# How approval works

## How approval works

The prepared action is primary. The message and evidence stay close, but quiet until you need them.

## The basic rule

Anything that reaches a person outside your business waits for you: sending an email, sending a text, sending a calendar invite, scheduling a callback, adding a contact, creating a record.

Things that only affect your own workspace do not wait: setting a reminder, tagging an item, closing something out. Nothing leaves the building, so nothing needs a gate.

## The decision surface

- Read the proposed reply or action
- Open the evidence if context is needed
- Edit the content without losing the original proposal
- Approve or reject with a recorded outcome

The queue is built for a phone. One tap to approve. You can read the original message, see the draft, edit it, and send without opening a laptop.

## The one thing you can let through

You can turn on an instant acknowledgment, a short note saying the message arrived and someone will get back to them, that goes out immediately.

It is off unless you turn it on. The wording is a fixed template written by us, not composed by the AI, so it cannot say anything unexpected. Text acknowledgments respect quiet hours.

## Your own rules go further

- Spending limits. Nothing above an amount you set goes out automatically.
- Quiet hours. Nothing sends unattended during hours you choose.
- Never-automatic actions. Specific things you always want to see first.

These are enforced in code, in both the automatic pipeline and the chat window. They are not instructions the AI is asked to respect. If a rule blocks something, lilis will tell you which rule and why.

## What stays in the record

The source communication, supporting evidence, proposal, reviewer, decision, and resulting action remain correlated. Autonomous actions need the same complete artifact.

## When lilis is not sure

The right behavior is to expose the uncertainty and ask for the missing judgment. A confident sentence is not a substitute for sufficient evidence.

Same when something it depends on fails. You get something to review, not a silent failure and not an invented answer.