Draft replies that cite the price-list row and date

The draft is an ordinary email file that cannot send itself

A draft from Staffbox is an ordinary email file (.eml) saved in a drafts folder. It is addressed to the person who wrote in, the subject is the original subject with "Re:" in front, and it carries one extra header, X-Staffbox-Draft: yes, so a mail rule or a human can tell it apart from anything written by hand. Nothing is sent. Staffbox has no sending code and holds no mail credentials.

The greeting uses the sender's first name from the From header. If the original email quoted older messages (lines starting with >), those are dropped before the request is read, because quoted history is noise to the pricing step.

Row, price and list date on every line turn checking into a glance

This is the layout the code produces for a request the worker can price. The request is the firewall question from the Fieldstone sample inbox (a fictional IT provider, one firewall installed). The line and total below were produced by running the staffbox quote command (it prices from the price table with no model) on the Fieldstone vault; the email wrapper is the layout the code writes. This is an illustration, not a recorded run of the full mailbox door.

Three things in the draft above do the work. The line shows the code, the unit price and the setup fee, so the checker sees the sum without opening a spreadsheet. The footer names the notes the price came from. The date in brackets is the updated field in each note's header, so a reader can see at a glance whether the list is current.

And here is a two-line request the model priced in our 6 October test run, shown as a receipt. The customer named neither SKU; the draft found both rows.

Why cite the row and the date

There are two reasons, and neither is decoration.

• Speed of checking. The person approving a draft is not re-deriving the quote. They are confirming that the right row was used. A citation turns that into a glance. Scoring on your own past quotes measures how many minutes editing still takes. See the scorecard.
• Staleness shows up. A language model has no idea that you changed a price last week. The date in the footer is the only signal a reviewer has. If it is old, the reviewer asks before sending.

One limit to know about. The date shown is whatever someone typed in the note's header. If a price changes and the header date does not, the footer will look current when it is not. Changing the date is part of changing the price. We build the check into the monthly review for that reason.

Drafts for questions that are not quotes

Not every email asks for a price. When the request is a question (a response time, a backup period), the draft body is the answer, and the footer lists the notes that answer read, with their dates. That is the same citation habit as for prices, applied to policies. The price list lookup page covers how those answers are tested.

When it will not price, the draft says why and writes no number

If the request asks for something not on the list, the worker does not write a number. The draft opens with a note addressed to the reviewer, then a holding reply that is safe to send as it stands once the note is deleted:

[NOTE FOR THE REVIEWER, delete before sending: Staffbox did not price this.
<the reason, for example: 32 inch monitors is not on the price list
(we stock: monitor 24in; monitor 27in)>]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for the request. We'll confirm the details and come back to you with a price shortly.

The bracketed wording is fixed text from the code; the reason line is filled in from the worker's answer. The customer never sees a made-up price, and the person checking sees why. Since 6 October 2026 the worker names the stocked items nearby and flags the unstocked item instead of substituting (by design; 0 wrong totals in 475 test answers). See what it got wrong for the earlier version that did. On a new trade it had never seen, an electrical distributor (14 Oct, Dell test box), the default Qwen3 8B setup scored 30 of 40 and 2 of 15 on messy requests, with 8 wrong prices in 55, because per-foot units, price levels and trade shorthand are not handled yet; that is why we score your own list first (the electrical result).

The approver checks five things, and only a person can check the last

• Is each priced line the item the customer meant? (Row, not just price.)
• Does the quantity match what the email says, including words like "two dozen"?
• Is the date in the footer recent enough to trust?
• Is there a reviewer note? If so, have you read it and deleted it?
• Is anything in the email that the worker could not see, such as a phone call this morning or a special deal?

The last point is the one software cannot do for you, which is why the approval step exists. The design is covered on human approval for AI drafts.

Sources

• Draft layout, header and footer wording: staffbox/inbox.py in github.com/Staffbox-ai/staffbox, read 13 Oct 2026.
• Fieldstone IT price list and sample inbox: examples/fieldstone-it in the same repository (fictional company).