Deciding before a rule is added

An approval is a request asking a person to allow or reject something before it happens. Cook uses them all over the product — see How to approve work for the general rules. This page covers the requests that playbooks raise: adding a standard, removing a setup, and, when you ask Cook in chat, activating or reinstalling one.

When it wants to add a rule

A standard is a written rule that Cook follows on every job, such as “never quote a price by text”. Every agent in the workspace reads it from its next job on.

The playbooks that come with Cook add their standards when you install them, with no request. Their text is reviewed by Cook before it ships.

A playbook your workspace made itself asks first. Each of its standards arrives as its own request, titled Save skill from playbook: and the standard’s name, showing the full text. The exact words you approve are the words that get saved.

When you remove a whole setup

There is no remove button. Ask Cook in chat to remove the playbook from a client. Removing it deletes the routines it created and stops anything they had running. Cook asks you to approve that first, and the request names exactly where it is being removed from, so you do not clear the wrong one.

Nothing is deleted before you approve. Standards are not removed with the playbook — they stay until you remove them yourself.

Where to find requests

Open the Needs you card on Home, or the notification bell. You will see these requests beside other work that needs a decision, such as drafted replies or work sent for review.

Each request shows:

• what action is being requested;
• who or what requested it;
• when it was requested.

Choose Approve, Request changes or Reject on the request.

If a request came from a chat, it also appears as a card in that chat. Deciding in either place closes the same request.

Four things worth knowing

• A newer request replaces the older request for the same item. You cannot approve an abandoned draft.
• Open requests expire after 7 days. Owners and admins can change this from 1 to 90 days in Settings → Team → AI approvals, under Pending approvals expire after. Nothing runs. The request is marked as expired, not rejected.
• Rejecting closes the request. Nothing happens. If you add a note saying why, Cook uses it on the next attempt.
• YOLO mode skips the request. If an owner or admin has switched on YOLO mode in Settings → Team → AI approvals, these actions run straight away with no request.