Tone, voice, and directives

Smart Drafts gives you three ways to steer a reply. Tone and length are quick controls that shape the draft. Your voice is something Chiefy learns from your email history. And a directive is a short instruction you type to say what this particular reply should cover. Together they let you go from a blank reply to one that reads like you wrote it.

Tone

Tone sets the style of the writing. You pick it from the tone control on the draft, and Chiefy carries it through the whole draft. There are five options:

• Casual — informal, with short sentences. Good for personal or friendly notes.
• Formal — structured and polished, with complete sentences. Good for official communication.
• Professional — clear and business-appropriate, balanced between formal and approachable. This is the default.
• Friendly — warm and approachable while staying professional. Good for colleagues and known contacts.
• Direct — to-the-point and action-oriented, focused on the essentials without extra pleasantries.

Length

Length controls how much Chiefy writes. There are four options:

• Very short — a single sentence. Good for acknowledgments and simple confirmations.
• Short — one to two sentences. This is the default, and it fits most replies.
• Medium — one to two paragraphs, for most fuller professional messages.
• Long — two or more paragraphs with detail, for complex or formal topics.

Chiefy picks a sensible tone and length for the first draft based on the thread. The tone and length controls then let you steer from there — switch either one and Chiefy reshapes the draft to match.

Here is roughly how the same reply shifts when you change one control:

• Direct + very short: “Tuesday at 2pm works — I’ll send an invite.”
• Friendly + short: “Thanks for the flexibility! Tuesday at 2pm works well — I’ll send over a calendar invite shortly.”
• Professional + medium: a short paragraph confirming Tuesday, noting the call length, and offering to share an agenda beforehand.

These examples are illustrations, not exact product output — the wording you get will be your own.

Your voice

Tone and length shape the style. Your voice is the harder part, and it is where Chiefy does most of the work for you. When it writes a draft, it draws on your earlier emails — how you tend to write to similar people, the phrases and rhythms you reach for — so the result reads like you rather than a generic assistant.

You do not configure this. It comes from your own history, so the more you use Chiefy, the closer drafts land to your natural voice. The tone and length controls then nudge that voice up or down for a given reply.

Directives

A directive is the instruction you type in the prompt field. It tells Chiefy what this reply should actually say. Tone and length decide how it sounds; the directive decides what it covers.

Be specific. A clear directive gives Chiefy the facts it needs to write a complete reply:

• Vague: “reply to this”
• Specific: “Apologize for the delay and propose next Tuesday for the call”

The specific version produces a draft you can almost send as-is. The vague one leaves Chiefy guessing at the details — and Chiefy will not fill those gaps with invented facts.

When a specific detail is genuinely missing — a date you have not confirmed, an address it does not have — Chiefy leaves a clearly marked placeholder like [AVAILABILITY] for you to fill in, rather than making something up. Read the draft, swap in the real value, and send.

Refining a draft

Once you have a draft, you can adjust it without rewriting your directive. Each refinement keeps the core intent and facts intact and changes only what you ask for:

• Improve and polish — tightens clarity and flow while preserving meaning, tone, and length.
• Simplify — plainer language and simpler sentences, keeping the key facts and asks.
• Fix typos and grammar — corrects grammar, spelling, and punctuation only; nothing else moves.
• Rewrite — writes the draft again from scratch using the same intent and context, in case you want a fresh take.

You can also switch tone or length on an existing draft and Chiefy will reshape it to match.

Refinements never invent new facts. If a detail was missing before, it stays a placeholder until you fill it in.