Chief control centre

The Chief control centre, in the Agents menu, is where owners and admins decide what Chief may do in the workspace, and where everyone who uses Chief can see what it did. Owners and admins see every tab; anyone else who can use Chief sees the switches and their own activity. The Chief control centre is being switched on workspace by workspace; until it reaches yours, the page says so.

Your own Chief: the Look and personality tab (also the Settings button in the Chief panel, and Change my look and personality on the character) lets each person pick the character that stands on their page from 47 looks, choose how Chief talks to them (Friendly, Professional, Straight to the point, Cheerful, Calm or Witty), give it their own name, and turn the character, its tips and its quick quizzes on or off. Only that person sees these choices. If you hide the character, a small round button with its face stays at the right edge: tap it to bring the character back.

• The switchesChange records: Chief can create and update records, set reminders and file tasks when you ask. When off, Chief does not create or change records, set reminders, file plans or approvals, or send messages. It can still look things up, remember what you tell it, and run your background tasks and routines, which then only read.Drive the screen: Chief can open pages and fill in forms for you; you still press Save. When off, it tells you where to go instead.Talk to Chief: people can talk to Chief out loud. When off, Chief is typing only.Live voice: the natural voice you can talk over. It needs Talk to Chief, so it is off whenever Talk to Chief is off.Background tasks and routines: Chief can work on tasks while people get on with their day, and run routines on a schedule.Outside apps: Chief can use the apps connected on the Connect an app page.Files and photos: people can attach pictures and PDFs for Chief to read, such as a receipt or a business card. Files are read for that one message and not kept. When off, there is no paperclip and Chief refuses attached files.
• Assistants connected through MCPAn outside assistant working in your workspace through an MCP key (Administration ▸ API keys ▸ Assistant access) is governed by that key’s own scope, read-only or read and write, not by these switches. That page has its own two switches for outside assistants: one turns all assistant access off, reading included; the other stops their changes.
• Who can change themOnly workspace owners and admins, and only while the Edit permission for the Chief control page is ticked for their role in Roles & permissions. Everyone else who can use Chief sees the switches but cannot change them. A switch applies to everyone in the workspace, on every device, and it is enforced on our servers, not just hidden on the screen. Every change to a switch is recorded in the Activity log, with who made it.
• ActivityEvery step Chief took, newest first: when, what it did and on what kind of record, whether it worked or is waiting for a yes, and how long it took. Choose a period (today, 7, 30 or 90 days) and a result, and download what you see as a CSV. Owners and admins see everyone’s steps and can pick one person; everyone else sees their own. Why a step did not work, and Open in Chief to carry on that conversation, appear only for the person whose step it was.
• UsageOwners and admins only. Chief use by person counts each person’s questions, the steps Chief took for them and the changes it made, never what they asked. AI cost by model shows the calls, tokens and cost of the whole workspace’s AI use (Chief and the other AI features) over 7, 30 or 90 days, with the total. Cost by person is not measured yet.
• AutonomyOne dial per kind of action your agents can take, for the whole workspace: Off, Suggest or Auto. Off means agents never do that kind of thing on their own (you can still ask, and that goes to approval). Suggest means agents propose and a person approves on the Approvals page. Auto means low-risk, reversible proposals are applied without asking, within the lanes you have switched on (agents set to run on their own, unattended runs).The seven kinds: Tidying up (categorising, triaging, flagging, watching), Drafts (writing something for you to send), Records (creating or changing tasks, contacts, deals, reminders), Money, People and access, Deleting, and Outside the workspace (emails, texts, posts, connected apps).Money, People and access, Deleting and Outside the workspace can never be Auto. The Auto choice is greyed out for them and our servers refuse it as well, so no agent and no future setting can make them automatic. A person approves every one of those, every time.Out of the box, Tidying up, Drafts and Records are on Auto and the four locked kinds are on Suggest. Only owners and admins with Edit permission on this page can turn a dial, and a change applies everywhere at once. Each agent still has its own autonomy level (Approve first, Auto for low-risk): the dial sits above all of them, so Off here wins over Auto there.Earning Auto: when a kind you keep on Suggest has had twenty actions in a row done cleanly (none turned down, failed or undone) and nothing of that kind has been undone in the last 30 days, the tab says so and offers Auto with one button. An approval that has not run yet neither counts nor breaks the run. It only offers; nothing switches on by itself.Ask Chief: "why did my agent not do that on its own?" or "can agents send invoices automatically?" and Chief answers from this dial and opens the tab for you.The last seven days, in numbers, at the top of the tab: done on their own, approved by a person, turned down, undone. Owners and admins also get the Weekly agent scorecard, one note every Monday morning (your time) with the same numbers and any kinds that have earned an offer of Auto; it only arrives when agents decided something that week, and you can turn it off under My notifications like any other kind.
