Updated 6 min read
Keep the final say
What waits on a card (email, schedule, meeting, page watch), what goes without one, and how you decide it, decline it, or let it expire.
Wednesday lunchtime at Hoffmann Tischlerei. Lena asks the Assistant to tell Herr Krüger that the written quote follows by Friday and that Jonas comes by on Tuesday to measure. A minute later she asks for a site visit at Familie Brandt's next week, and on a call she asks to be reminded every Friday at nine to ring Thomas Brenner about the oak delivery.
Three requests, three cards. The email is written, the visit has a time, the reminder has a schedule. None of it has happened yet. Each one waits in its thread until Lena decides.
What waits for you, and what does not
Your AI Employees read, search, work things out and make files without asking. These wait on a card until you decide:
- Sending an email.
- Setting up a scheduled task asked for in a thread.
- Adding, changing or removing a meeting in your werkfolk calendar.
- Watching a page for changes, which the Researcher proposes.
Some things do not wait for a card, and it is worth knowing which:
- A form or a send button in the browser goes after a five-second countdown you can stop, rather than a card. More on that below.
- What an AI Employee does on its own at the Do level of the dial: it does it and tells you after, with an Undo where the thing can be undone. Sending is never at Do unless you put it there.
- Saving a contact detail you gave, recording an expense from a receipt in Files, and similar work inside werkfolk come with an Undo instead of a card.
An email card is a draft you can change
The email card holds the whole message: To, Cc if there is one, Subject and the body. Every field can be edited while the card waits, and what goes out is exactly what is on the card when you send it.
Four buttons rewrite the subject and body for you: Shorter, Friendlier, More formal and Proofread. Each leaves an Undo for one step back.
- Files. When the email carries files, such as a quote PDF, they sit on the card as chips. Up to five, and they cannot be swapped on the card.
- Replies. When the email answers one you received, the card says Replying to: and the subject, and it goes out in that same email thread.
- Limits. Ten recipients, a subject of 200 characters, a body of 10,000.
- The mailbox. It sends from your connected Outlook mailbox. Until you connect one, the card shows Connect a mailbox to send where the send button would be, and your edits are kept while you do. Connect mail, calendars and Telegram covers that.
Schedules, meetings and page watches
A scheduled task asked for in a thread arrives as a card that begins This is what I understood: and lists When, Who and What.
Confirm it and the card reads Setting up, then Scheduled, and the task is on your Scheduled tasks screen. If it can't be created, it reads Wasn't set up with the reason. Work that runs without you covers what happens next.
A meeting card shows What, When, Where and With. Approving it puts the meeting in your werkfolk calendar, and, if the card says so, a copy in your own Outlook or Apple Calendar. Nobody receives an invitation from it.
A page watch the Researcher proposes works like a schedule: confirm it and the page is read every six hours, and you hear when it changes.
Decided in the thread that asked
A card belongs to the thread it came from, and you decide it there, next to what you asked for and what the AI Employee answered. Once decided it becomes one line in the thread, such as Sent: and the email's headline.
On the home screen, a thread with a card waiting moves into Needs you on the Today list, with the card's action under the request.
Hold to approve
The approve button is a hold, not a click: press and keep holding until it fills. A brush of the mouse or a thumb resting on a phone can't send anything. Let go too early and it asks you to keep holding.
After the hold there are six seconds in which nothing has left yet, with an Undo. The button counts down ("Sending in" for an email, "Going ahead in" for anything else).
On a computer the Today list has keys for this, shown above it: J and K move between rows, A approves and D declines. Select all that wait ticks every waiting row, and Hold to approve all decides them together.
Saying no, and why
Decline an email, or press Not now on a schedule, and werkfolk asks "Why not? Optional, and your AI Employee sees it." Write up to 500 characters, or nothing, and press Decline.
The AI Employee reads your reason and answers it once in the thread. A schedule you want at a different time is a decline with the change in your reason. An email you want worded differently is easier to edit on the card.
Decided in the app
A card is decided by you, in the app. The action runs under your name and your connections.
A card can't be decided from Telegram or by email. The reply there says a decision is waiting and points to the app.
Seven days, then it expires
A card waits seven days. Its corner reads Expires in a number of days, then hours, then Expires soon, then Expired with a line such as "Nobody decided this in time, so nothing was sent." Ask again and you get a fresh card.
How you hear about a card
The bell and a push to your phone say Something needs your approval, with a line like "The Assistant is waiting to send an email. Nothing has happened yet."
A notification names the kind of action and never repeats what the AI Employee wrote, because it can show on a locked phone. The face of the AI Employee in Your team also carries a count of what waits for you.
Once a card is decided or expires, it shows in Settings, Activity, as one line: "Sent an email", "Added a meeting", or "Asked to" with Declined or Expired beside it. The trail never shows what the email said.
The dial, and where sending starts
Each AI Employee has work it starts on its own, listed under On their own with a dial: Off, Tell, Offer and Do. Tell says it and stops. Offer prepares it and waits on a card. Do does it and tells you after.
Recording an expense or a bill at Do comes with an hour to undo it. Anything that sends starts at Offer, so you see each card. After five sent in a row without a change, the card asks once, "Let me send these myself?" Only your yes moves it to Do, and a standing order such as "never send without asking me" keeps it at Offer. At Do an email still makes a card, with a 30-second countdown and Stop before it goes. A sent email has no Undo.
The browser's five seconds
When an AI Employee fills a form or presses a send button in its browser, because you asked it to, a strip says "Sending the form on" and the site, with a Stop button, for five seconds. Stop, or Take over, and nothing is sent. A plain search on the same site goes at once.
Some things it will not press at all: a form with a password, card or code field is yours to type and send, and so is any payment. Work running with nobody watching, such as a scheduled task, cannot send a form. The browser shows this in action.
Try it on your own business.
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