Authority modes — Manual, Copilot, Autopilot

The three authority modes

Every thread in AI Emaily is processed under one of three authority levels. You set a global default in Settings → AI, and individual agent-behaviour rules can narrow or widen that default for specific senders, labels, or thread patterns.

The mode controls whether the agent takes action autonomously, drafts work for your approval, or stays silent until you ask.

Autopilot guardrails

Autopilot is never a free agent. A set of gates determines when it sends and when it holds for you. They are all enforced at once — the first one to fail holds that draft for your review in the Agent drafts queue instead of sending it. Above them all sits a global PAUSE kill-switch that stops every autonomous send at once, plus full audit and per-send undo.

• Sender allow-list — autonomous sends only go to the domains and addresses you have approved; everything else is held
• Confidence floor — default 85%; any reply the agent rates below this is held rather than sent
• Undo delay — a cancellable countdown (default 5 minutes) after the agent queues a send, giving you real-time undo
• Escalate-if keywords — words or conditions that force human review no matter how confident the agent is
• Working-hours-only (optional) — restrict autonomous sends to your working hours, e.g. 9–5 Mon–Fri in your timezone

Adopting autonomy gradually

The recommended path is to start on Copilot, watch the agent’s drafts for a week, then promote trusted sender groups to Autopilot one rule at a time via agent-behaviour rules. This gives you a clean sense of the agent’s quality before you hand over send authority.

1. 1

   Set global default to Copilot

   Go to Settings → AI → Authority and choose Copilot. All threads now get drafts in the Agent drafts queue with one-click send.

2. 2

   Review drafts for one week

   Use the confidence score and one-line reason on each draft to calibrate how well the agent knows your voice.

3. 3

   Create a behaviour rule for trusted senders

   In Rules ⚡ Brain, add a rule matching your trusted senders and set its authority to Autopilot with your desired confidence floor.

4. 4

   Tune the gates

   Adjust the undo delay, escalate-if keywords, working hours, and standing instructions until the behaviour feels right. The audit log shows every action the agent took and why.

5. 5

   Expand the allow-list over time

   Add more domains or addresses to Autopilot rules as confidence builds. You can always revert a rule to Copilot without losing its other settings.

Changing modes mid-thread

You can override the authority mode on any individual thread from the thread action bar. This is useful when a normally routine thread suddenly becomes sensitive — drop it to Manual with one click and the agent will not act on it autonomously until you lift the override.

Thread-level overrides take precedence over both the global default and any matching behaviour rule.