MSBAi Knowledge Base — Allowlist, Roles & Access

Authorized senders for the MSBAi knowledge base bot (msbai@illinihunt.org and @MSBAiBot Telegram), with their access tier, role/domain, and the gatekeeping routing. This file is the single source of truth for who has access, at what tier, and in what role. As of 2026-07-28 this is no longer a small pilot: it covers the full MSBAi operating team — all 10 teaching faculty, program leadership, operations, T&L, marketing, admissions, and research observers.

What is actually enforced by code vs. documented intent:

• ✅ Enforced: the allow/deny in the table below — src/channels/webhook.ts reads the emails (closed-mode). Senders not in the table are not processed; a non-allowlisted @illinois.edu sender gets a one-time courteous “limited pilot” reply (since 2026-05-30), non-UIUC/unknown drop silently. Telegram: only the handles in the Telegram table reach @MSBAiBot. Edits take effect within 5 minutes (no restart).
• 📋 Documentation / policy, NOT yet code-enforced: the Access tier (read-write vs read-only), the Role / domain column, and the Gatekeeping routing section below. Read-only is currently soft (an agent prompt instruction for the observers); the two-stage gate runs as a convention (makers propose, the domain owner reviews), not code. Hard enforcement is future work — see docs/process-architecture-audit.md §J for the rationale + mechanism.

K-ai Onboarding Cohorts

Agent rule: Rules scoped to “newly onboarded” stakeholders (e.g., Box sync follow-up reminders, onboarding check-ins) apply only to members whose K-ai access since date is within the last 30 days. Everyone else has been an active K-ai user for longer and must not be treated as new, regardless of when they were last mentioned in a session. Cross-reference this table before scheduling any onboarding-style action. Use the date, not the cohort name — cohort labels accumulate, so any rule hardcoded to one label silently stops firing for the next group.

Authorized Senders (MSBAi operating team)

Note: two people use NetIDs from a previous surname — Heather Aldridge (hfletch), Emily Ziegler (ekrickl). Confirmed from official Gies profile pages. Ashish Khandelwal’s address confirmed from his 2026-05-21 email header.

Retired access (revoked, no longer authorized):

• Kacie J. Jones (wilson34@illinois.edu) — Director of Graduate Recruiting and Admissions; k-ai-cohort: stage-2-pilot (2026-04-19). Departed the university May 2026; row removed from the enforced table 2026-07-29 (Vishal). Admissions routing that previously pointed at her now goes to Ravi Mehta (mehtar). Confirmed by Kate Deering (ked@illinois.edu, 2026-07-28) and previously recorded in ACTION_ITEMS.md since 2026-06-10.

Plan-and-test group (2026-06-10): Vishal Sachdev, Amber E. Glynn, Maria A. Rodas, Ashish Khandelwal, Emily A. Ziegler (from the Friday 2 PM meeting invite) — the planning core for K-ai rollout decisions. (Resolved 2026-07-28: the “separate test-only cohort to be named later” never materialized and is obsolete — the 2026-07-28 expansion onboarded the full operating team instead, making a distinct test cohort moot.)

Observer context: W. Ocasio and G. Love are observers for a Gies AI-strategy research study on governance and orchestration; MSBAi×K-ai coordination is a living embodiment of that strategy. Read-only access (soft-enforced via the email-group prompt for now).

Gatekeeping routing (policy — convention now, not yet code-enforced)

Two-stage maker-checker on the source of truth (program/curriculum.md + discussions/DECISIONS.md). Routine writes (ACTION_ITEMS, course files, Box autosync) commit directly. A source-of-truth change should be proposed and approved by the domain owner before it lands (target mechanism: a PR the owner merges — see audit §J.3). Today this runs as a convention, not code.

Rule: maker ≠ checker. Amber and the agent are the dominant makers; their SoT proposals route to the domain owner above; they never self-approve. Read-only senders (observers) never propose or approve.

When the agent routes a SoT change to kb-triage, it CCs the domain approver on its reply to the sender; if the sender is that approver, it CCs the fallback (Vishal) / escalation (Ravi).

Telegram Handles

Phone on file for Ron: 770-309-9523 (provided 2026-04-16 for verification purposes).

Notes

• Access scope: closed-mode — only senders in the table are processed. A non-listed @illinois.edu sender gets a one-time courtesy reply (“access is limited to the MSBAi program team”) pointing them to Vishal; others drop silently. (History: access was narrowed to a small pilot group 2026-05-30; expanded to the full operating team 2026-07-28.)
• To add/remove someone or change a tier/role, edit this file (it’s the single source of truth) and notify Vishal. The allow/deny takes effect within 5 minutes automatically; tier/role/gate changes are documentation until the corresponding enforcement is built.
• Onboarding procedure (2026-08-04): in one commit — (1) add the row here (senders table + cohort table, with the person’s title verified against their Gies profile or email signature), then (2) run scripts/sync-stakeholders.py to regenerate the roster in stakeholders.md. CI (G57) fails any push where the two files disagree or a retired sender still appears in stakeholders.md. Removals: move the row to Retired access and re-run the script.
• msbai@illinihunt.org itself is always allowed (internal use).
• Telegram allowlist enforcement is active — only the handles above reach @MSBAiBot; all other DMs (and senders with no username) are silently dropped.

Created: 2026-03-15. Pilot group + roles/access consolidated here 2026-05-30. Emails sourced from Gies faculty/staff directory.