# Agent email

> Let agents answer email for a business, inside rules you set: which situations, at what level, and the guardrails every agent email passes.

Source: https://sydbar.app/docs/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](/docs/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:

| Mode | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| **Off** | Agents never send. Agents you connect can still save drafts for you to approve. This is the default, and the switch that stops every agent email at once. |
| **Trial** | Agents draft every reply they would send and hold it for you. Nothing leaves. Start here. |
| **On** | Agents act at the levels you set, inside the guardrails. |

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.

| Level | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| **Jev classifies** | Sorted and labelled. No agent touches it. |
| **Agents act** | An agent updates the record and sends nothing. |
| **Agents reply** | An agent replies on its own, inside the guardrails, after the undo window. |
| **Human approves** | An agent drafts the reply; you read it and press **Send**. |
| **Human only** | Flagged for you. No agent drafts or sends. |

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

| Situation | Recommended | What agents do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Newsletters, notifications and receipts | Jev classifies | Sorted into Automated, kept out of Needs you. |
| Spam, phishing and suspicious requests | Agents act | A clear scam is archived and flagged; anything merely suspicious stays put for you. |
| Sales pitches and vendor outreach | Jev classifies | Left for you. Agents never reply, so a pitch can't book itself into your calendar. |
| Out-of-office and other auto-replies | Agents act | Never answered. |
| Someone asks to meet or talk | Agents reply | Your booking page, so they can pick a time. |
| A booked call needs to move | Agents reply | Your booking page, to pick a new time. You clear the old slot. |
| You're away | Agents reply | One note per person per absence: when you're back and who to contact. |
| Files or information received | Agents reply | A one-line thank-you, to clients only. |
| A client asks where things stand | Agents reply | Each milestone's state from the record, with their project page. |
| A client asks for something on record | Agents reply | Their project page, where the scope and invoices are. |
| Something you delivered is broken | Agents reply | Thanks them and says it's with you. No fix time is promised. |
| Feedback or change requests | Human approves | A draft listing the changes asked for. |
| A client approves a milestone | Agents act | The approval is flagged on the thread for you to mark delivered. |
| A client asks for the invoice | Human approves | The invoice draft starts at once, and a reply waits for you. |
| An invoice is overdue | Agents reply | Reminders on day 1 and day 7 past due. See below. |
| A client says they've paid | Human approves | A thank-you draft. You mark the invoice paid when it lands. |
| Someone asks what something costs | Human approves | A draft with no number in it. |
| A bill you owe is due | Agents act | Flagged at the front of Needs you. Agents never pay anything. |
| A new inquiry | Agents reply | Thanks them and sends your intro-call booking page. Nothing about price. |
| An introduction or referral | Human approves | A warm draft with your booking page. |
| Complaints, refunds, legal, passwords and access, personal matters | Human only | Flagged for you. Locked. |

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.

| Guardrail | Default |
| --- | --- |
| How sure Jev must be before an agent sends | 88% |
| Undo window before it leaves | 2 minutes |
| Agent emails per business per day | 40 |
| Agent replies per conversation per day | 1 |
| Who agents may email | People in the conversation and the client's contacts. Never a new address. |
| Emails written outside working hours | Held until 8:30 the next working morning (Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 18:00 in the business's time zone). The away note and first replies to new inquiries go at once. |
| Signed as sent by Sydbar | On: agent emails end with "Sent by Sydbar for {business}." |

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:

| Open issue | Open until |
| --- | --- |
| A bug report, complaint, refund or dispute, or a contract or legal matter, in their mail | You archive that conversation, or 30 days pass with nothing new in it |
| An issue filed to Linear from their mail | Linear shows it done in the client's project, or you archive the conversation |
| Changes they asked for to a scope in their portal | You send a newer version of the scope |

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](/docs/agents)) 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.