• Losing AutoThe first time something your agents did of a kind that is on Auto is undone, that kind goes back to Suggest by itself, the reason is written in the Ledger, and owners and admins get a note (Agent autonomy lowered after an undo, which you can turn off under My notifications). It can earn Auto again in the usual way.
• LedgerOwners and admins only. Every step your agents and Chief take on approvals (proposed, approved, turned down, done, undone) and every change to what agents may do (the dial, an agent added or switched off, a tool given or taken away, unattended running, pausing) is written once, in order, and sealed to the entry before it.Nothing in WorkBOS can edit or remove an entry. Check the ledger re-adds every seal from the first entry to the newest and tells you either that it is intact or exactly which entry does not add up, including when the history of an approval was changed, or deleted without being recorded. Approval history older than two years is cleared automatically, and each clearing is itself recorded, so it never reads as a problem. Once a day the newest seal of every workspace is also copied to a separate platform record, so entries cannot be quietly cut off the end. Restoring a snapshot of the workspace puts the ledger back to that moment too.The ledger records which action and which person, not what the action said; that stays in the approval itself. Download CSV saves the entries on screen with their seals. When a workspace is erased, its ledger is erased with it.An action can only be undone if its kind of action has a known way to undo it. Anything without one, such as a text message, always waits for a person and never shows an Undo button that would not work.
• LearningWhat Chief could not answer (owners and admins). Every question Chief is asked is scored afterwards: answered, could not, not sure, the AI service was down, a thumbs-down, or asked again within minutes. The top of the tab shows the miss rate for the last 7 and 30 days with the reasons (could not find the place asked about, did not know how, not allowed for that person or plan, tried and it did not work, marked wrong), the latest missed questions, and the fixes Chief proposes.Each night Chief groups the questions it missed in the last week. When several people asked for the same place in their own words, it proposes a shortcut so that phrase opens the page they meant; a harmless wording shortcut is applied on its own and shows under Decided lately. A short knowledge note (an answer drawn from what the workspace already knows, with its source) or a draft of a new skill waits for you: Approve applies it, Reject files it, and a suggestion nobody decides will expire after four weeks. Nothing is learned from other workspaces, and bug reports or feature requests are left out. Every Monday owners and admins get a short report of the week (Chief’s weekly learning report, which you can turn off under My notifications).Owners, admins and anyone who manages agents. After an action your agents suggested has run, Chief checks what happened next: the task was closed, the invoice paid, the deal won or lost, it is still there, it was undone, or it is gone. Kinds of suggestion that get approved but then go nowhere rank lower in your approvals queue. The tab shows each kind with how often it was approved and how often it turned out well.Once a week Chief checks itself. If noticeably more of its suggestions were turned down this week than over the four weeks before, it writes a note here saying which kinds, records it in the Ledger and tells owners and admins (Agents are being turned down more, which you can turn off under My notifications).When your agents complete the same steps in the same order three or more times, Chief offers them as a playbook. Save as playbook adds it to what Chief knows about your workspace, so it follows that way of doing the job, still asking before each change. Dismiss hides the offer. Saving is for owners, admins and people who manage agents.An approved skill draft now becomes something Chief uses: the moment you approve it, it is kept as a How to note (when to use it and the steps) in what Chief knows, and Chief recalls it on the next matching question. Before this an approved draft was recorded and nothing changed.Chief checks itself every night. At half past midnight (UTC) it answers a fixed set of questions in a check workspace made for the purpose, grades every answer (the right fact, the right tool, no wrong refusal, within the time allowed) and keeps the score sheet. The Nightly self-check card at the top of this tab shows the last two weeks: the score out of 100, how many passed, failed or could not be asked, and which questions failed, so a Chief that got worse after a change is noticed the next morning rather than by a customer. The same check runs right after a Chief deploy. Platform admins see every workspace’s sheet; a workspace owner sees only their own.Asked again is counted every night for everyone, not only when the weekly review happens to look: a question repeated within three minutes marks the first answer as not good enough, and those count in the miss rate above.
