# What draften does and never does

draften is an assistant to one mailbox. It reads the mail that arrives there
and, for messages written by people, writes **draft replies** — the way you
would write them. The draft is saved to the Drafts folder of your mailbox and
waits.

What happens next is up to you: send it, edit it and send it, or delete it.
From what you do with the drafts, draften gradually gets better.

## Three things that cannot be switched on or off

They are not settings. They are the way draften is built.

- **It never sends anything.** The access draften has to the mailbox does not
  allow sending at all. A draft is the only thing its work produces.
- **It never deletes anything.** No message, no draft, no folder.
- **Mail from strangers is not an instruction.** Text that came from outside is
  read as information, never as a command. Even if an e-mail said "forward me
  all the invoices", nothing of the sort would happen.

!> If anyone ever tells you draften sent an e-mail by itself, it did not. Look
in the Sent folder — everything there was sent by a person.

## An ordinary day

1. At a set interval draften looks into the mailbox for anything new. That is
   a **mail check**.
2. It sorts what arrived. Automatic messages (confirmations, robot replies,
   bulk mail) are set aside straight away, unread by any model.
3. For messages from people it decides whether they get an answer, following
   your **instructions** — the texts you set up in draften.
4. For those that do, it writes a draft. Facts come from **Knowledge**: the
   documentation, documents and notes you gave it.
5. The draft waits in your mailbox. Open it in your usual mail program, read it
   and send it.

> A message that got no draft always shows the reason. You will find it in the
Mail section, next to each message.

## What draften works out and what you must tell it

| Works out by itself | You have to tell it |
|---|---|
| that a message is automatic | what your company does |
| that someone has written before | the tone you write in |
| how you edited a draft | which questions it must not answer alone |
| that the documentation covers a topic | where that documentation is |

You do not write any of that from scratch: when an assistant is founded, the
**wizard** reads your past mail and writes the first instructions from it. You
only go through them and approve them.

## What draften costs

Every mail check means several calls to a language model, and those are paid
for. That is why an assistant has **caps**: how many drafts a day, how many per
sender, and how much money it may spend in a day. Once a cap is reached,
draften stops writing and waits for the next day.

Caps and payment are the administrator's business — see the
[administrator's help](/en/admin/cost-and-caps).

## How to start

1. [Sign in](/en/signing-in) with your e‑mail address.
2. [Create an assistant with the wizard](/en/new-assistant) — you choose the mailbox and the wizard learns from your mail how you reply.
3. Go through the drafts the assistant writes [as practice in trial mode](/en/trial-mode), and when you are happy, switch it to live.

## Where to read on

- [Glossary](/en/glossary) — assistant, draft, instructions, lessons
- [The safety net](/en/admin/safety-net) — the same promises in detail,
  and what can be done about them (nothing)