# What Connect will not do

Some of what Connect declines to do is policy you set, some is a capability that genuinely is not finished, and some is a claim it refuses to make about itself. Knowing which is which saves you from raising a support question about a refusal that is working exactly as intended — and every refusal is recorded, because a refusal is a decision.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/autonomy-audit, #/needs-you
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/getting-started/what-connect-will-not-do/

## Refusals in the moment

| Situation | What happens | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A rule holds the message | It waits for a person under `ask_before_send`, or is written and stopped under `draft_only` | Decide it in Needs You, or change the mode |
| The recipient is suppressed | The send fails immediately, with the suppression's origin shown | Only clear it if it is a suppression that may be cleared |
| The contact is blocked | Nothing is sent on any channel, now or later | Remove the block directive if it was wrong |
| The daily allowance is spent | The approval is kept and the send waits | Wait for the reset, or change the plan |
| It does not know the answer | It says so, rather than producing something plausible | Add the missing Knowledge |

The last row is the one worth valuing. An agent that answers everything confidently is not more capable than one that says it is unsure — it is less safe, and the difference only becomes visible after a customer has acted on something invented. [Why uncertainty is a valid answer](/research/uncertainty-is-an-answer/) makes the case at length.

## Not built yet, and not dressed up

**Call recording on the live carrier** — The telephony layer has the capability; it is not enabled on the carrier in use. The transcript and summary are the record of a call.
**Completing a handover of a live call to a person** — A supervisor can queue one, but finishing it depends on a provider capability that is gated. Calls that need a human become a message and a follow-up instead.
**Outbound SMS on the live carrier** — That carrier carries no SMS. Inbound, STOP and suppression work; sending needs a provider that carries SMS, and in India a DLT registration.
**Password sign-in** — There is none. Google is the only route in, deliberately, which removes a whole class of credential problems and also means an account without Google access cannot be let in by an exception.

> **Careful** Each of these is written down with a status rather than softened into 'limited'. If a page in this manual ever describes one of them as though you could use it today, the page is wrong and the status vocabulary is the thing to trust.

## Claims it will not make about itself

- **It does not invent an email address.** Prospecting evidences an address or leaves the field empty; there is no pattern-guessing from a name and a domain.
- **It does not report a message as sent without the provider's own acknowledgement.** Until that arrives the state is uncertain, which is a less satisfying word and a truer one.
- **It does not claim a certification.** No page in this manual asserts one, and any material that does is not from here.
- **It does not train a model on your business data.** Your knowledge and mail ground answers inside your workspace; isolation is enforced three separate times.
- **It does not promise future capability.** A thing either works now, exists as foundation, or is written down as not implemented.

## What the Assistant specifically may not do

The Connect Assistant's rights are deliberately narrower than a person's, and this is not a configuration you can widen by asking it nicely. It cannot set pricing, and it cannot clear a do-not-contact entry. Those two restrictions exist because both are decisions with consequences outside the software — one is money, the other is somebody's explicit request not to be contacted.

More generally, an action refused to a person is refused to the Assistant acting for them. There is no path where automation is permitted to do something the human operating it could not, which is what makes the decision log a complete account rather than a partial one.

## The one refusal that is yours to make

Everything above is Connect declining. The reverse control is the runtime switch: it stops Connect acting immediately, without altering a single setting, so nothing has to be unpicked and nothing has to be remembered to restore it. Use it when you want to stop first and think afterwards — that order is usually right, and the settings are still exactly where you left them when you switch back on.

## Questions

### How do I tell a designed refusal from a fault?

The decision log records what was decided and under which rule, including refusals. A designed refusal names its rule; a fault appears as an operational item in Needs You instead. If neither is present and something simply did not happen, that is worth reporting.

### Can I make Connect answer anyway when it is unsure?

The lever is grounding, not confidence. Adding the missing Knowledge gives it something to answer from; there is no setting that converts 'I do not know' into an invented answer, and a setting that did would be a defect rather than a feature.

### Is the list of unfinished capabilities likely to change?

The statuses in this manual are dated, and each page carries the date its claims were verified. Rather than guessing from an older page, check the date at the foot of the one you are reading — that is what it is there for.

## Related

- [What Connect by JBRH is](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/getting-started/what-is-connect/)
- [Stop Connect immediately](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/stop-connect-immediately/)
- [Why uncertainty is a valid answer from a business agent](https://connectbyjbrh.com/research/uncertainty-is-an-answer/)
- [A four-word vocabulary for capability status](https://connectbyjbrh.com/research/status-vocabulary/)
- [Security and isolation](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/security/)
- [Decide what Connect may do](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/getting-started/set-what-connect-may-do/)

## What this page is based on

- Connect capability registry (docs-source/facts.py) — FORBIDDEN_CLAIMS and CAPABILITY_STATUS
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §8, §10 — Assistant rights and security
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §5 — refusals recorded in the audit trail