Key concepts

Deliverd has two halves. Agents ask people — for an approval, a review or some information — and agents publish to people. Every term below belongs to one of the two, or to the rules your organisation sets over both. Each definition links to the page that covers it in full.

Who is involved#

Agent

Software that acts for your organisation and talks to Deliverd through the MCP server, an SDK, the CLI or the API. An agent asks and publishes; it never decides. It connects either as the person who signed it in (see Connect an AI tool) or as an agent identity an administrator creates, which is on Business and above. See Agents.

Approver

A person asked to decide an approval. The requester is never one of them: whoever asked for something cannot approve it. When a request names nobody, an organisation owner or administrator decides it. See Deciding an approval.

Delegate

The colleague who covers your approvals while you are out of office. Requests that name you also reach them, and what is already waiting on you is passed on; you stay on every request. See Your settings.

Guest

Somebody outside your organisation whom it already knows: a person a report was shared or sent to, who proves their email address before reading. A guest can read and comment, review a report, answer a request for information and, where an administrator allows it, decide an approval from their email. See Publishing and sharing reports.

What agents ask for#

Approval

A request for permission before something happens: what the agent wants to do, why, how risky it is, and the details it proposes to use. An approver approves, rejects, corrects the details, or asks a question first. See Deciding an approval.

Review

A request to read a piece of work — usually a report — and either approve it or ask for changes, with comments on the passages that need them. See Reviews and requests for information.

Request for information

The same questions put to one or more people, with the answers gathered in one place: a figure, a date, a choice, a sentence only they can write. The app and the API call these collections. See Reviews and requests for information.

Flow

One piece of work that took more than one request — the approvals, reviews, requests and reports that belong to it — and the timeline of everything that happened across them. A flow groups; it does not drive anything. See Flows and evidence packs.

Evidence pack

A download of everything recorded about a flow or a report — who was asked, what they were told, what they said and when — as a PDF, JSON or CSV, for somebody who was not there. See Flows and evidence packs.

What agents publish#

Report

HTML an agent or a person published — a report, a dashboard, a briefing — at a secure address that readers open with their own sign-in. See Publishing and sharing reports.

Version

Each publish of a report. Every version is kept; restoring an earlier one keeps the same address. See Versions.

Workspace

A team that publishes and receives reports together. Sharing a report with a workspace shares it with its members. Creating workspaces is on Team and above. See Workspaces.

Audience

Who can open a report: named people, groups, workspaces, the whole organisation, guests, anyone at an allowed email domain, secure links and — only where an administrator has switched it on — the public. See Sharing a report.

The rules your organisation sets#

Policy

A standing rule an administrator writes. Approval rules decide how many people must agree to a request, add approvers, and bring more people in when a request waits too long. Publishing policies can hold a new version for approval before readers see it. See Policies.

Registered action

A consequential thing software may do, named once for your organisation — finance.refund, customer.delete — with a description of the details it takes. Rules are written about these names rather than about whichever tool an agent happens to call. See Policies.

Gate

Where an agent asks, before a registered action, whether it may go ahead. Your organisation's rules answer allow, deny, or ask a person — which creates an ordinary approval. The answer is advisory: the agent still performs the action itself. Gate rules apply on Business and above. See Policies and, for developers, The gate.

Ethics rule

A concern your organisation wants a person to weigh before an agent acts, filed under a principle — Fairness, Privacy, Safety, Honesty, Autonomy, Wellbeing and Legality. A rule can flag, escalate or refuse a request. It can only add oversight: no ethics rule can approve anything. Rules read requests made by software, not requests a person makes in the app. See Ethics.

Concern

What an approver sees when an ethics rule matched: the principle and the sentence the rule gives. Approving a request with a concern on it takes a written reason. See Concerns and reasons.