> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.orbit.devotel.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Inbox terminology FAQ — replies, consent, and AI drafts

> A single definitions page for the three vocabularies that collide across the Inbox screens: conversation replies (including pending replies), consent receipts and posture, and AI draft turns. Use it while working the pending-replies queue, reviewing consent posture, or reading AI-turn records.

# Inbox terminology FAQ — replies, consent, and AI drafts

Three vocabularies mix across the Inbox surfaces, and they are easy to conflate while you scan a screen: **replies** (the conversation and its approval queue), **consent** (receipts and the posture they form), and **AI drafts** (the co-pilot's suggested-turn records). This page defines each term once and answers the collisions operators keep asking about, so the support team can cite a stable link instead of re-explaining.

* **Section 1** — term conventions: what counts as a reply, a consent record, or an AI draft turn.
* **Section 2** — the specific collisions operators ask about: the pending-replies count, approving a draft versus consent posture, a draft versus a queued reply, and more.
* **Section 3** — the three guides this page leans on and what each one owns.
* **Section 4** — how to cite this page from support replies.

## 1. Term conventions

These are the conventions used across the platform's Inbox screens. Use the same vocabulary in tickets and operator hand-offs.

* **A reply** — in the Inbox, a reply is a message drafted to send into a conversation. It exists in one of two places: dispatched directly when it is sent, or held for review when the workspace gates its author.
* **A pending reply** — a reply held by the reply-approval gate, waiting for a supervisor decision. "Pending" describes that queue position, not a conversation state, a message-delivery state, or customer consent.
* **An AI draft turn** — when the Inbox AI co-pilot proposes a response, each proposal carries a model-confidence score and becomes an auditable turn record. High-confidence drafts can qualify for one-click approve-and-send; escalate or end suggestions never qualify, at any score.
* **A consent receipt** — the contact-level record of opt-in or opt-out (often created alongside a conversation when a channel captures consent). Receipts feed the compliance-posture surface, where per-scope details roll up into a posture block.
* **Consent posture** — the screen that aggregates consent receipts into a posture summary for the workspace. It reports state; it is not part of the reply workflow and is never an approve/reject decision.

Conflating these four ideas is where most terminology errors come from, so the distinctions above are the ones to settle first.

## 2. Collisions operators ask about

Each question below names the two vocabularies that collide and the distinction that resolves it.

### What exactly does the pending-replies count include?

It counts replies held by the reply-approval gate — nothing else. A queue that shows N pending rows means N gated replies are waiting for a supervisor to approve or reject; it is not a count of unread conversations and it is not a count of blocked sends. The queue renders up to 50 pending rows and mounts the first 10, growing with **Load more**, so a short visible list plus a larger remainder is normal.

### Is approving a reply the same thing as setting consent posture?

No. Approving a pending reply is a send decision on one queued body, made by an owner, admin, or supervisor — the queue row records the decision and, for approvals, points at the message that went out. Consent posture is the workspace's aggregated consent state, report-only. The gate that holds the reply is a tenant-owned control you turn on per agent (off by default, with a workspace default); posture never participates in that approve/reject step.

### Is an AI draft the same as a pending reply?

No. A draft is what the AI co-pilot proposes; a pending reply is what a gated teammate submitted. Both can require review before they send, but the requirements are separate per-agent/per-draft settings: the gate is about who wrote the reply, the AI-confidence rule is about what the co-pilot suggested. A draft always carries `require_human_review = true`, and only send-shaped suggestions can be eligible for one-click approve-and-send.

### Does rejecting a reply touch consent?

No. Rejecting simply holds the queued reply out of the customer and records a reason for the submitter. Nothing changes on the consent side. (Any consent effect — for example cleaning up an opt-in captured alongside the message — would be a separate contact-level action a supervisor takes outside the queue.)

### Posture versus receipts: why are there two pages?

Receipts are the individual opt-in and opt-out records; posture is the aggregate. You inspect receipts when you need a particular contact's history, and you read posture when you need the workspace's overall state. The FAQ keeps both because the deep-dive page for receipts and the FAQ page for posture answer different questions.

## 3. The three guides this page leans on

Open the guide that owns the surface rather than re-deriving terminology in every ticket:

* **[Pending replies — the supervisor approval queue](/guides/inbox-pending-replies)** — how the queue works and who can act: when the gate applies, reading each card, approving, rejecting with a note, queue hygiene, and the privilege model (owners, admins, supervisors decide; agents submit).
* **[Reply approvals — API](/inbox/reply-approvals)** — the endpoints the queue mirrors, with curl samples for listing, approving, rejecting, and reading the gate defaults.
* **[Compliance Posture FAQ](/compliance/posture-faq)** — the consent/gate vocabulary: `GET /compliance/health` readback, consent receipts, posture blocks, defaults, and the sole platform-wide TCPA carve-out.

## 4. Cite this page in support replies

This page is stable enough to cite verbatim in tickets. The route is `/guides/inbox-terminology-faq`, and the sections above are named in the H2s so a link plus a section number lands the reader on the exact answer. When a new collision shows up in support, add the collision to Section 2 and keep the three see-also links pointed at the owning guides.

## See also

* [Pending replies — the supervisor approval queue](/guides/inbox-pending-replies)
* [Reply approvals — API](/inbox/reply-approvals)
* [Compliance Posture FAQ](/compliance/posture-faq)
