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When Aide writes a draft for your team to send, it writes the reply as it should go out and leaves a short blank in square brackets wherever a fact is missing, such as “Your order ships on [ship date].” Your teammate fills it in before sending.

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Why blanks

The person sending the draft is your team, so the draft doesn’t tell the customer what Aide doesn’t know or offer to pass them to the team. Where your knowledge or the order doesn’t have the answer (a restock date, a refund amount), the draft names the missing fact in a few words, in the customer’s language. When the customer can give the detail themselves, such as an order number, the draft asks them for it.

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Blanks you can’t miss

  • A draft written as an internal note opens with “Fill in before sending:” and lists the blanks, in bold in Gorgias and Zendesk.
  • In that note, and in what the Aide card’s “Aide: insert draft” macro puts in Gorgias’s reply box, each blank reads ⟦FILL IN: ship date⟧, so one left in by mistake stands out.
  • With Always draft, the note holds the reply alone: each blank is marked in bold where it goes, with no list above the draft.
  • Front’s shared draft and the Aide panel’s draft keep the plain [ship date] form.
  • Order numbers, amounts, dates and links in brackets aren’t treated as blanks.

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What drafts can use

Drafts read the customer’s verified orders, their shipments and your returns portal, so they can say where an order is, link to its tracking, or link to your returns portal on the order. An order that hasn’t shipped is described as not shipped yet, without a blank for a tracking number. Drafts never offer to cancel, refund or change an order, and a blank never stands for a decision: Aide still never writes that a refund, credit or exception was granted.

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Which conversations get blanks

Inboxes where Aide only drafts (including Always draft, see Always draft a reply on every helpdesk conversation), topics set to Draft for review, scenarios that ask for a draft or escalate with a comment, and shadow mode.

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Replies Aide sends itself

Replies Aide sends never contain a blank. Where Aide answers customers directly, it says plainly what it doesn’t have. A reply that still contains bracketed text is never sent; Aide hands the conversation to your team instead.