---
title: When it checks with you
description: The situations where Else stops and waits for a decision, how to widen or narrow them, and why waiting costs you nothing.
---

Else stops and asks you before it does anything that leaves the app. That is the
default, and it is the setting most people should keep. You can widen it or narrow it
per run.

## The control

In the panel above the composer, under **CHECK WITH ME BEFORE BIG STEPS**, there are
three choices:

| Choice | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| **Before anything leaves this app** | Sending, publishing, buying or changing things. **This is the default.** |
| **Before sending or publishing** | Other reversible changes go ahead on their own. |
| **Don't check with me** | Runs on its own. Do not read the spend limit field below as the backstop — see [Spending limits](/docs/spending-limits). |

Alongside it, also on by default: **"Plan before doing — Shows you the steps first,
then gets going."** You see the plan before the work starts.

## What always stops, whatever you picked

Sending or publishing is a hard stop. Even on *"Don't check with me,"* sending an
email is held for your approval. That one is not a preference.

## What else triggers a check

- **Changes to your connected apps.** Drafting or sending mail, changing labels,
  saving a file into your drive — anything that writes.
- **An app action we have not explicitly cleared.** For apps with a per-action list,
  an action that is not on it needs your approval. For the rest, only read-shaped
  actions — searching, listing, fetching — proceed without asking; anything else
  stops. That direction is deliberate: an unknown action asks rather than assumes.
- **A capability the run wasn't given.** If a run needs something you did not switch
  on for it, it asks instead of quietly reaching for it.
- **The spend limit — on handed-off work only.** A task found over its limit between
  steps stops and comes back to you. A chat does not do this: the number you set there
  is not read. See [Spending limits](/docs/spending-limits) for both cases.

## Questions that aren't approvals

Separately from approvals, Else can stop to ask a real question — a missing detail, an
ambiguity it refuses to guess at. In a chat it gets **three** such rounds per run — a
budget, not an open licence to interrogate you. A reply that answers directly without
using any tools gets **none**, and never interrupts you at all.

Handed-off work uses the same mechanism and labels the reason it stopped: an approval,
the spend limit, a capability it lacks, or something it wants to publish. On the Tasks
screen these show up as **Needs you**.

## Waiting costs you nothing

This is worth stating plainly, because it changes how you should use approvals.

When a run stops on one of the checks on this page — an approval, a capability it
wasn't given, the spend limit, or a question it wants answered — **nothing runs and
nothing is charged for as long as it sits there.** The step that needs your approval has
no way to execute until you resolve it; that is how it is built, not a timeout racing
you. The pause is written down and survives, and if the scheduler wakes up and finds the
work paused it does nothing and goes back to sleep.

That covers waiting on you. It is not a claim that every conceivable interruption is
free — only this one, which is the one you will actually meet.

**There is no expiry on a parked question or approval.** It does not time out, it does
not lapse into a default, and it does not decide for you after some interval. It waits
until you answer it, or until you stop the task yourself.

So leaving something in **Needs you** overnight is free. You are not paying for
patience, and you are not being pushed to approve quickly. Keep the default setting
and let it ask.