Agent email

Agent email lets agents send email for a business. You choose who acts on each kind of email: Jev only sorts it, an agent acts on the record, an agent replies on its own, an agent drafts for you to approve, or you handle it. It's off until you turn it on, and one switch stops it.

Set it up

It takes a few minutes, and nothing is sent until the last step.

Start with a first look. After your first import, the welcome screen offers to show agents at work on the mail that just came in: Jev reads your latest emails from people, and for each one an agent shows what it would do at your levels, with the reason, the reply it wrote, and anything it needs from you first (a booking page, a client's project page, a scope). Nothing is sent or moved. If you keep what it wrote, agent email starts in Trial and each draft waits in its conversation for you to send.

1. Connect the business's mailbox in Settings → Connections. Agent email sends from it, as your replies do.
2. Make a booking page if you want agents to answer meeting requests and new inquiries: they send its link. Without one, those wait for you. See Booking pages.
3. Choose Trial in Settings → Agents → Agent email. Agents read each new email from a person and draft what they would send, and hold every draft for you. Nothing leaves.
4. Check the levels under Who acts on each email. The recommended ones are set; change any situation to match how you work. Complaints, refunds, legal matters, access requests and personal matters stay locked to you.
5. Review the drafts for a week. They show in each conversation and under Latest agent emails. Send the good ones as they are; edit or dismiss the rest. Each one you send unchanged counts toward its situation.
6. Choose On when the drafts are right. Situations set to Agents reply then go on their own after the undo window, and Settings offers more as they earn it.

Optional: set your away dates for the away note, and tick Can send next to a connected agent's key to let it send through the same rules.

Modes

Go to Settings → Agents → Agent email and choose a mode for the business:

Agent email sends from the business's own mailbox, as your replies do, so connect it first.

Who acts on each email

Jev reads each new email from a person and answers short questions about it, each with how sure it is. Code turns the answers into one situation, and your level for that situation decides what happens.

How Jev's answers count:

• Safety first, at "possibly". If Jev thinks an email might be a complaint, a refund or dispute, a legal matter, a request for passwords, access or bank changes, or something personal, a person handles it. These are locked: you can't hand them to an agent.
• A reply needs a clear answer above the sending line. Jev must read the email as clearly one situation and be at least as sure as your sending line (88% by default). Below it, a reply waits for your approval instead, and an action is left undone.
• An email that is several things takes the level that needs the most of a person. A status question that also asks for changes is drafted for you.
• Machines are never answered. Auto-replies, mailing lists and notifications are decided by their headers, never by a model.

The situations

The emails agents send on their own are templates filled from the record: your booking page, the client's project page, an invoice. The one exception is the answer to "where do things stand", which a model writes from the scope and the GitHub or Linear read; it goes on its own only when that record was read in the last 7 days and Jev reads the draft and finds nothing in it that isn't on record. Drafts that wait for you are written by a model from the conversation.

Some situations have no safe template yet, so agents can draft for them but not send: you won't see Reply offered there.

Guardrails

You set these per business. An agent email that fails any of them waits for you instead, with the reason, and every one is checked again the moment it would go.

Always checked, whatever the settings:

• Jev reads every model-written draft and finds no price, date, deliverable or term that isn't in the record.
• Every amount matches an invoice or the scope. Links go only to the client's project page or your booking pages.
• Never a reply to an automated message, an auto-reply or a mailing list.
• Not when you replied yourself, or a new message arrived, while it waited. Not when you're writing a reply in that conversation: your draft is never touched.
• Never to a client with an open issue. See below.
• Sample conversations never get agent email.

Clients with an open issue

An agent never emails a client while something they raised is still waiting on you:

Before an agent email that could go on its own, Jev reads the client's recent mail it hasn't read yet, so an issue raised before agent email was on still counts. Every check runs again the moment the email would go, so an issue raised during the undo window holds it too. When Jev can't read their mail, the email waits for you.

The one exception is the acknowledgement of a bug report itself: when a client reports something broken and its level is Agents reply, the one-line acknowledgement in reply to that report still goes. Everything else to that client waits for you, with the reason, until the issue is handled.

In the conversation

• A reply waiting to go shows above the thread: "Sydbar will send this reply in 2 min", with what it says. Cancel stops it; Edit first stops it and opens it for you to change and send.
• A draft waiting for you shows the reason it waited. Review and send opens it; Dismiss throws it away. In the reply screen, a stopped draft has Discard draft.
• A sent agent email reads "sent by Sydbar for you" in the thread, and the reply's activity says it was approved by your agent email rules.
• Left for you: when Jev keeps agents out (a complaint, a legal matter), the thread says why.

Every agent email, sent or not, is listed under Latest agent emails in Settings → Agents, with who wrote it, the situation and the reason it waited.

Away

Set your first and last day away, and optionally someone to contact and a line of your own. While you're away, each person who writes gets one note saying when you're back, once per absence. Machines, mailing lists, scams and sales pitches never get it. When an agent replies to someone for another reason while you're away, the note is added to that reply instead of sent separately.

Overdue invoices

Once a day, Sydbar looks at the invoices this business sent that are past due and unpaid. The billing contact gets a polite reminder from the first day past due, and a second from the seventh, each once, in the invoice's conversation. A reminder never goes once the invoice is marked paid, and it waits for you if the client's mail since the due date says they've paid or disputes the invoice. A third reminder, late fees or a firmer tone are yours.

Earning more autonomy

• Trial first. In Trial, agents draft everything they would send and hold it for you.
• The tally. Each agent draft you send unchanged counts toward trust; each edit counts against. Settings shows the tally for every situation.
• Promote. When you've sent 19 of a situation's last 20 drafts unchanged, Settings offers Let agents send this.
• Demote. Two agent emails you cancel in a week move that situation back to Human approves, with a note saying when.

Agents you connect

An agent connected with a key (see Connect an AI agent) can use the same rules:

• draft_reply saves a reply for you to approve. It never goes on its own.
• send_reply works only for a key you allowed to send (Can send next to the key in Settings → Agents) and only while agent email is on or in trial. The email's situation and your level decide: it goes after the undo window, or waits for you, and the agent is told which and why. Jev reads its draft like any model-written one.
• cancel_send stops a reply that key queued.

What agents never do

Agents never pay or approve anything, mark an invoice paid, share or ask for passwords, write to an address that isn't already part of the conversation or the client's contacts, or answer a machine.