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One rule lets an AI send email for you
Reading is free, acting is gated. How Cedric's approval gate works, what it asks before sending, changing or spending, and why it is not a setting you can switch off.
Benjamin Ben HattarThe question I get most about giving an AI your inbox is not "can it write a good email". It is "what stops it from sending a bad one". Fair. An email your CFO did not write, arriving at a customer, is not an inconvenience.
Cedric's answer is one rule: anything that leaves the workspace, changes a record, or costs money waits for a human yes. Reading is free. Acting is gated. That line predicts almost every case correctly, and it is why we let it near email at all.
- Cedric can read anything you connected and produce anything internally: analysis, drafts, files, summaries. None of that needs permission.
- The moment an action would reach someone else, alter a system of record, or spend money, it stops and asks.
- The request says exactly what will happen, in plain words, before it happens: what is sent, to whom, with what attached.
- You approve, edit then approve, or hold. Holding is a real outcome; nothing happens until you decide.
- Approvals happen in the channel, so the team sees what was proposed and what was decided.
What it looks like
The email that waits.
Lena Marsh9:14 AM
@Cedric follow up with Halcyon, attach the security pack, offer Thursday 14:00.
CedricAPP9:15 AM
Ready to send the follow-up to Halcyon: the security pack as an attachment, plus an offer of a call Thursday 14:00. It goes to Priya and their IT lead. Approve?
Why it is not a toggle
People ask for a switch. "I trust it, let it send." We do not ship one, on purpose. An assistant that can be talked into acting on its own is only as safe as the least careful instruction anyone in the team gives it. The gate is structural: it sits under every tool, the built-in ones and the ones you connect, and no prompt removes it.
What you can do is make the gate cheap. Approve from the channel in one click. Edit the recipients before approving, as in the example above, where the IT lead was taken off the list. Put a recurring task on a schedule and the schedule becomes the standing approval for the reading and drafting, while the sends inside it still stop and ask.
Where it is stricter than you might want
Posting to a channel it was not asked to post in, updating a CRM field, merging a pull request, issuing a refund, removing someone's access: all gated, even when the ask feels small. The pattern is consistent enough that you stop noticing it after a week.
FAQ
Nothing happens. Tell it what to change and it comes back with a new proposal, or hold it and decide later.
Yes. Through MCP, a send comes back as a pending approval and you decide in the dashboard or your team chat.
Free to start, no card.