# 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.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/needs-you, #/approvals
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/product/what-a-person-decides/

## 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.

## Related

- [What Connect decides on its own](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/product/what-connect-decides/)
- [Approvals](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/approvals/)
- [Needs You](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/needs-you/)
- [Price, SLA and warranty: what Connect may say](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/sales/safe-sales/)
- [What the Assistant may not do](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/assistant/assistant-authority/)
- [Current limits](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/product/limits/)

## What this page is based on

- `backend/app/autonomy.py` — pricing, money and legal topic sets, and the timeout restriction
- PROJECT-STATE.md — the Assistant's rights stay narrower than a person's, 2026-09-10
- `webapp/trust/index.html` — data rights and requests
- AGENTS.md §8 — what is never done without asking