> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.meetorbis.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Scouts

> Scouts watch your accounts on a schedule and turn what they find into Signals — a queue of things that need your attention, with the evidence behind each one.

A scout watches one thing for you on a schedule — for example, email threads where someone is waiting on your reply — and records each thing it finds as a **Signal**. You decide which scouts are on and how often they run, and each run is capped in what it may cost. Scouts never send, reply or change your records; they only look and tell you.

## What a scout is

Each scout is one skill, run on a schedule, with a scope and a spending limit:

| Part               | What it means                                                                                                                   |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Skill**          | The one thing the scout looks for. Scouts come from Orbis's catalog; the first is **Email follow-ups**.                         |
| **Watches**        | **Your accounts** (only what you have connected) or **The whole organisation**.                                                 |
| **Runs**           | How often it runs: **Every hour**, **Every morning**, **Every afternoon** or **Once a week**.                                   |
| **Spending limit** | The most one run may spend on AI, shown on the row as "\$1.00 a run (default)". A run that reaches the limit stops and says so. |

## The Email follow-ups scout

Finds email threads where the last message is from the other side and a reply from you is overdue. Each thread becomes one Signal, ranked by how long the other person has waited:

| Waited         | Priority       |
| -------------- | -------------- |
| 7 days or more | **Urgent**     |
| 3 to 6 days    | **This week**  |
| Under 3 days   | **This month** |

Newsletters, notifications, automated mail and calendar invites are skipped. The scout reads your mail; it never drafts or sends a reply — that stays with you.

## Switching a scout on

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open Scouts">
    Click **Scouts** in the sidebar (or press <kbd>g</kbd> then <kbd>w</kbd>). Each row is one scout: whether it is **On**, what it **Watches**, how often it **Runs**, its **Last run**, what it **Found** this week and its **Cost** this month.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Switch it on">
    Use the switch at the start of the row. The scout keeps the schedule shown; change it from the **Runs** picker.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Run it now, or wait">
    Click **Run now** to start a run immediately, or let the schedule start the first one. While a run is in flight the row says **Running now**; afterwards it shows **Finished** with how long ago — hover it for the exact date and time.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Note>
  New workspaces get a **What Orbis watches** step during onboarding; the scouts you switch on there are the same ones this page shows. Everything can be changed later.
</Note>

## What a scout found

Click a scout's name to open its page: its schedule, what it watches, when it next runs, and every run newest first — when it ran, who started it (**Run now** or **On schedule**), the outcome, how long it took and what it cost.

Each run shows a short **Summary** and its **Findings**: one line per thing found, with how important and how confident the scout is, and a link to open the thread in your Inbox or the source page. Findings become Signals — see [Signals](/signals) for where they go and what you can do with them.

A run that did not finish says why in plain words — it reached its spending limit, the model did not answer, or something was not set up right — with details available.

## Notifications

When a scout finds something new, the person who switched it on gets a notification, **A scout found something**, that opens the Signal — that holds for organization-wide scouts too. If a scout stops working you get **A scout stopped working**. Both are on by default and can be turned off under **Settings → Orbis → What Orbis tells you**.

## Switching everything off

**Settings → Orbis → Scouts** has an organization-wide switch. Turning it off stops every scout from running — nothing is deleted, and switching it back on resumes the schedules.

## What scouts do not do

* They do not send email, create drafts, change contacts or move tasks.
* They do not run when switched off, when the organization switch is off, or past their spending limit.
* They do not share what they find beyond the scope they watch: a scout on **Your accounts** produces Signals only you can see.