Questions, two-value answers and approvals all run today, and so does the single-use page for an
account number or a credential.
Your assistant relays, it does not decide
When Hence Assistant needs something, the task moves to needs input and your assistant repeats the question in its own voice. You answer in the conversation, and your assistant returns the answer. Hence Assistant does the errand; your assistant carries the words. What Hence Assistant needs falls into a few kinds, and the kind decides the mechanism.A data point
Something only you know, that the portals do not show: the rate written on an original car loan contract, which of two employers a plan belongs to. Asked as a single question, with options wherever the errand knows the options. Where an errand’s admission conditions read your profile, a value already held there is used rather than asked for. What you answer is written back the same way, when the question maps to something your profile tracks — a later errand reads it instead of asking again. An answer about one specific account or person is still recorded against this task only: the errand does not yet know which row of your profile it belongs to. What you answer reaches the step that asked for it. The value is validated against the question, recorded against the task and closes the question, and it is handed to the step alongside the errand’s own description of that step when the errand resumes. The description itself is never rewritten — it is what an approval was given against — so your answer travels beside it rather than inside it.A yes or a no
Asked as a two-value question. Yes and no are distinct answers, and nothing proceeds on silence. Say no rather than dismissing the prompt. If your assistant cancels or declines the elicitation instead of returning an answer, nothing is recorded — the question stays open and the errand waits where it was, rather than reading the dismissal as a no. An explicit no is the answer that ends it.An approval
An approval is a yes that authorizes a consequence — changing a deferral rate, sending a request to an issuer. Three rules attach to it:- It names the step, in the errand’s own words. The question is the errand’s published description of the step it is about to take, asked back to you — “may I go ahead and …”. It does not quote the numbers: the current rate and the proposed rate are on the page the errand is driving, not in the question.
- It is bound to that description. The approval is checked again at the moment of acting, against the step and the words it was granted for; if either changed in between, Hence Assistant asks again rather than proceeding on the old yes.
- One approval authorizes one act. There is no standing yes.
An account number or a credential
Neither of these travels through the conversation. Hence Assistant sends your assistant a link, your assistant shows you the domain, and you type the value on a single-use page on our domain. Your assistant never sees it. What happens next depends on which of the two it is. An account number or a routing number is what the errand has to type into a form on your behalf — the new plan’s account number for a roll-in, say. It is recorded against this task, exactly like an answer you gave in the conversation, it closes the question that asked for it, and the errand picks up where it left off. On our record it is held in the task’s own record: encrypted under a key held for your household before it is recorded, and readable back only by a live step of that same errand — while the errand is still running, for you, and only from inside the errand’s own machinery. Nothing outside that errand can open that copy, nothing can once the errand has ended, and it is never read off your profile or by a later errand. It may reach a second place as well: typing a number into a page puts it on the page, so a screenshot the step takes of that page afterwards carries it too — sealed the same way, but kept on its own 30-day clock rather than the errand’s, and not redacted during the pilot (what that means). A step captures as it goes rather than on a schedule, so whether that second copy exists depends on whether it captured that page. Typing it does send it onwards, too: the model driving the step is handed it, and that leaves copies we do not keep on this record — see Trust and control. A password, a one-time code, a Social Security number, a CVV or a card number is a credential. It is never recorded, never put on the task’s record and never shown to the model: it goes from your browser to the browser session waiting for it, once, and then it is gone.Because a credential has nowhere to wait, Hence Assistant will not send you a link for one unless
a step is live and waiting to use it — and if that step has moved on by the time you submit, the
page tells you so, nothing is stored, and your link is left unused rather than spent. A step that
genuinely needs a sign-in Hence Assistant cannot do for you ends by telling you which sign-in to
do, rather than leaving the task waiting on a question nothing can answer.