Platform Rules

Understand the automated rules, thresholds, and enforcement mechanisms that protect your infrastructure

System Modes

Superkabe operates in 3 modes that control enforcement behavior:

OBSERVE

Logs all events, no automated actions

Use for: Testing, learning baseline metrics

SUGGEST

Provides recommendations, no blocking

Use for: Review suggestions before automation

ENFORCE

Fully automated pausing and blocking

Use for: Production-ready automated protection

Mailbox-Level Rules (Tiered)

We use a two-tier threshold system to catch issues early:

⚠️ WARNING Threshold

3 bounces within 60 sends

~5% bounce rate — early detection

Action: Mailbox transitions to warning state

🛑 PAUSE Threshold

5 bounces within 100 sends

5% bounce rate — hard stop

Action: Mailbox transitions to paused state

Flow Example

healthy → warning (3/60) → paused (5/100)
  ↑__________________________________|
  └── recovering → healthy (after clean window)

Domain-Level Rules (Ratio-Based)

Domain health uses percentage-based thresholds that scale with infrastructure size:

Threshold	Ratio	Action
WARNING	30% unhealthy	Domain → `warning`
PAUSE	50% unhealthy	Domain → `paused` + cascade

Scaling Example

Mailboxes	Unhealthy	Old Logic	New Logic
3	1	✅ Healthy	⚠️ Warning (33%)
10	2	🛑 Pause	✅ Healthy (20%)
10	5	🛑 Pause	🛑 Pause (50%)

Cooldown System

After a mailbox is paused, it enters a cooldown period with exponential backoff:

Formula: Cooldown = 1 hour × 2^(consecutive_pauses - 1)

Maximum: Capped at 16 hours

Pause #	Cooldown	Cumulative Offline
1st	1 hour	1 hour
2nd	2 hours	3 hours
3rd	4 hours	7 hours
4th	8 hours	15 hours
5th+	16 hours (max)	31+ hours

📊 Key Insight

These thresholds are production-hardened based on email deliverability best practices:

• 5% bounce rate is the industry-accepted maximum before reputation damage
• Early warnings at 3 bounces give operators time to investigate
• Ratio-based domains scale from small (3 mailboxes) to large (200+) infrastructure
• Exponential cooldown prevents rapid re-entry into unhealthy patterns

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the default mailbox pause bounce rate?

3% bounce rate with a minimum of 60 sends before the rate is evaluated (prevents flapping on low-volume mailboxes). Warning-level threshold fires at 2%. Both are configurable per workspace.

How are domain-wide thresholds different from mailbox-level?

Domain-wide thresholds aggregate across every mailbox on the domain and fire only when multiple mailboxes are drifting together — that's the signal that the issue is domain reputation, not a single bad sender. Mailbox-level thresholds fire on individual senders.