Trust & privacy
Your name, your inbox, your call.
An assistant that reads your mail and moves your calendar is only useful if you trust it. So here is how access, approvals, and automation actually work, including what isn't built yet.
Approvals where it counts
The approval queue is the last stop between “the agent drafted it” and “it went out under your name.” You can read it, edit it, approve it, or delete it. Nothing happens behind your back.
Principles
Your name is on it
One badly worded email from your address can cost more than an hour of inbox time. So messages from your address, changes to your public site, and anything touching policy wait for you, even when the agent feels sure.
Your files stay yours
Your papers, syllabi, email, and notes support your work inside a private system. They aren't uploaded to a public chatbot or fed into an ad profile. We'll publish formal retention and training terms after legal review, and until then we won't promise more than we can back up.
Public site and private work stay apart
Your visitor-facing pages live in one place. Your chats, queues, and files live somewhere else. Site changes arrive as drafts, and you publish.
You turn the dial
Connect email and calendar when you're ready. Start with drafts and triage, then let it do more as it earns it. Access starts conservative, broader automation comes as our product and policies allow, and high-risk sends stay approve-first.
Not surveillance
FacultyAide is your personal assistant, not a dashboard for your department to watch you. You choose the connections and the mode.
Limited and Trust modes, honestly
We won't pretend every faculty member gets full inbox automation on day one. Early on, the agent works within tighter limits. As you opt in, and as we're ready, it can do more.
Limited mode
Tighter limits on what it can reach and send. Good while you're figuring out what to trust. It still drafts and preps, and sends from your address stay gated.
Trust mode (roadmap)
More access for faculty who want a lighter touch, with approvals still in place for anything that could surprise you or misstate policy.
Common questions
- Will it read my email without me knowing?
- No. It only works with what you connect, and you can see and change that. How much it does on its own depends on your settings, and early on we start conservative.
- Can it send email for me?
- Eventually, for routine things you've told it to handle. Right now the default is draft and queue, and you approve before anything sends. Email from your address is too important to guess at.
- How is this different from ChatGPT?
- ChatGPT starts every conversation knowing nothing about you. FacultyAide works from your email, calendar, papers, and syllabi, with an approval queue in front of anything that goes out. It's built for how a semester actually goes.
- Can I connect my university account?
- That depends on your institution's IT policy, and we'd rather tell you that up front than have you find out later. Some faculty will start with a personal calendar or just their own documents. Write to hello@facultyaide.com if you're not sure what's allowed.
- Is this for my whole university?
- No. It's built for individual faculty, and maybe small teams later. Institution-wide research administration is a different category of software, aimed at central offices rather than one professor's desk.
- Does it replace our grants office systems?
- No. It helps you keep track of deadlines and paperwork on your side of the desk. It doesn't replace your institution's grants or ERP systems.