel's rule is not the place to settle one message.
**Nothing to approve and nothing being sent** — Check for `draft_only`, then for `off`. Neither queues anything.
**Approved and still not sent** — Not an autonomy question at all — look at the allowance, the suppression state and the send evidence. Autonomy permitted it; something else is holding it.
**Wanting a record of who released something** — The audit trail, which records the decision against the person, and the rule against the engine.

> **Careful** Setting a whole workspace to `autonomous` to clear a backlog is the one change to make deliberately rather than under pressure. It applies to future work on every channel it covers, not only to what is queued now.

## Questions

### If I change the mode, does the waiting queue empty?

Treat those as separate acts: the queue is worked item by item, and the mode governs what arrives next. If you want the held items gone, decide them; if you want fewer of them tomorrow, change the rule.

### Can autonomy be different for one customer?

Yes. Four scopes — contact, endpoint, channel, workspace — and the narrowest applicable one wins. An endpoint is one mailbox or one phone number, so "everything from this address needs approval" is expressible without touching the channel.

### Does approving something teach Connect anything?

An approval is a decision about one action, recorded as such. If there is a lesson in it — a phrasing to avoid, a term to use — write it as guidance or a memory. A yes and a no on their own are not instructions for next time.

## Related

- [The four autonomy modes](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/modes/)
- [Autonomy scopes](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/scopes/)
- [Comparisons and concepts](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/compare/)
- [Needs You](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/needs-you/)
- [Held drafts](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/held-drafts/)
- [Rules and instructions](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/compare/rules-vs-instructions/)

## What this page is based on

- `docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md` §5 — modes, scopes, Needs You, audit
- `docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md` §1 — allowance and suppression holds
- `docs-source/facts.py` — CANONICAL_TERMS for Autonomy and Approval
- Connect capability registry (docs-source/facts.py)