The Inbox: Review Before Anything Goes Out

Draft first, approve second

Your AI helper does not act on the outside world by itself. When it wants to send an email, prepare a quote, propose a booking, or save a note, it drafts the work and puts it in front of you first. Every outward-facing action goes through one place: the Inbox.

New customer-facing workflows start in review. You can edit, approve, or decline each draft. Over time, repeatedly approved low-risk email replies can earn narrow, capped autonomy that you can pause or revoke at any point, and high-stakes messages stay manual. See Earned Trust for how that works.

Where the Inbox lives

Open Inbox in the dashboard sidebar (/dashboard/triage). The page header reads “Inbox” with the subtitle “Your helper drafts the work. You review before anything is sent or changed.” It has three tabs:

• Pending: drafts and requests waiting on you, with a count badge.
• Recent: history of what was approved, declined, or failed.
• Settings: business defaults (time zone, currency, quote validity, booking defaults), auto-approval policies, earned-autonomy rules, and trusted connectors.

The main dashboard page (/dashboard) also shows a Review inbox summary card when items are waiting, with buttons to review the top item or open the full Inbox.

The Inbox keeps working even while your helper is stopped. Reviewing and approving happens on BrainRoad’s side, so you can clear pending items whether or not the helper is running.

How items get into the Inbox

• Your helper proposes something. As it works, the helper drafts actions (a reply, a quote, a note) and each one lands as a card in Pending.
• A customer emails your helper’s managed mailbox. Every inbound email to the helper’s @mg.brainroad.com managed agent mailbox creates a reply card. The helper drafts a response; nothing sends until you approve it.
• Onboarding. Shortly after setup, BrainRoad sends one real welcome email into your helper’s mailbox so your first review item is a genuine draft you can practice on. It is never sent automatically.
• Scheduled tasks. If your helper runs on a schedule, anything those runs want to send still lands in the Inbox like everything else.

What approval means

Approving a card executes the action right away: the email sends, the note saves, the invitation goes out. Declining marks it declined and nothing happens. Cards left untouched for 7 days expire on their own, so old drafts do not pile up or fire late.

A full walkthrough of the card types and review actions is in Reviewing Items in Your Inbox.

The record of what happened

The Work Ledger (/dashboard/activity) is the owner-facing record of what was proposed, who reviewed it, and what happened, including any trust changes. It is a history, not a second queue; the Inbox is the only place work waits for you.

What never sends on its own

Some things always face a human, no matter what auto-approval you have turned on:

• Quotes and price commitments.
• Booking invitations.
• Text messages (SMS).
• Offers to widen the helper’s own autonomy.
• Anything proposed from outside BrainRoad through an API key.
• Any message flagged as high-stakes (money, contracts, credentials).

There is also no way for any AI model to approve a card. Approval is a human action in the dashboard, full stop.