The AI Receptionist lives in Settings → AI Assistant, in the "AI SMS receptionist (after-hours)" section (/app/settings/assistant). Read this whole article before you turn it on: unlike every other AI tool in SalesThumb, it does not wait for a person to review anything. When a customer texts your shop's number outside the hours you configure here, the AI reads the message and sends a reply by SMS right away — there is no draft, no approval step, no staff member in the loop. If the AI recognizes a specific service the customer named and has enough detail to price it, it can also create a real quote straight from your shop's own catalog and text it to that customer, again with no human review before it goes out. Two settings on this same page are your safety controls on that risk: a cooldown that limits how often the AI will auto-reply to the same customer, and a per-day cap on how many quotes it's allowed to create and send completely unattended. The feature is off by default, and both controls are yours to set before you turn it on.
Turning it on
Flip "Enable after-hours auto-reply" on, then set your actual after-hours schedule — a weekly grid, separate from your public booking-page hours, meant to reflect when a real person at your shop is reachable. Leave a day unchecked and it's treated as closed all day. If you leave the whole weekly schedule empty, the feature never treats any message as "after hours," so nothing fires even with the switch on — you have to set real hours for this to do anything.
Below the schedule are the two safety controls: "Minimum hours between auto-replies to the same customer" (1–72 hours, default 24) and "Max autonomous quotes per day" (0–20, default 5; set it to 0 to let the AI acknowledge after-hours texts but never create a quote on its own). Save applies all of it together. This is a Growth-plan-or-higher feature — on a Basic or Starter plan, saving shows a clear upgrade message instead of silently doing nothing, and the same plan check runs again every time a message actually comes in, in case you've since changed plans.
What happens when an after-hours text comes in
Every inbound SMS is checked in order: is the feature on for this shop, is the plan still Growth or above, and does the message fall inside the after-hours window you configured — daytime messages are left completely alone by this feature. A number that has opted out of texts, or is otherwise suppressed, is never auto-replied to. The cooldown you set is then checked per customer, so a customer who already got an auto-reply recently won't get another one until that window passes, no matter how many more texts they send. Your shop's normal messaging send limits apply too — if those are exhausted, no auto-reply goes out for that message at all.
If all of that clears, the AI reads the message alongside the business details, services, policies, pricing notes, and tone you've entered elsewhere on the AI Assistant page, plus your real catalog. It's only allowed to answer factual questions using that information — it doesn't invent prices, policies, or promises. It can also decide the customer clearly named a specific service and gave enough context to quote it. When it does, SalesThumb matches that service name against your actual active catalog (an exact match first, then a partial one) — if nothing matches confidently, no quote is created, full stop. The AI never sets the price itself; the number that goes to the customer always comes straight from that matched catalog row. A quote only gets created and texted if a confident match was found and your daily cap hasn't been hit yet for that shop. Either way — quote created or not — the AI's conversational reply is always sent, so the customer never gets silence.
Things to know
- Plan requirement: Growth plan or higher. A lower-tier shop can't turn this on, and the check runs again at message time in case a shop downgrades after enabling it.
- Off, and inert, by default: the switch defaults off, and even once it's on, an empty weekly schedule means nothing is ever treated as after-hours — you have to fill in real hours.
- Stub mode: if the environment doesn't have an AI key configured, every after-hours text gets the same generic canned reply (a "we're closed, someone will follow up tomorrow" message) and the AI never proposes a quote in that mode — it's a placeholder, not a real read of the customer's message.
- Cooldown is per customer, not global: it limits repeat auto-replies to the same phone number, not the total number of after-hours conversations the AI can handle in a night.
- The quote cap is a hard daily ceiling on quotes this feature creates and sends unattended, separate from anything else in the shop — set it to 0 to keep the auto-reply text but turn off autonomous quoting entirely.
- Prices are never invented. A quote created this way always uses your shop's own current catalog price for the matched service. If the AI can't confidently match what the customer described to an active catalog item, it doesn't create a quote — it just sends the text reply.
- Needs an owner account to act as when it creates and sends a quote — a technical requirement so the same account-level protections (like two-factor and account-freeze checks) apply to an autonomous quote exactly as they would if a staff member sent it. A shop with no owner membership on file will still get the acknowledgment text, just without the quote step.
- Opted-out and suppressed numbers are never texted by this feature, the same protection SalesThumb applies to all outbound messaging.
- This is a different tool from the draft-only "Auto-suggest replies" assistant elsewhere on the same settings page — that one only prepares a suggestion for a staff member to review and send from the Inbox. This one sends on its own.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Does a staff member review the AI's reply before it's sent to the customer?
A: No. This is the one AI tool in SalesThumb that acts without human review. Outside the hours you configure, it sends its reply immediately — and can create and send a real quote — before anyone on your staff sees the conversation.
Q: Can the AI actually create and send a real quote without me approving it?
A: Yes, within limits you set. If it recognizes a specific service the customer named and can match it to an active item in your own catalog, it creates a quote at your catalog price and texts it to them — up to the per-day cap you configure (0–20, default 5). If it can't find a confident match, or that day's cap is already used up, it just sends the acknowledgment text instead.
Q: What stops it from replying over and over in a late-night back-and-forth?
A: The cooldown you set, 1–72 hours (default 24). Once the AI auto-replies to a customer, it won't fire again for that same customer until the cooldown window has passed, however many more texts they send in the meantime.
Q: How do I make this safer, or turn it off?
A: Turn off "Enable after-hours auto-reply" to disable it entirely. Short of that, set "Max autonomous quotes per day" to 0 to keep the auto-reply text while stopping unattended quoting completely, shorten your after-hours schedule so fewer messages qualify, or raise the cooldown so it fires less often per customer.
Q: What plan do I need for this?
A: Growth plan or higher. On a lower plan, saving these settings shows an upgrade message instead of turning the feature on.
Q: What happens if the shop's AI key isn't configured (stub mode)?
A: Every after-hours text gets the same generic canned reply, and the AI never creates a quote in that mode. It's a placeholder response, not a real read of what the customer asked.