Creating a document, end to end
You describe the document you want. Connect resolves the record it is about, assembles the contents from material it can point at, and shows you a proposal — including the fields it could not fill. On your confirmation create_file writes version 1 into the workspace file store, the audit records who allowed it, and the file can then be linked where it belongs.
The chain, stage by stage#
- Trigger — you ask for a document: a summary for a case, a note for a deal, a letter for a company.
- User event — the request is posted with the route you are on and any record the tab is pinned to.
- Authentication and workspace resolution — the workspace is fixed before a single record is read, and a customer session reaches the same service down its own path.
- Ingest — the request joins the conversation, which is the history the model is given for this turn.
- Canonical record — the company, deal or case named in the request is resolved to a real row, and a screen-context claim is checked against the database before it is trusted.
- Reasoning — the model gathers what the document needs from records, the conversation and any attached file, and selects
create_file. - Knowledge, memory and rules — grounding is assembled to a fixed budget, and the Assistant's own authority applies: pricing is outside it, and a value it cannot source is left as a gap.
- Autonomy and approval —
create_fileis a writing tool, so a proposal is shown and nothing exists yet. Where the rule says a person decides, it waits in Needs You instead. - Action through the owning service — the file service writes the document; no table is touched directly.
- Result — version 1 exists, with provenance naming the request that produced it, and it appears on the Files sheet.
- Relationship and timeline — linking it to the record makes it visible where the work happens; that is a second change with its own entry.
- Audit, usage and Needs You — the decision log records the tool, the request and the person who confirmed; the model call is metered against the workspace's AI budget.
Stage seven is the one worth arguing with rather than working around. A document with an obvious gap is a document you can finish; a document with a plausible invented figure is one somebody sends.
What you see and what changes#
| Stage | What you see | What changes | What can fail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Request | Your words in the conversation | Nothing | The record you named is ambiguous, and Connect asks which you meant |
| Resolve | The record named in the proposal | Nothing | No such record, or one you cannot see from this workspace |
| Assemble | A working line | Nothing | The material needed is not in the workspace |
| Propose | What will be produced, and the gaps | Nothing | The format asked for is not one Connect writes |
| Confirm | The action runs | A file at version 1, and an audit entry | A refusal from the file service, reported as itself |
| Link | The document on the record | A link, and its own audit entry | The record type does not accept a file |
Verified success looks like this#
- A file row exists at version 1, with provenance naming the request behind it.
- The Files sheet shows it, whatever it is or is not linked to.
- The decision log has an entry naming the tool and the person who confirmed.
- Nothing was sent. Producing a document is not delivering one; that is a separate action under autonomy.
If any of those four is missing, the run did not complete, whatever the conversation appeared to say. The file itself is the evidence — not the sentence describing it.
Where it goes wrong, and what is left behind#
- Refused before the proposal
- Nothing was written and there is nothing to undo. The refusal is recorded, because a refusal is a decision.
- The proposal was wrong and you discarded it
- Also nothing. Discarding is free, which is why the proposal exists.
- Confirmed, then the file is wrong
- The file exists, and correcting it is changing a document — a new version rather than an edit over the old one.
- Produced but never linked
- Common, and harmless. Find it on the Files sheet and link it from there.
- Produced against the wrong record
- The document is fine; the link is not. Remove the link and add the right one. Both moves are audited.
Questions#
Can I have the document produced and emailed in one go?
They are two actions with two different gates. Producing the file is a change to your workspace; sending it is outbound work under the channel's autonomy rule and its allowance. Connect can do both in sequence, and each one is authorised separately, which is exactly what you want the day one of them is wrong.
What if the document needs a price?
It will be left as a gap. Pricing sits outside the Assistant's authority, so it is filled by a person rather than by a model reaching for a plausible number — see what the Assistant may not do.
Does the produced file become something Connect quotes later?
No. A generated document is not a knowledge source, and adding one is a deliberate act that is usually the wrong call: grounding future answers in text Connect wrote itself is how a small error becomes a permanent one.