Links and sender look-up

People treat links the way real readers do. Before a person answers an email, they decide which of its links to click and whether to look up who sent it. Then their reply is written knowing what they saw: the price on a listing, a broken page, a form that asks too much.

This needs the lifelike behaviour feature of your plan.

Clicking links

A click is a real HTTP GET request, made at that moment. Some links are never candidates:

• links already seen earlier in the thread
• unsubscribe links, unless the link rules allow them
• links the universe’s link rules refuse (deny list, allow list, mail ports)
• links to the sender’s own machine or private network, such as localhost or 10.x, when private addresses are not allowed. These are treated as testing links and left out.

For the rest, rules work out how likely this person is to click, from:

• the link itself: a “verify” or “sign in” link they expect, a document they asked about, a tracking or social link, or a link whose words name one site while it goes to another (a classic phishing sign);
• their link habit (style.links): usual (the default) clicks about 70% of ordinary links from strangers and 95% from people they know; curious clicks everything; wary about 10% from strangers; never nothing;
• how they feel about you (warm, wary, annoyed, done with you) and their temperament (skeptical and busy people click less).

When the rules are sure, the dice decide at that likelihood, so a link someone opens 90% of the time still goes unclicked now and then. When they are unsure (typically an ordinary link in a first email from a stranger), the AI settles it as that person, in a randomly drawn mood, if your plan includes AI decisions; otherwise the dice decide. Activity shows which: “an ordinary link from a stranger (rules, 70% likely)” or “AI: it’s the property”.

The AI’s answers to those close calls are kept (only the facts above, not the email) and the rules are re-tuned to agree with them, so over time fewer close calls need the AI.

A “known sender” means an ongoing thread, or a matter the person is on. At most max_links links are opened per email (3 by default).

Looking up the sender

Some people check who is writing to them by visiting the website of the sender’s domain. How often starts from the link rules’ sender_check rate (0.35 by default) and moves with who they are and what is going on: skeptical and wary people check more, people who never click don’t, a stranger writing about money or an account is looked up far more often, and someone already warm with you rarely bothers. The close calls go to the AI, as with links. A person looks up each domain only once.

Automated email

People don’t reply to email a machine sent: verification codes, receipts, password resets, notifications. simmail recognises them from the sender (no-reply@ and the like), the Auto-Submitted and Precedence headers, and their wording. The person doesn’t answer, but may act on it, opening the “verify” or “sign in” link, as most people do. When it’s not clear whether a machine sent an email, the person decides while writing.

Domains under .test, .example, .invalid, .localhost and .local are never visited. When there is no website at the domain (always the case for those), the missing_site rule decides:

• imagine (default): the AI imagines what the person found, at a quality drawn once per domain, so everyone who looks sees the same thing.
• notice: the person sees there is no site.

Events

Every decision appears in Activity with its reason, and goes to webhooks:

Event	When
link.opened	They opened it. Includes status, final_url, title and ms.
link.failed	They clicked and it did not load. Includes error.
link.skipped	They did not click, or did not look the sender up. Includes why.
link.sender	They looked the sender up.

Link rules

Each universe has link rules. Read them with GET /api/links and change them with PUT /api/links (admin role). In the dashboard they are under Behaviour → Links. See Behaviour settings for every field.

People never open addresses on private networks, and a universe opens at most 60 links a minute.