Core concepts
Approval gates
Monroe's protections come in three tiers, and this page says plainly which tier each one lives in.
Tier 1: Machine-enforced approvals
Monroe cannot send email or create calendar events without your approval. The runtime blocks these actions until someone approves them in Slack or Teams, and that holds in every approval mode. Monroe posts the prepared action in your thread (what it wants to send, and to whom) with Approve and Deny controls. Deny it and Monroe stands down; it never retries around a denial. If nobody answers, the ask times out and the step is skipped, never silently executed.
Tier 2: Draft-first working discipline
Other external writes (CRM updates, file and doc changes, posts to connected tools) are draft-first and ask-first by Monroe's operating rules: it presents the prepared change in your channel and asks before acting. This is how Monroe is built to work, not a runtime lock like tier 1, and we say so plainly. Extending machine enforcement to more write actions is on the roadmap.
Tier 3: Hard floors
Dangerous system commands are blocked outright, in every mode. No setting turns this off.
What that means in practice
| Action | Protection |
|---|---|
| Read a Slack thread, a Drive doc, a CRM record | None needed (read-only) |
| Summarize, research, build a draft | None needed (drafts stay drafts) |
| Reply in the thread where you asked | None needed (that is how Monroe delivers work) |
| Send an email | Machine-enforced: blocked until you approve |
| Create a calendar event | Machine-enforced: blocked until you approve |
| Update a CRM record | Draft-first: presented in-channel before acting |
| Write to a Drive doc or file store | Draft-first: presented in-channel before acting |
| Run a dangerous system command | Hard floor: blocked outright, in every mode |
Approval modes
Workspace admins choose an approval mode in Settings → Behavior:
recommended: the tiers above.strict: everything in recommended, plus Monroe asks before risky technical operations.manual: every flagged operation waits for your explicit OK; useful for compliance pilots.
The tier 1 gates and the tier 3 floors hold in every mode, including recommended.
How approvals resolve
Approval asks and decisions happen in your Slack or Teams threads, where the whole team can see them. Approve and the action proceeds; deny and Monroe stands down. Unanswered asks expire and the step is skipped, never silently executed.
Customizing rules
Per-action overrides ("always require approval on emails to lenders and LPs," "multi-approver gate on anything that touches a connected finance tool") are on the public roadmap for the next release. Enterprise contracts can have these wired server-side today; email enterprise@getmonroe.com.
The audit trail
Per-run approval records in the dashboard are on the roadmap; the audit log page describes what's live today vs. coming.
Next → skills.