AI textingnew

Business AI Texting lets one of your AI agents write back to the texts a business number receives. The reply is written server-side on every inbound text — grounded only in the workspace's knowledge base, in your team's voice (it learns from the replies your team has already sent), 24/7. When a text needs a person (a refund, a complaint, "can I talk to someone?", a question the knowledge doesn't cover) the agent says so, hands the thread to your team and goes quiet in that conversation. Anyone — a teammate in the inbox, or your code — can take over any conversation and hand it back.

This is the hosted alternative to running your own SMS agent: no LLM, no webhook server, no loop — three switches.

#The three switches

A text is answered only when all three are on:

Plus one workspace-level precondition you don't control per switch: texting must be live — the workspace's 10DLC campaign is approved, or the line is toll-free. Every response below reports it as textingReady; the agent starts answering automatically the moment it flips to true. Set everything up before that if you like.

None of this needs a publish: no carrier assistant is involved, so each change applies to the very next inbound text.

#What the agent will and won't do

• Answers only from the knowledge base. Hours, prices, services, policies — if the texting AI can't read it in an article, the agent says your team will confirm and hands off. It never invents a fact. Control what it may read with the knowledge audience: texting (AI texting on every number) or texting:<e164> (one line only).
• Never pretends to be human. Asked if it's a bot, it says it is your business's AI assistant and offers to bring in a teammate.
• Never asks for card numbers, IDs, passwords or codes, and never promises a booking, payment or callback time unless the knowledge says exactly how that works.
• Hands off on refunds, cancellations, disputes, complaints, legal, medical or safety topics, and whenever someone asks for a person — the run has handoff: true and the thread is paused for the agent from then on.
• Stays out of the way of carrier keywords (STOP, START, HELP, YES…), of a teammate who already replied to that text, and of a paused thread.
• Won't loop. At most 20 replies per conversation per hour, and exactly one reply per inbound text (the run is keyed on the inbound activity, so a redelivered webhook never double-replies).

#Pricing

30 AI credits per carrier segment of a reply, from the same credit wallet as the agent's calls (creditsPerSegment in every status response). A one- or two-sentence reply is usually one segment (30 credits); a longer one can be two (60). Only replies that are actually sent are charged — skipped texts and hand-offs without a reply cost nothing. When the wallet is empty the run is skipped with reason: "no_credits" and texts fall through to your team.

#The run object

Every inbound text the texting agent looks at produces one run — your audit trail and the answer to "why didn't the AI reply?". Read them per agent (GET /agents/:id/texting) or per thread (GET /conversations/:id/ai-texting/runs).

curl https://api.ody.co/v1/api/agents/$AGENT_ID/texting \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ODY_API_KEY"

const t = await ody.agents.texting(agent.id);
if (!t.live) console.log({ enabled: t.enabled, agentEnabled: t.agentEnabled, textingReady: t.textingReady, lines: t.links.textingNumbers });

t = client.agents.texting(agent["id"])
print(t["live"], t["links"]["textingNumbers"])

{
  "enabled": true,
  "agentEnabled": true,
  "links": { "voiceNumbers": ["+15125550100"], "textingNumbers": ["+15125550100"] },
  "textingReady": true,
  "live": true,
  "creditsPerSegment": 30,
  "runs": [
    {
      "id": "7b1e…",
      "agentId": "0d9c…",
      "agentName": "Astra",
      "conversationId": "c4f1…",
      "inboundActivityId": "a1…",
      "replyActivityId": "a2…",
      "lineE164": "+15125550100",
      "contactE164": "+15125550123",
      "status": "replied",
      "reason": null,
      "detail": null,
      "groundingMode": "vector",
      "groundingSources": [{ "articleId": "9f…", "title": "Hours & location" }],
      "handoff": false,
      "segments": 1,
      "credits": 30,
      "createdAt": "2026-11-02T18:05:44.000Z"
    }
  ]
}

curl -X POST https://api.ody.co/v1/api/agents/$AGENT_ID/texting \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ODY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"enabled":true}'

await ody.agents.setTexting(agent.id, true);
// Later: off, and release every line's texting link too.
const { released } = await ody.agents.setTexting(agent.id, false, { unlinkLines: true });

client.agents.set_texting(agent["id"], True)
client.agents.set_texting(agent["id"], False, unlink_lines=True)

curl -X PUT https://api.ody.co/v1/api/numbers/%2B15125550100/texting \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ODY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"agentId":"0d9c…"}'

const r = await ody.numbers.setTextingAgent("+15125550100", agent.id);
if (!r.agentTextingEnabled) await ody.agents.setTexting(agent.id, true);

r = client.numbers.set_texting_agent("+15125550100", agent["id"])

await ody.conversations.setAiTexting(conversationId, true);
await ody.messages.send({ conversationId, body: "Hi, this is Sam from Acme — I've got it from here." });

client.conversations.set_ai_texting(conversation_id, True)

#Recipes

Turn it on from scratch — create or pick an agent, give it knowledge, link the line, flip the switch:

const { agents } = await ody.agents.list();
const agent = agents[0];
await ody.knowledge.createArticle({ title: "Hours & location", content: "We're open Mon–Fri 9–6 at 12 Main St." });
await ody.numbers.setTextingAgent("+15125550100", agent.id);
const { textingReady } = await ody.agents.setTexting(agent.id, true);
// textingReady false? Finish 10DLC (POST /messaging/registration) — the agent starts automatically when it's approved.

Escalate on hand-off — subscribe to message.received; after each inbound text, read the thread's latest run. The agent answers (or decides not to) within a few seconds of the webhook, so give it a moment, then page a human when the run has handoff: true:

// in your webhook handler, a few seconds after message.received
if (event.type === "message.received") {
  const [run] = await ody.conversations.aiTextingRuns(event.data.conversationId, { limit: 1 });
  if (run?.inboundActivityId === event.data.activityId && run.handoff) await notifyTeam(event.data.conversationId);
}

Tell AI replies from human ones in any timeline: activity.aiTextingAgentId is set on the agent's messages and absent on yours.

Know why nothing was answered — read the thread's runs; the latest reason names the missing switch (texting_off, agent_off, texting_not_enabled, paused, no_credits, …).