Setting up and testing the phone agent

Voice is where an owner or manager sets the receptionist's allowed work, reviews its conversations and runs the tester. The policy is the authority. The telephony transport only speaks, listens, hands over or hangs up; it cannot quietly give the agent powers the shop did not enable.

Credentials identify providers; they do not connect a line

Under Provider credentials, the shop can save a Twilio Account SID and Auth Token and an ElevenLabs API key. They are sealed before storage, and leaving a password field blank keeps the saved value. A connection check can prove the account identity is accepted. It does not activate a phone line, buy or release a number, port a number, or repoint webhooks.

Today the mock transport is the only transport the application selects. A checked-in Twilio protocol adapter exists for release review, but live line activation is not provisioned in Torqix, so entering credentials alone must not be read as a promise that calls will route here.

Readiness reports what is known without dialling

Open Call readiness for the component-by-component answer. It checks the saved credential shape and last read-only account check, this location's globally unique number binding, the press-1 and no-recording invariants, and a fresh authenticated report from the one-shop sidecar. The report proves that the sidecar's Torqix API key was accepted and that its reported shop and number matched under RLS; it never returns a secret value.

The headline remains Not ready for live calls while carrier routing, the independent carrier fallback, and the separately reviewed exact-number activation are unproved. A process heartbeat cannot establish any of those facts, and no call is placed to pretend otherwise.

Test the policy without placing a call

Press Test without calling. The tester uses the real shop policy, hours and availability but no carrier, phone number, provider minutes or audio. Test conversations and any test drafts are stamped as test data, so live-call counts and work figures exclude them. An owner or manager can still inspect that separate test plane under Saved rehearsals.

Choose what the receptionist may do

The policy switches decide whether the receptionist may take a message, capture a callback number, answer hours, location or directions, offer an appointment request, or transfer to a human. It never quotes a price. Offering an appointment creates a draft request for a person to confirm; it does not claim a slot by itself. AI drafts and a human confirms.

A message is persisted rather than disappearing with the call. Open Call messages to read the note and transcript, or Callbacks for callers who asked to be called back. The message joins the shop's lead and work queue so a person can call, dismiss or continue the work. Capturing a callback number does not create texting consent.

A real call fails closed before listening

Before a media stream opens, the caller must hear that the assistant is AI and that the conversation is transcribed, then press 1. Without that keypress there is no stream, no transcript record and no agent tools. The fallback after a stream begins also has to remain usable without the application, which is why carrier-hosted recovery is part of activating a real route rather than an optional extra.

Torqix stores no audio. A completed call can retain the words spoken by both sides with timestamps, the outcome, caller details and any callback or message produced. The transcript is the retained business record for the life of the tenancy; there is no hidden audio column and no automatic transcript-expiry sweep.

Corrections are reviewed, not self-applied

An agent correction is a draft tied to the exact transcript that showed the problem. A manager reviews it, and a human confirms before it becomes active. A correction can improve the saved guidance but cannot widen the policy or grant the receptionist a new authority.