Writing 'we will deliver Friday' can create a commitment even before the send button is pressed. A drafting prompt should distinguish confirmed facts, proposed actions, owners, and deadlines. It should not promise a date that the thread has not approved. Save a draft with its thread ID, recipients, body version, and attachment list, then present it for review. The send operation is a separate effect. If the send call times out, query the mail service for the draft or message receipt before trying again. A model's claim that it sent a message is not delivery evidence, and a provider's acceptance receipt may still be narrower than confirmed recipient delivery.
Make this comfortable
Email prompts: separate drafted commitments from sent messages
Operational case
The Aster reply says the team can review the 20-site pilot on Tuesday. It does not promise to approve 47-site expansion or deliver a final vendor contract by Friday. The assistant saves draft D-47, containing the two reviewed recipients and no contact-list attachment. The user approves the exact draft. If sending returns an ambiguous timeout, the workflow checks whether D-47 became a sent message before another attempt. The final user report distinguishes draft saved, send accepted, and recipient delivery when those states are known.
Draft D-47: 20-site pilot review; 47-site expansion unresolved.
Recipients: two reviewed addresses; attachments: none.
Commitment: meeting proposal only, no contract deadline.
Send timeout: query mail-service state before retry.
Final status: draft, accepted send, or confirmed delivery separately.Performance and operating cost
A keyed receipt lookup is O(1) average; reviewing C commitment claims is O(C). An extra receipt query is cheaper than a duplicate email to an external party. Keep a stable draft ID and body version through retries. If the body or recipients change after approval, require a new review instead of treating the old approval as transferable. Measure drafting latency separately from mail delivery latency.
Common Mistakes
- Do not write an unapproved deadline as a firm promise.
- Do not call a saved draft a sent message.
- Do not resend after an ambiguous timeout without checking mail-service state.
Connected lessons
- Production prompt engineering
- Prompt Engineering
- Tool effects: reconcile receipts before retrying
- Meeting actions: verify owner, task, and due date
- Browser effect recovery: resolve ambiguous submissions before retrying
- Email prompts: reconstruct the thread before drafting
- Email prompts: keep sender identity and message text separate
- Email prompts: verify attachment version and coverage
- Email prompts: review To, Cc, Bcc, and reply scope
- Calendar prompts: resolve availability, zone, and duration
- Calendar prompts: distinguish create, update, and cancellation
- Calendar prompts: scope recurrence changes to the right instances
- Project: review an Aster vendor reply and invite
- Email and calendar prompt decisions
prompt engineering
email calendar