# Drafting and sending

A draft is private, free and reversible. A send leaves the business, cannot be recalled and becomes something the recipient acts on. Those are different enough that they deserve different permissions, which is why autonomy is a rule about sending rather than a rule about working, and why Connect can be fully useful in a workspace where it is not allowed to send anything at all.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/compare/draft-vs-send/

## Two acts, compared

|  | Draft | Send |
|---|---|---|
| Who can see it | Your workspace only | The recipient, immediately |
| Reversible | Yes — edit it, replace it, discard it | No. A correction is a second message, not an undo |
| Cost | Model work against the AI budget | Model work, plus the channel's allowance |
| Evidence it happened | It exists in the queue | The provider's own acknowledgement, and nothing weaker |
| What a failure means | Nothing left the business | Something may have left the business and needs establishing |
| Time pressure | None | Real — the recipient's clock started |

Read the last row twice, because it is the one people invert. A draft waiting for approval feels like progress and is not: to the customer at the other end, a held reply is no reply, not a slow one. The queue is where that cost is paid, and it is why an approval queue nobody works is worse than a narrower autonomy rule honestly chosen.

## Why the gate goes here

A gate is only worth having where the two sides of it differ. Putting one before reading, researching or drafting would buy nothing — none of those acts can hurt anybody, and a person asked to approve them learns to approve without reading, which is the worst outcome of all. Putting one after sending is not a gate; it is a post-mortem.

1. **Everything before the send is recoverable**, so nothing before it needs a human decision.
2. **The send is the irreversible step**, so it is the only place a person's attention changes an outcome.
3. **The same boundary serves every route.** A send from the Assistant, from a follow-up or from the approvals queue passes the same check.
4. **Sending is where evidence is required.** A message is *sent* when the provider says so, not when Connect decides it is finished writing.

> **Note** This is also why `draft_only` exists as a mode distinct from asking. `draft_only` writes the reply and stops, deliberately, so a workspace can watch what Connect *would* say without anybody having to keep saying no. It is a way to evaluate, not a slower way to send.

## What a draft is worth on its own

It is easy to treat drafting as the incomplete half of sending. In practice the draft carries most of the work: reading the thread, finding the customer's history, checking what the business has said before, deciding what the reply should contain. The send is a button.

- **A draft you edit teaches nothing by itself.** If the change is a lesson rather than a one-off, say so as guidance or as a memory — an edit is a decision about one message.
- **A rejection is also about one message.** It is recorded, and the engine does not immediately produce the same reply again, but it is not a rule.
- **A stale draft is a real risk.** If the thread moved while the draft waited, approving it sends an answer to an older message, which reads as though nobody was listening.
- **Nothing is in flight while it waits.** No provider has been called, so there is no read receipt, no delivery attempt and nothing in a sent folder.

## Choosing where your own line sits

1. Start narrower than feels necessary on any channel where a mistake is public.
   - Result: You see what Connect writes before anybody else does, and the cost is your reading time rather than a customer's impression.
2. Widen by scope rather than all at once — one channel, or one kind of message.
   - Result: Autonomy resolves at several scopes with the narrowest winning, so a single demanding account can stay held while everything else moves.
3. Watch the queue's age, not its length.
   - Result: A queue of forty worked hourly is healthy; a queue of six with items three days old is a customer waiting.
4. Revisit the rule when you find yourself approving without reading.
   - Result: That is the signal that the gate has stopped doing anything, and either the rule should widen or the approvals should get real attention.

The comparison that goes with this one is [autonomy and approval](/docs/compare/autonomy-vs-approval/): autonomy is the standing rule, an approval is one decision taken under it.

## Questions

### Can Connect be useful if it is never allowed to send?

Yes, and it is a reasonable way to start. Reading, research, drafting, record-keeping, follow-up tracking and answering your own questions are all unaffected by a sending rule. What you lose is the out-of-hours reply; what you gain is a period where every word is seen by somebody before a customer sees it.

### Does approving a draft send exactly what I read?

Yes, including your edits. The approval is recorded against you, and the send runs through the same boundary a person's own send uses. Until the provider acknowledges it the state is uncertain rather than sent — a distinction that matters when you are deciding whether to try again.

### Is a draft counted against my plan?

Drafting is model work and is metered as such. The channel allowance is about messages that leave, so a draft that is never approved does not consume one. A workspace running in a draft-only mode therefore spends on thinking rather than on sending.

## Related

- [The four autonomy modes](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/modes/)
- [Held drafts](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/held-drafts/)
- [Needs You](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/needs-you/)
- [Proof that a message was sent](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/send-evidence/)
- [Autonomy and approval](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/compare/autonomy-vs-approval/)
- [Human approval without blocking low-risk work](https://connectbyjbrh.com/research/approval-without-blocking/)

## What this page is based on

- Connect capability registry (docs-source/facts.py) — `autonomy_modes`, `held_draft_approval`, `send_evidence`, `daily_quota_refusal`
- docs-source/STYLE-EXAMPLE.py — held drafts and the four holds
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §8 — the Assistant