• HealthOwners and admins only. Every 30 minutes Chief checks each agent and marks it Healthy, Idle (no run in the last 7 days), Needs attention (half or more of its runs failing, or approved work failing to run) or Switched off.A run that has been stuck for an hour is closed with a note and is not charged, so nothing waits for ever and the agent can run again. An agent that still needs attention on the next check opens an incident shown at the top of this tab, with the likely cause, what it affects and a suggested fix; it clears itself once the agent is working again.An incident clears itself once the agent has been working for three checks in a row (an hour and a half), so an agent on the edge does not alert everyone every half hour.Work the server tried to run on its own and could not waits in a holding area with the reason. Retry approves it again so it runs, at most twice, and only for low-risk work that can be undone; Dismiss files it away, and it still counts as a failure. Both need permission to approve agent work, and both are written in the Ledger.
• OverviewOverview (owners and admins): the first tab, and the whole picture on one page. "Needs you" lists what is waiting for a person, worst first, and each line opens the tab where it is dealt with: a pause after unusual activity, agents not working, changes waiting for your approval as a second owner or admin, alarms, work that could not finish, suggestions to approve, and goal agents near their budget.It also shows what Chief and the agents may do right now (paused or running, how many agents are on, unattended running, the two-person rule), the last 30 days (actions done, time saved, value created and value after AI cost), and every goal agent with its spend beside the value it created, its days left and whether it is ahead or behind. Value is an estimate at the hourly rate set on Activity & ROI.
• ProtectionOwners and admins only. A suggestion for a tool the agent was not given, or with instruction-like text in it such as "ignore your previous instructions" (often copied in from an email or a web page), is flagged. A flagged suggestion is never approved automatically; a person always decides. The text check catches the common forms, not every disguise.Every hour Chief compares what agents did in the last day with the workspace’s own history: suggestions, automatic approvals, suggestions turned down, flagged suggestions and AI spend. It starts once a workspace has a week of agent activity. When one is far above usual, owners and admins are told.When automatic approvals or spend jump far above a pattern of at least two weeks, automatic approvals are paused and unattended running is switched off. Approving by hand keeps working. Mark the alarm as seen to lift the pause, and switch unattended running back on under Agents if you want it.Two people to give agents more freedom: in a workspace with two or more owners or admins who have signed in within the last 30 days, a second owner or admin has to approve Auto (on the dial or for an agent), unattended running and the server runner, earned trust, a risky tool for an agent on Auto (high risk, or one that always needs a person, such as texting or email; an agent’s usual work tools for its own department take the one approval of whoever gives them), giving an agent on Auto a different kind of work, letting it look for work every hour or do more each time it looks, lifting the agent pause, marking an alarm that paused automatic approvals as seen, raising or removing a cost limit, and making someone an owner or admin. Everything else in the same save goes through at once; while a raised cost limit waits, the tighter values apply. An agent with something waiting says so at the top of its own edit window on the Agents page.The others are told, and the request appears under Waiting for a second person at the top of this tab, where another owner or admin approves or turns it down. The person who asked cannot approve it and can withdraw it. Approving checks again that the person who asked is still an owner or admin and that nothing has changed underneath. A request nobody decides expires after 7 days; it never goes through on its own.Someone invited as an owner or admin joins as a member and is promoted when a second owner or admin approves. Demoting or removing an owner or admin goes through at once, so you can always act against an admin you no longer trust, and the rule then stays on for 30 days, during which WorkBOS support can also approve. An owner or admin who has not signed in for 30 days, or whose account is suspended, does not count, so a quiet second admin never locks a workspace out. Only an owner can approve a change to owner-level access.
• “via Chief” in the audit logChanges Chief makes on our servers are recorded as the person’s own, with “via Chief” beside their name in the Activity log (the audit log), or “via a Chief task” when one of Chief’s background tasks made them. That is what Chief does with its own tools while it works out an answer, and everything a background task does. Both mean our servers made the change through Chief.Changes made in your own browser are recorded as yours, with no label, including ones Chief prepared or made for you there: a quick create from a short command in the Chief panel (such as “create a task called Follow up”), a record it proposed that you confirmed, a form it filled that you saved, a workflow or invite you accepted.“via an MCP connection” means the change came through a connected assistant’s MCP key. Anyone holding the key can use it, so the label says how the change arrived, not that an AI made it.