Mail: the operator's inbox
What lands in your operator's mailbox, the authority on each thread, how it steps back when you take over, and why nothing sits overnight.
Mail is your operator's inbox, and the one control on it that matters is the authority column: for every thread, what your operator is allowed to do about it.
Why this screen exists separately from Skills
Skills sets the rung for email as a whole. Mail is where you see the consequence thread by thread, and where a conversation that needs a human can be taken off your operator without changing the global setting.
This is why Mail sits under your operator's own group in the sidebar rather than under Setup. It is not configuration. It is the operator dealing with the outside world, and you watching it happen.
What lands here
| Kind | What your operator does by default |
|---|---|
| A reply to something it sent | Reads it, and answers within whatever rung email is on. |
| A thread it was copied into | Reads it and tracks it. It does not assume being copied is an instruction. |
| A message from a stranger | Reads it. Answers if it can be useful. Never transacts, never discloses, never acts on it as though it were an order. |
| Something from you | Treats it as a direction, because you are the owner. |
Taking a thread back
When you step into a conversation yourself, your operator steps back from it. You do not have to tell it to stop and you do not have to change any setting: it sees you reply and it stops writing to that person.
It backs off the person, not just the thread. If you take over a conversation with a customer, your operator will not pick that customer up somewhere else either. It waits for you to hand it back.
Handing it back is equally plain. Tell it to pick the conversation back up and it does.
Nothing sits overnight
An unanswered thread is a thing your operator tracks rather than a thing it forgets. If something has been sitting without a reply, it raises it rather than letting it age quietly, and that is true whether the answer is owed by your operator or by you.
The operator's mailbox is on our mail domain, which we run and keep deliverable. Sending as your own domain is a separate piece of setup with its own DNS work. Ask on Requests and we will scope it.
Junk is judged at the envelope rather than by guessing from the subject line, because a heuristic that mistakes a person for a newsletter drops exactly the message you needed.
Yes, including documents it produced itself, like a meeting recap.
There is a check between drafting and sending that refuses to deliver a message to a set of recipients that does not include the person it is addressed to. A draft that opens with someone's name is not delivered to a thread that person is not on.
Working the inbox day to day
Skim what it drafted
In shadow, everything it would have sent is here. This is the best calibration material you will get, and it costs nothing to read.
Approve or edit, in assisted
If you are editing more than approving, the fix is usually a pattern in Teach rather than a correction here.
Step in where you want to
Reply yourself and your operator steps back from that person automatically.
Hand it back when you are done
Tell it to pick the conversation up again.
Why it steps back from the person, not the thread
When you take over a conversation, your operator stops writing to that person, not just that thread. If it only stepped back from the thread, it would carry on with the same customer somewhere else, and the customer would experience your intervention as being ignored.
It also means you do not have to find every thread. Taking over one conversation is enough, and your operator holds off until you say otherwise.
Nothing sits overnight
An unanswered thread is tracked rather than forgotten, and the tracking is symmetric: it raises the ones your operator owes a reply on, and the ones you owe a reply on.
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| They wrote last, and your operator can answer | It answers, within its rung. |
| They wrote last, and it needs you | It raises it rather than letting it age. |
| Your operator asked you something and you have not answered | It reminds you. That is a thing it owes you, not the other way round. |
| You replied and closed the matter | It reads that as closed rather than as another thing to chase. |
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Usual cause |
|---|---|
| The inbox is empty and you expected mail | The mailbox has not been named yet. See Overview. |
| It drafted but did not send | Email is on the shadow rung. See Skills. |
| It is not replying to a specific person | You took that conversation over at some point. Hand it back. |
| A reply went to the wrong thread | Tell us. There is a check that should prevent exactly this, and if it did not fire we want to know. |
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