Decisions, scores and modes

What allow, hold and block mean, how the score works, and what shadow mode does.

Three answers

The score

Every message gets a score from 0 (clearly real) to 100 (clearly spam) and a category: real message, spam, scam, SEO outreach, sales pitch or job seeker.

Each site has two levels in its Rules:

• At the hold level (50 by default) the message is held for review.
• At the act level (85 by default), and only when Cayve is confident, the action you chose for that category applies. By default spam and scams are blocked, SEO outreach is held, and sales pitches and job seekers are let through, because for many businesses those are leads.

A category with the action “block” still only blocks when Cayve is confident; anything less is held. A real message is never deleted.

Shadow mode

In shadow mode Cayve decides and records, but never acts. The dashboard and the plugin show “would have held” and “would have blocked” so you can check its judgment. New sites stay in shadow mode for seven days; you can end it early from the site’s page, or keep a site in shadow mode for as long as you like.

Feedback

Marking a message as spam or as a real message changes that site immediately: the sender’s address and the message’s fingerprint go on the site’s own block or allow list. Wider behavior changes only through reviewed retraining, when many sites agree, so one wrong label can’t affect everyone.