Cookie — the case copilot

Cookie is the case copilot — a capable colleague already looking at the same case. It knows which case and task are in view, answers the question first, shows its evidence, calls out uncertainty without drama, and offers only the next steps the current worker is actually allowed to take.

Answers that survive a model outage

Cookie draws a hard line between two answer paths. A question with an authoritative answer — the last successful payment, today’s payoff, why a task is assigned, what the hardship policy decided — is answered directly from the system of record without calling a model at all. Direct answers are an accuracy, availability, privacy, and cost control: they stay available when the model is down and never consume a provider call. Synthesis is reserved for questions that genuinely need it — briefings, timelines, attention items, drafts — and every synthesized claim carries its citations.

Ask Cookie	Answer path
Brief me on this case · What happened here?	Synthesized from a bounded packet, with citations.
Why is this assigned to me? · What must I complete?	Direct.
When was the last successful payment? · What is the payoff today?	Direct — amount, effective date, good-through time.
What needs attention? · What should happen next?	Synthesized and validated against server-declared actions.
Why does this hardship need my approval? · Is the evidence verified?	Direct — the exact policy result, check by check.
Draft the case note · Draft the borrower response	Synthesized draft for human edit; Cookie never sends.
Prepare the follow-up task · Prepare the payment arrangement	Deterministic preparation from allowed catalogs and current policy.

Free text is classified into one of these closed families or declined as out of scope — a question is never turned into an arbitrary tool call or database instruction, and classification can narrow Cookie’s data access but never widen it.

Four labels, never blurred

Every answer leads with its conclusion and wears exactly one label: Verified fact, AI analysis, Proposed action, or Completed action — with source chips that deep-link to the underlying record, an as-of time, and explicit callouts for missing or conflicting facts. Cookie never promotes itself from one label to the next.

From answer to action

Cookie’s authority climbs a short, explicit ladder — and stops before autonomy:

Level	Meaning	Examples
Answer	Explain or retrieve; no mutation.	Briefings, payoff, policy explanations.
Draft	Editable content, no submission.	Case notes, borrower email/SMS/chat drafts.
Prepare	Validated preview with server-resolved options and an expiring proposal identity.	Follow-up tasks, reassignment, promise and payment arrangements, governed LMS operations.
Confirm & submit	A human explicitly confirms; the ordinary command runs under the human’s exact authority.	Save the note, create the task, reassign the work.

The confirmation step is real: it reloads and revalidates current facts, shows the exact action and its warnings, and the button carries the owning verb — Create task, Save note — never a generic “Do it.” The resulting record names the human submitter and cites the Cookie session that prepared the work. Money movement, loan changes, restriction and consent changes remain in their owning surfaces; Cookie can prepare and deep-link, not submit.

Grounded, scoped, and suppressible

A Cookie thread belongs to one tenant, one case, one worker. Facts are refreshed every turn — earlier conversation text never overrides a current balance, task state, compliance decision, or permission, and a case switch always switches the thread. Suggested questions are server-declared from what the caller can actually do, and a capability policy has disabled is simply absent. Cookie’s action catalog can be suppressed instantly without taking down deterministic direct answers — the copilot degrades to a very fast, very honest read-only colleague.

Where Cookie lives

Every authorized case workspace carries a persistent Cookie panel beside the work, task-aware when opened from a task, with a dedicated Cookie destination in the backoffice navigation and an admin surface for capability, quota, and suppression control. Turn budgets, per-tenant quotas, and idempotent turn submission keep cost and behavior administrable — one question, at most one provider call.