# How we answer HR policy questions on autopilot

Every 15 minutes our Machine agent reads the HR inbox, answers only from our Notion policy library as a Gmail draft for HR to send, and passes anything sensitive to HR in Slack.

Canonical page: https://themachine.myapps.ai/use-cases/hr-policy-qa

Every week the HR inbox fills with the same few questions. How many days of PTO
roll over? What does the remote-work policy really let me do? What's the
spending cap for a conference? When does parental leave start building up? None
of it is a secret. It's all written down in a Notion policy library that anyone
in the company can open. Still, someone has to find the page, quote it
correctly and write the reply, and that pulls them away from the work only a
person can do: the exception request, the accommodation, the hard conversation.

Now an agent on Machine checks that inbox every 15 minutes. If the answer is in
the library, it writes it up. If not, it passes the question on. It does not
send email on its own, and it never rules on a question the library hasn't
already settled. Either it drafts or it escalates, and a person handles what
comes next.

- **Team:** Machine
- **Runs on:** A schedule that fires every 15 minutes
- **Connected systems:** Gmail · Notion · Slack
- **Mode:** New session each run · writes drafts only · hands off the rest

## The problem

These questions arrive in bulk and barely vary. Most already have an answer,
often in exact wording, somewhere in the library. The inbox can't tell, though.
"How many sick days have I got?" sits in the same line as "Can we talk about a
medical accommodation?", and someone has to open every thread just to learn
which kind it is before writing a word.

The common fixes fall short. An FAQ page only helps people who remember it
exists. An auto-reply with a link to a shared doc can't read the actual
question or point to the paragraph that answers it. Sending everything to a
person means the simple, written-down questions fight for the same time as the
ones that truly need HR's judgment: legal matters, personal circumstances, pay.
That's the wrong way round.

## What we built

Every 15 minutes a schedule starts a new session on Machine. The agent can read
the HR Gmail inbox and the Notion policy library without changing them, and it
can post into Slack. It picks up new questions and sorts each one. When the
library covers it, the agent finds the precise policy section and writes a
reply based on it, saved as a Gmail draft that is never sent automatically.
When a question is unclear, legal, personal or about pay, the agent doesn't try
to answer. It posts it to HR's Slack channel along with the reason it needs a
person.

## How it works

### Start a clean run every 15 minutes

A **cron trigger** goes off every quarter hour. Each time, it opens a brand new
**session**, a fresh cloud computer (sandbox) that remembers nothing from the
run before. To keep track of what it has already done, the agent uses Gmail
labels rather than its own memory. That way no thread is handled twice and none
slips through the gap between runs.

### Teach it how to sort and how to answer

The agent carries a **skill** that explains how to separate a question the
policy covers from one that needs HR. It defines "answerable from policy", sets
a firm line for escalation (unclear, legal, personal or pay-related), and shows
how to write a reply that quotes the source, or stays very close to it, rather
than loosely retelling it.

### Hook up the inbox, the library and the hand-off channel

The agent uses scoped **connectors**, connections that Machine brokers on the
server so the model never sees a raw token. Through them it handles:

- **Questions in Gmail**: it scans the HR inbox for threads with no label yet,
and the only thing it writes there is a draft. It never sends.
- **Policies in Notion**: it reads the policy library without editing it,
looking for the exact page that answers each question.
- **Hand-offs in Slack**: anything the policy doesn't cover goes to the HR
channel, with the question and why it needs a person.

### Set firm limits

The agent answers what the library actually says and **nothing else**. It
won't fill gaps, stretch a rule or guess at policy that isn't written, and it
never grants an exception. Sending is off limits too: each answer waits in Gmail
as a draft for HR to check and send. Legal, personal and pay questions go to
Slack without an attempted reply, with no exceptions.

### Draft, hand off, label

Once that's set up, the inbox gets worked every 15 minutes. Questions the policy
covers end up with a drafted reply in Gmail that cites its source. Everything
else appears in HR's Slack channel with the question and the reason it was
passed on. The agent labels each thread so the next run skips it. HR reads the
drafts, sends the good ones, and deals with the hand-offs in person.

> **The pattern**
> Every 15 minutes a **cron** opens a fresh session that can read Gmail and
> Notion and post to Slack. The rules for sorting and answering live in a
> **skill**. The agent either drafts from written policy or hands the question
> to HR. It never sends, and it never decides a policy point the library hasn't.

## Guardrails

This agent reads employees' messages and the company's official policy, so its
reach is limited and a person holds every output before it goes anywhere:

- **Answer from documented policy only.** It never makes up, reads between the
  lines of, or widens a policy past what the Notion library says. If the
  library isn't clear on a question, it escalates rather than guessing.
- **Drafts only, never sends.** Everything it writes is saved as a Gmail draft.
  HR checks it and hits send; the agent has no ability to send.
- **No exceptions, ever.** Granting, waiving or bending a policy is not
  something the agent can do. That decision is HR's.
- **Hard escalation triggers.** Questions that are unclear, legal, about
  someone's personal situation or about pay go straight to a person in Slack,
  with no attempt to answer.
- **Read-only into the policy library.** Notion pages are never edited by the
  agent.
- **Scoped secrets.** Gmail and Notion are reached through brokered connectors,
  limited to the agents you grant them to.

## The outcome

- **Every 15 min:** Inbox reviewed against the latest version of the policy library
- **Drafts only:** Each reply sits in Gmail as a draft until HR sends it
- **0 exceptions:** Unclear, legal, personal and pay questions are always passed to HR

Simple policy questions no longer wait behind everything else. Within 15
minutes they have a draft ready to send that quotes the exact policy behind the
answer. The questions that need HR's judgment appear in Slack straight away,
and nothing in between is guesswork. The agent reads and drafts; HR decides and
sends.