Permissions and scopes

What each MCP permission grants, which actions it unlocks, and how to give an AI app only the access it needs.

When an AI app connects to Missive, it asks for a set of permissions. You approve them one by one on the authorization screen, and you can uncheck any of them.

Permissions are enforced, not advisory. Missive hides the matching capabilities from the app completely, so an app without Read calendars doesn't get a calendar tool it's trusted not to use. It never sees one.

The permissions

Permission	What it grants
Read conversations	View your conversations and the messages, comments and attachments they contain.
Manage conversations	Organize and make changes to your conversations on your behalf.
Read contacts	View your contacts and their details.
Read organizations settings	View your organizations, teams, shared labels and other organization settings.
Create drafts	Compose and create message drafts on your behalf.
Send messages	Deliver message drafts to their recipients on your behalf.
Read calendars	View your calendars and their events.
Manage calendars	Create and edit events on your calendars.

Drafting and sending are deliberately separate. An app can write replies for you to review without any ability to put them in front of a recipient. If you want a human check before anything goes out, grant Create drafts and withhold Send messages.

What each permission unlocks

Most of what an AI app does through Missive is read-only. The write actions are listed separately below so you can see exactly what you're handing over.

Read-only

Permission	Actions
Read conversations	Search conversations across all connected accounts, fetch conversations by label, team, or account, and load older messages in a long thread.
Read contacts	Look up contacts by email, phone, or keyword.
Read organizations settings	Search mailboxes, shared labels, and teams, and search your canned responses.
Read calendars	List the calendars you can access and read events and busy times to check availability.

Write

Permission	Actions	What to watch
Manage conversations	Add and remove shared labels and mailboxes on a conversation.	Changes your team's shared organization, not just your own view.
Create drafts	Create and update drafts, whether a reply, a new message, or a new conversation.	Drafts stay unsent until something delivers them.
Send messages	Deliver a draft to its recipients.	Sends real email as you.
Manage calendars	Create, update, and delete events, including video conferencing links.	Deleting an event notifies attendees.

Write actions taken through MCP happen immediately. Missive's own in-app confirmation step doesn't apply here, so the only thing standing between a request and a sent email is whatever approval prompt your AI app shows you. Check that your app is set to ask before running tools, especially if you granted Send messages.

What an app can reach

An app acts as you. It sees what you see in Missive and nothing more: your conversations, your accounts, your calendars, and the shared data of the teams you belong to. Missive applies the same access checks it applies in the app itself.

One consequence worth understanding: your access spans every organization you belong to, so a connected app does too. That's why MCP has to be enabled in all of them before you can connect at all. See Admin controls.

Choosing what to grant

A few sensible starting points:

You want to	Grant
Ask questions about your inbox and calendar	Read conversations, Read contacts, Read organizations settings, Read calendars
Also have it write replies for you to review	Add Create drafts
Also let it triage and label	Add Manage conversations
Let it handle a thread end to end	Add Send messages

Start narrow. Adding a permission later means revoking the app and reconnecting, which takes under a minute.

Related

• Connecting an AI app

• Managing connected apps

• Admin controls