What a person always decides
Some decisions are reserved for a person no matter how a workspace is configured. They fall into four groups: anything that commits the business commercially, anything touching money or law, anything that would undo a protection such as a do-not-contact entry, and the rules themselves. Each is reserved for a stated reason rather than out of caution.
The reserved decisions#
| Decision | Why it is reserved | Where you make it |
|---|---|---|
| A price or a discount | A number quoted in your name becomes a commitment. Connect has no authority to set one, and the Assistant is deliberately narrower still — it cannot set a price at all. | The held draft, or the item in Needs You |
| A guarantee, a service level or a warranty | A promise about how the business will perform is a promise only the business can make. | The held draft |
| A delivery or deployment timeline | A date given to a customer is a commitment somebody has to keep. | The held draft |
| A support commitment | Same class: it binds people who were not in the conversation. | The held draft |
| A refund or a payment dispute | Money moving is not a drafting decision, and an unanswered request about it must never resolve itself. | Needs You |
| Anything legal or contractual | The consequences outlive the conversation, and the text of an agreement is not something to improvise. | Needs You |
| Clearing a do-not-contact or suppression entry | The entry exists because somebody asked not to be contacted. Removing it is the one action that can undo a person's own choice, so it is kept away from automation entirely. | The suppression list |
| A first approach to a new contact | Where a workspace has asked for it, the first message to somebody who has never heard from you is held. | Needs You |
| Placing a call | A workspace can require a yes before Connect rings anyone, because a call interrupts in a way a message does not. | Needs You |
| What is true about the business | Knowledge is the workspace's own material. Connect grounds answers in it; it does not decide the facts, and it refuses rather than filling a gap. | Knowledge and the facts editor |
| What the rules are | Autonomy modes, blocked topics, standing instructions, business hours and spend caps are the boundary itself. Nothing inside the boundary may move it. | Connect Rules and the autonomy screens |
| Whether Connect runs at all | The runtime switch stops new work immediately, per channel, without changing a single setting. | The runtime control |
| Removing data | Forgetting a memory, deleting a record and closing an account are irreversible in ways an automatic decision should not be. | The record, or a request through the Trust Centre |
Why silence never becomes a yes#
An approval request that nobody answers expires. A workspace may opt into sending on timeout for low-risk categories, and that option is refused for anything held because it touched pricing, money, law or a privacy or security commitment. The restriction is enforced where the decision is made rather than described in a setting, because a setting can be ticked by somebody who did not read it.
The practical consequence is worth stating plainly: if you go on holiday and nobody works the queue, the outcome is that nothing was sent. That is the safe failure, and it is the one this system chooses.
Refused is not the same as waiting for you#
Two outcomes look similar on a screen and are not the same thing. Held means Connect prepared something and needs a yes. Refused means the answer was already no — the channel is off, the kill switch is on, the topic is blocked, or the spend cap is reached — and no request is raised, because asking would imply the answer could be yes.
That distinction is why a blocked topic never appears as an approval. The decision was made when somebody blocked it; the refusal is that decision being kept.
Where the reserved decisions turn up#
They arrive in one queue rather than five. Needs You holds every decision, approval and operational problem for a person, ranked so the most consequential is first, and a held message can be edited before it is approved rather than only accepted or rejected as written. Rejecting is a recorded outcome too, with the reason, which is what lets a pattern of rejections become a change to the rules instead of a daily chore.
The cost of reserving too much#
Reserving everything has a price, and this manual would rather say it than imply otherwise. A workspace that asks to approve every message ends up with a queue nobody can keep up with, and a queue nobody works is indistinguishable from a system that was switched off. The setting that survives contact with a real week is the one where low-risk work proceeds and the decisions above wait — which is why they are enumerated rather than left to a general sense of caution.
Questions#
Can I make Connect fully autonomous, including pricing?
No. Autonomy is a ceiling rather than a switch: the pricing, money and legal gates sit outside the mode, so an autonomous channel still stops on them. There is no configuration that removes them.
The Assistant is signed in as me. Does it have my authority?
No. Its rights are deliberately narrower than a person's — it cannot set a price and it cannot clear a do-not-contact entry — so an instruction typed into it cannot reach further than you could reach through the same screens.
What happens to a held message I never answer?
It expires unsent, and the expiry is recorded. Nothing about the passage of time turns a held commercial or legal message into a sent one.