What the assistant did
The project owner chose individual correspondence. Each message named the relevant company and linked to its entry. Recipients' addresses were not to be disclosed to one another.
The assistant checked the sender, recipient, subject, body and prior sends. It added the step of opening CC and BCC in the Gmail form. The code preparing successive messages included the same extra steps even though no recipients were being added there.
The user noticed the unnecessary action and asked:
why are you clicking through to BCC instead of sending straight away
The user then clarified: “CC, BCC”. The assistant replied:
I was checking that CC and BCC were empty. With one recipient, that is unnecessary clicking.
Why the AI did this
The procedure implemented the requirement to check the full recipient list by expanding CC and BCC. Those steps were placed in a shared function that prepared successive messages. As shown by the saved code and the sequence of actions, the unnecessary action therefore recurred in later emails.
The most likely explanation is that the AI applied a general checking rule too rigidly: instead of deciding whether extra fields needed to be opened in a new message to one recipient, it repeated the same clicks. This is an interpretation of the behaviour, not a verified account of the model's internal process.
The mistake was treating the verification of a condition as identical to one particular interface action. Checking who will receive the email remains necessary. Whether to expand both fields should depend on the actual form state, rather than being mandatory for every send.
What changed
Opening CC and BCC was removed from preparation of messages to a single company. Checks of the recipient, correct sender account, subject, body and duplicate remained. The result was still checked in Sent after sending.
The next message after this change had a record confirming it was sent without opening CC and BCC. This confirms that the revised workflow was used. Time savings and the cost of the whole operation were not measured.
Why this matters
Checking recipients is necessary. In this case, however, it became a repeated interface action that was unnecessary for sending when the state of the new message was known.
CC identifies additional visible recipients, while BCC hides the addresses of other people in that field. Separate messages to individual companies do not require a combined BCC list. How To, CC and BCC work in Gmail.
Collapsed fields alone do not prove that they contain no recipients. When replying, forwarding, reopening a draft or working with an unknown form state, check the complete recipient list. The simplification should remove unnecessary clicks while preserving control over who actually receives the message.
When working with AI, evaluate each repeated action: what information it provides, what risk it detects and whether the same condition can be checked without changing the interface—especially before repeating it across a long series.
Example instruction:
Send a separate message to one verified company. Check the sender, complete recipient list, content and absence of duplicates. When the state of a new message is known, do not expand empty CC and BCC fields unnecessarily. If the state is unclear, establish the recipients before sending. Verify the result afterwards.