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Which emails you can answer

These emails carry a reply address of their own. A reply belongs to: Every other email (welcome, credits, account notices, client reports) has a no-reply address as its Reply-To. Mail sent to it is not read; everything in those emails can be answered in the app. No reply goes to a person’s inbox, ours included.

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What the reply address is

The Reply-To of an answerable email looks like r+<code>@reply.attensira.com. The code is unique to that email and to you:
  • It is signed. An edited or made-up code is refused.
  • It names the one email it came from, the workspace, and who it was sent to. A teammate’s copy of the brief has a code of its own, so a reply always counts as the person it was sent to.
  • It is valid for 14 days from when the email was queued. After that, answer in the app.
  • It carries no permissions of its own. A reply can only do what you could do in the app, and anything irreversible still needs your explicit yes, as everywhere else (approval).
Forwarding the email forwards the reply address with it, but not the right to answer it (see below). To share a decision with a teammate, share it from the app instead.

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Or press a button

The morning brief and the Inbox email also show their decisions under Decide from here, at most three. In the brief they carry the numbers a reply uses (“2 yes”): Every button works the same way:
  • Opening it does nothing. It opens a page that says what it will do, with one button to confirm. Mail scanners open every link in an email, so opening a link never acts.
  • Confirming acts once, as you. It is the same answer as pressing Approve or Decline in the app, held to the same approval rules. Pressing it again never acts a second time: within a day it shows the first result again, and after that it says Already answered. Pressing it while the first press is still being carried out says so and does nothing more.
  • Already answered. If the decision was answered before you pressed (in the app, by the other button, or by a reply), the page says Already answered, with who and when where it knows, and nothing changes.
  • Expired. A button works for 14 days from when the email was queued. After that its page says it has expired, changes nothing, and links to the decision in the app.
  • Yours. Each person’s copy of an email has buttons of their own, and they work only while that person is still a member of the workspace. A button acts as the person it was sent to, whoever presses it, so forwarding the email hands its buttons on: to share a decision, share it from the app instead.
  • Only where a button confirms. The note “Each button opens a page that asks you to confirm” appears only when the email has such a button; a link that opens the app opens the app.
  • Counter it. A rival alert has one button, Counter it: confirming it puts one counter-move in your queue as a change, which waits for your yes like any other. A rival alert has nothing to decline.
  • Never more room. A button only approves or declines the decision it names, or counters the rival an alert names. No button raises an autonomy level, a budget, a cap or spend, or touches a connection or a key.

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Who can reply

Only the person the email was sent to. A reply counts when all of these hold:
  • It comes from the address the email was sent to: yours for your copy, a teammate’s for theirs. A teammate who has left the workspace can no longer answer their old copies.
  • Your mail provider vouches for it: the reply passes the standard sender checks (SPF and DKIM) for your address’s domain. Gmail, Outlook, Apple iCloud and every business mail service do this for you.
  • It is sent to the email’s own reply address within its 14 days.
A reply that fails any of these is ignored. It is not forwarded to anybody, and nothing is done with it, so a forwarded email or a spoofed sender cannot act on your workspace. Answer in the app if a reply of yours is not picked up. Only what you write above the quoted email counts: the quoted message, your signature and footers such as “Sent from my iPhone” are left out. The same reply arriving twice counts once.

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What you can write

A reply is read in one of two ways: as a short command on the decisions the email listed, or as words for your agents. A reply is a command only when every word in it is a command word, a decision’s number, or a courtesy such as “thanks” or “please”. One other word makes it words for your agents, and then it approves nothing: “yes but make it shorter” is not a yes. When the email listed more than one decision, an unnumbered yes doesn’t say which one, so nothing is done and you get the options back. The same goes for words that contradict each other (yes no, 1 yes 1 no): nothing is guessed.

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Work that can’t be undone

Anything that cannot be taken back once it ships needs your explicit yes for that one decision, as everywhere else in Attensira (approval):
  • Reply yes (or 1 yes, naming it). ok, ship it and a thumbs-up don’t count for it.
  • yes to all approves only what can be undone. The reply says which decisions still need their own yes.
  • A button in our reply never approves it. The button opens the decision in the app.
A yes from a reply is held to the same approval rules as a press in the app: it can only do what you could do there.

