Docs · Trust and control
It asks first. Here is exactly when.
One rule covers it: anything that leaves the workspace, changes a record, or costs money waits for a human yes.
- Reading is free. Acting is gated. That single line predicts almost every case correctly.
- An approval request states exactly what will happen, in plain terms, before it happens.
- Approve, edit then approve, or hold. Holding is a real outcome and nothing happens until you decide.
- Approvals happen in the channel, so the whole team sees what was proposed and what was decided.
- The gate is structural, not a preference toggle that can be switched off by accident.
The rule, and why it is a rule
Cedric can read anything you have connected it to and can produce anything it wants internally: analysis, drafts, files, summaries, charts. None of that needs permission, because none of it is visible outside your workspace or changes anything.
The moment an action would reach someone else, alter a system of record, or spend money, it stops and asks. Sending an email, posting to a channel it was not asked to post in, updating a CRM field, merging a pull request, issuing a refund, restarting a campaign, removing access: all gated.
This is deliberately not a configurable convenience. An assistant that can be talked into acting unilaterally is only as safe as the least careful instruction anyone gives it, and the failure mode is not an inconvenience, it is an email your CFO did not write arriving at a customer.
What is gated and what is not
The pattern is consistent enough that you rarely need to check this table twice.
| Action | Needs approval? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Reading a ticket, record, or file | No | Nothing changes and nothing leaves |
| Writing analysis, a draft, or a file | No | It exists for you, not for anyone else |
| Posting in the channel you asked in | No | That is the reply you asked for |
| Sending an email or a message outward | Yes | It reaches a person outside the room |
| Updating a CRM or ledger record | Yes | It changes a system of record |
| Merging or deploying code | Yes | It changes what runs |
| Issuing a refund or payment | Yes | It moves money |
| Changing access or permissions | Yes | It changes who can do what |
| Running a scheduled task you set up | No, it was pre-approved | You approved the schedule; gated steps inside it still ask |
In the channel
What an approval actually looks like.
CedricAPP9:14 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?
Hannah Berg9:15 AM
Drop the IT lead, just Priya. Then send.
CedricAPP9:16 AM
Sent to Priya only. IT lead removed from the recipients. Logged in the activity view.
Specific, not abstract
It names what will be sent, to whom, and with what attached. "Approve this action?" with no detail is not an approval, it is a rubber stamp.
Editable in one reply
You can change the thing and approve it in the same message, without restarting the task.
Visible to the room
Because it happens in the channel, approvals are reviewable by the team rather than buried in one person's inbox.
Saying no, and saying not yet
Holding an action is a first-class outcome. Cedric stops, keeps the prepared work, and leaves the item open rather than discarding it or quietly retrying later. You can come back to it hours later and approve it then, and nothing has expired in the meantime.
Declining outright is equally fine. The work already done is not wasted; the draft, analysis, or file remains available, it simply never leaves the room. Nothing about declining teaches Cedric to be more timid in a way that makes it useless afterwards.
Silence is not consent. An approval request that nobody answers results in nothing happening. There is no timeout after which Cedric decides to go ahead, which is the property that makes it safe to leave a request pending over a weekend.
Scheduled work and standing approvals
A scheduled task is approved once, when you set it up, and then runs on its cadence. That is the whole point of scheduling: a weekly report should not ask permission every week to be a weekly report.
Gated steps inside a scheduled task still ask. A scheduled reconciliation can run untouched and still stop to request approval before reversing a duplicate refund it found. The schedule authorises the work, not every consequence the work might turn up.
You can see every scheduled job, what it does, and when it last ran from the dashboard, and cancel any of them from there or from the channel.
The limits worth understanding
Approval is not a substitute for reading. If your team approves everything reflexively within two seconds, the gate is technically intact and practically gone. The mechanism assumes someone is actually looking.
Scoped access still matters. Approvals control actions; connections control reach. Do not connect a system Cedric has no business reading on the grounds that risky actions are gated anyway.
Anyone in the channel can approve. Cedric works at the level of the room it is in. If a channel contains people who should not be authorising refunds, that is a channel-membership decision.
It cannot un-send. Once you approve an outbound message, it is out, the same as if you had pressed send yourself.
FAQ
You can pre-approve recurring work by scheduling it, which is the sanctioned way to say "do this every week without asking". What you cannot do is globally disable the gate on ad-hoc risky actions, and that is intentional.
Anyone in the channel where the request appears. Control who can approve by controlling who is in the room, and keep sensitive work in channels whose membership reflects that.
Nothing happens. The request stays open until someone approves, edits, or holds it. There is no timeout that results in the action proceeding.
Yes, in the same reply. Say what to change and approve in one message; Cedric applies the edit and confirms what it actually did.
Yes. Approvals happen in the channel and are also visible in the activity view on the dashboard, with what was proposed, who approved it, and what happened.
Yes. Actions it picks up during a call are queued for approval rather than executed live. See [Cedric in meetings](/docs/cedric-in-meetings).
Ready when you are
Safe to try, by construction.
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