Response Drafts let Dosu prepare answers for your team to review before anything is posted publicly. Dosu drafts the response, queues it on the Review page, and waits for a person to approve, edit, or decline it. This page explains how drafting works, how the Review step works, and how preview mode lets you run Dosu without any public posting.
What it is#
Response Drafts is the Auto Draft reply mode for a Dosu Agent. Instead of replying to an issue, discussion, or Slack message as soon as possible, Dosu writes the response and saves it as a draft. A teammate reviews the draft, edits it if needed, and decides whether to post it. This is the human-in-the-loop path for teams that want Dosu's research and first drafts while keeping a person in control of what gets published.
A Dosu Agent runs in one of three reply modes:
- Mention: Dosu responds only when someone mentions
@dosu. - Auto Draft: Dosu drafts responses automatically and queues them for review (this page).
- Auto Reply: Dosu posts responses automatically, with a quality check first.
Why it matters#
Letting an AI post directly in your repositories and channels is a trust decision, and at scale that decision multiplies across many repos, teams, and conversations. Response Drafts gives you a controlled way to adopt automated answers:
- Build confidence before you automate. Run Auto Draft first to see the quality of Dosu's responses in your own context, then move to Auto Reply once you trust them.
- Keep a person accountable for public replies. Nothing reaches a contributor or a customer until a teammate approves it.
- Use Dosu as a research assistant. Even if you do not publish a draft, the investigation behind it (related issues, relevant code, workarounds) is still available to your team.
How it works#
When an Agent is set to Auto Draft, Dosu monitors for new activity, generates a response, and saves it as a draft instead of posting it.
Dosu drafts only when the conditions warrant a response. It drafts when:
- The thread is open.
- Dosu has not already answered it.
- The author is not a bot.
Old or stale threads are skipped unless someone explicitly mentions @dosu.
There is one important exception. A direct @dosu mention always posts a response immediately, even in Auto Draft mode. Drafts apply only to responses Dosu starts on its own, where no one asked for it by name.
You configure the reply mode per surface, so issues, discussions, and Slack channels can each use a different mode. Configure it inside the Agent that connects the Source. See Agent interactions and Issue triage and Q&A for where reply modes fit, and Custom guidelines for shaping what Dosu drafts.
Reviewing a draft#
Drafts collect on the Review page. Each draft carries a "preview" badge and a confidence badge so you can scan the queue and decide what to do. For every draft you can:
- Accept it to publish as written.
- Edit it, then publish your edited version.
- Decline it when no response is needed.
Confidence badges#
Each draft shows how much relevant information Dosu found during research, so the weaker answers stand out:
- High (score of 0.85 or above): Dosu found relevant information.
- Medium (0.75 to 0.84): Dosu found some related information. Review before publishing.
- Low (below 0.75): Dosu did not find enough information. Low confidence responses are always held for review and never published automatically.
Preview mode#
Preview mode is the most cautious way to run Dosu. With public responses turned off, every answer Dosu generates is queued on the Review page for private inspection first, and nothing posts publicly. It is the way to validate Dosu's quality on real activity before you let any reply go out. When preview mode is on, the app shows a "Preview mode" indicator noting that draft responses are queued on the Review page.
Note on Auto Reply#
Auto Reply is the next step after you trust Response Drafts. Dosu posts automatically, but it still runs a quality check first and weighs your Agent guidelines. Responses that are speculative, generic, or aimed at a specific person or team, or that land in the middle of a disagreement, can be held for review even in Auto Reply mode. So review is a backstop in both modes, not only in Auto Draft.
