Autonomy
Autonomy is the rule that says what Connect may do without asking, set per channel and enforced before anything leaves. There are four channels — email, WhatsApp, SMS and voice — four modes from off to autonomous, and four scopes; the narrowest scope that applies wins. The screen is called What Connect May Do.
Modes#
| Mode | What happens | What reaches a person |
|---|---|---|
off | Connect is switched off for it entirely | Nothing |
draft_only | It prepares the outbound and stops — deliberately without asking | Nothing to approve; the prepared work sits in the conversation |
ask_before_send | Every outbound waits for a human yes | An approval, in Needs You |
autonomous | It acts within the gates | Nothing, unless a gate stops it |
draft_only and ask_before_send are the pair people mix up, and the difference is the whole reason both exist. Ask-before-send puts the work in front of a person and waits. Draft-only writes it and stops, on purpose, so that a workspace can watch what Connect *would* say without anyone having to keep saying no. If replies are appearing nowhere and nothing is queued for approval, draft-only is the first thing to check.
Scopes, narrowest first#
The same hierarchy memory uses, resolved the same way: contact, then endpoint, then channel, then workspace. An *endpoint* is one mailbox or one phone number.
- A setting against one contact overrides everything else for that person.
- A setting on one endpoint overrides the wider one — so a support mailbox can run autonomously while a director's address never sends unaided.
- A channel setting is the usual place to work.
- The workspace setting is the floor everything else falls back to.
Narrowest-wins is what makes a careful account manageable without slowing the business down. One account where every word matters gets its own rule; everything else keeps moving.
What autonomy is not#
- A rule
- Rules constrain how Connect behaves. Autonomy decides whether the behaviour may leave the building. No rule widens autonomy, and autonomy does not exempt anything from the rules.
- An allowance
- Work that autonomy permits can still be stopped by the plan's daily allowance. The action is permitted and the quota is spent — two different holds with the same appearance from the conversation screen.
- A suppression list
- Suppression and do-not-contact stop contact with a recipient regardless of the mode set here. Granting autonomy does not clear one.
- A promise about quality
- Autonomy governs permission, not competence. Grounding, rules and the intelligence boundary decide what the message says; autonomy decides only whether it goes.
Choosing a starting point#
A common progression is to open a channel at ask_before_send, work the queue for a while, and move it — or one endpoint on it — to autonomous once the approvals stop being interesting. draft_only suits a period of observation where nobody wants a queue to work. off is for something the business does not use, and is not a safety measure for something it does: an unanswered line that customers still write to is its own failure, and human approval without blocking low-risk work covers the trade.
Questions#
Why is a reply not going out on a channel set to autonomous?
Check three things in order: a narrower scope overriding it, the daily allowance, and a suppression on the recipient. All three look identical from the conversation, and only the first is an autonomy setting.
Does autonomy apply to inbound work?
It governs what Connect may do, so reading, classifying and grounding continue regardless. What changes is whether the result may leave without a person.
Can a channel be autonomous for one customer only?
Yes, at the contact scope, which beats every wider setting. That is the usual way to run a familiar account at full speed while everyone else waits.