Skip to content
Cook
Documentation Browse

Start here

How to approve work

What Cook has to ask you about first, what an approval looks like, and how to stop something fast.

The first fair question about software that does marketing for you is: what can it do while I am not looking?

Cook asks you first before anything spends money or leaves the building, unless an owner or admin has switched on YOLO mode (see below). Leaving the building means reaching someone who is not on your team: a customer, a lead, a public web page, an ad platform.

Costs nothing, reaches nobody — it just happens Researching your market · drafting a message Writing a page · reading your own numbers done, and Cook tells you Spends money or reaches a customer — it stops here Sending a text or an email · putting an ad live Publishing a page · changing what you spend Send this text to 14 new leads? "Hi Dave — thanks for asking about the driveway…" Approve Request changes Reject Nothing in the bottom row happens until you press a button. What you approve is exactly what runs.

Examples of things that wait for you:

  • sending an email or a text to a customer;
  • publishing a page at a public web address;
  • putting an ad live, or changing what you spend on ads;
  • posting somewhere public.

Research, drafting, planning and reading your own numbers do not wait. None of it costs money and none of it reaches anybody, so Cook just gets on with it and tells you what it found.

What an approval looks like

You get a request that shows the exact thing being proposed — the wording of the message, the amount, the page. It has three buttons:

  • Approve — it runs exactly as shown.
  • Request changes — you say what is wrong and it comes back changed.
  • Reject — nothing happens.

What you approve is what runs. The request is frozen at the moment it is created, so it cannot change between you reading it and pressing the button.

When the proposal is a list, the request has tick boxes. Untick anything you do not want, approve, and only the rest runs.

Where requests appear

Open the Needs you card on Home, or the notification bell. Everything waiting for a decision is there. You can also press ⌘P and type Needs you.

If the request came out of a conversation, it also appears in that conversation, including in Slack or Discord if you use those. Deciding in either place closes the same request — you will not be asked twice.

Who is allowed to press it

In a workspace with one person, that is you.

In a team, your workspace has a rule about who signs off what. A teammate’s request goes to whoever is allowed to approve it, and an owner can do some things without a request at all. An owner or admin sets that in Settings → Team → AI approvals.

YOLO mode

The same page has a YOLO mode switch. With it on, everything the agents do runs straight away, with no approval request. A request that charges a fee still waits for its tick-box, and a request from a client still files a request. Requests already waiting stay waiting.

The AI sales rep is set up to send on its own by default: once you switch it on, it texts and emails new enquiries without a request each time. You can ask Cook to set it so every message waits for you instead.

Three things worth knowing

  • A newer request replaces an older one for the same item. You cannot approve a draft that has already been superseded.
  • A request left open for 7 days expires. Owners and admins can change this from 1 to 90 days under Pending approvals expire after in Settings → Team → AI approvals. Nothing runs. It is marked expired, not rejected.
  • Rejecting closes it and nothing happens. If you add a note saying why, Cook uses it on the next attempt.

How to stop something quickly

Anything Cook does repeatedly is a routine, and every routine has an off switch. Turning a routine off stops new runs from starting. It is not deleted, so you can fix it, test it, and turn it back on.

Turning it off does not stop runs already in progress: the routine shows Run still active while they carry on. To stop one, open the routine, choose Who’s in it, and press Stop on that person.

A routine you build is off when it is created. It never runs until you switch it on yourself.

Why is everything locked? — why your Cook may show less than you were expecting.