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Words for your agents

A reply that isn’t a command goes into the email’s thread, as your message, so your agents read it and answer there.
  • Asking for a rewrite. When the email has one open decision and it is a change with a draft, a reply such as “make it less salesy” or “shorten the intro” rewrites that draft’s open sections under your words. The rewrite is held to your rules: a phrase on your words-to-avoid (never-say) list is never used, and a rewrite that used one is written again without it. The change still waits for your yes. Sections you already accepted are kept as they are.
  • Anything else (a question, a note, a rewrite when the email listed several changes) is a message in the thread, and your agents answer there with their usual tools. That includes asking for work in your own words, such as “undo the pricing page change”: your agents find the change and act on it as you, under the rules in Ask for it in words.

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What a reply can never do

Some things are never done from an email or Slack, whoever writes the reply: Why:
  • Only a person, in the app, gives agents more room. A level is raised by you, signed in, after seeing what the step allows (only a person raises a level). An email can be forwarded and a mailbox can be shared, so a reply is enough to answer the decision it was about and nothing wider.
  • Money moves only where you can see it. A higher budget or cap is set on the billing screen, never from a line in a reply.
  • Credentials go through the other service’s own sign-in. A connection is made by signing in to that service yourself, in the app. Never send a password or a key by email or Slack: we never ask for one.
  • A change’s destination is set where you can see it. Where a change publishes, who it goes to and which lane it runs in are part of the change you approve in the app. A reply can rewrite a draft’s words, never where it goes.
Nothing is changed by such a reply, and nobody at Attensira is told: the link is the way to do it yourself. The same limits hold one layer down: the actions a reply turns into (POST /v1/actions, the same verb as act over MCP) never change autonomy, spend, connections or keys, for any caller.

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What you get back

Every reply that asked for something is answered in the same mail thread:
  • It was done. One line per decision (“Approved: …”, “Declined: …”, “Stopped: …”), with an Undo link when one change was approved and it can be undone. The same lines are written into the thread in the app, after your reply, so the Today thread shows what you wrote and what it did.
  • It wasn’t, or not all of it. A sentence saying why (unclear, already answered, needs a plain yes, or something a reply never does), then each open decision with Approve and Decline buttons. A decision that can’t be undone has a button to approve it in the app instead.
The answer itself comes from a no-reply address. To answer a decision it lists, use its buttons, or reply to the original email. Nothing you send is routed to a person at Attensira. An answer always gives you a way to finish it yourself.

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The buttons

Each button is a link signed for you, that decision and that action, valid for 14 days.
  • Opening it does nothing. The page shows what it will do and a button to confirm. Mail scanners open every link in an email, so opening never acts.
  • Confirming acts once. Pressing it again never acts a second time, and pressing it after the decision was answered somewhere else says Already answered and changes nothing.
  • Expired. After its 14 days the page says the button has expired and links to the decision in the app.
  • It works only while you are still a member of the workspace, and it is held to the same approval rules as the app.

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Slack

Decisions posted to Slack are answered with their Ship and Not now buttons (Slack), or by replying in the note’s Slack thread exactly as you would reply to its email (Slack): commands act, anything else goes to your agents on the same thread, and the answer comes back in the Slack thread. The same rules apply: the same approval rules, the same explicit yes for work that can’t be undone, and the same things a reply can never do.

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Over MCP and the API

A reply is not a power of its own. It becomes the same calls any client makes, as you, through the door you used:
  • A command is act on the decision (approve, decline, stop, undo, and counter on a rival alert): POST /v1/actions and act over MCP. A decision in the Today thread is answered as POST /v1/today/{id}/asks/{askId} answers it.
  • A rewrite is act with regenerate and your words as the instruction.
  • Words for your agents are a message in the thread, as ask on that thread.
The change’s history records who acted and through which door (via=email, or via=slack).