Building a receptionist
Templates, voices, the prompt and workflow brains (and where each runs), knowledge, tools, hours and bookings, guardrails, rehearsal and going live.
8 min readUpdated Oct 17, 2026Applies to Reception AI 1.0.0
On this page
A receptionist (an "agent" in the code) is one AI persona with its own voice, instructions, knowledge, tools, opening hours and phone number. A workspace can have as many as its plan allows.
Creating one
Open New receptionist in the workspace. There are three ways to start:
| Option | What happens |
|---|---|
| Pick a starting point | Choose one of 18 business templates. The receptionist is created ready to use. |
| Tell us about you | Describe your business in a short chat and the AI builder drafts a receptionist for you to review (needs XAI_API_KEY). Created as a draft. |
| Skip | A blank receptionist. |
The 18 templates
Clinic appointments, Restaurant reservations, Salon & spa, Customer support, Inbound sales, Product walkthrough, Invoice collections, Real estate showings, Home services, Hotel concierge, Candidate screening, After-hours answering, Veterinary practice, Dental practice, Gym & studio, Tuition centre, Auto service, Legal & accounting.
A template sets the voice, language, job, greeting, instructions, tools and some sample knowledge.
Important
Review two things on every new receptionist:
- Boundaries (guardrails). New receptionists get a generic default ("No financial advice. No medical diagnosis. No legal counsel.") rather than template-specific rules. Pick the presets that fit your business.
- Opening hours. Templates do not set hours, and no booking slots exist until you save a timezone and hours.
The receptionist editor
Each receptionist has seven sections, plus a Talk panel on the right for testing as you edit:
| Section | What you set there |
|---|---|
| Personality | Tagline, voice (with a Hear preview), language, job, chat model, instructions (with Rewrite), greeting, boundaries, response variety and tools |
| Phone setup | Prompt or workflow brain, direction, transfer number, outbound caller ID and calling defaults |
| Call flow | The visual workflow builder |
| Knowledge | Documents, web pages and notes |
| Hours | The generated booking slots and who booked them |
| Apps | Connectors attached to this receptionist |
| Share | The widget link, embed code and appearance, plus a quick simulation |
The header has Practice (rehearsal), Try it live (opens the public chat page) and Publish.
Jobs
The job tells the receptionist what success looks like and decides which rehearsal scenes run: Book, Sell, Present, Support or Collect.
Voices and languages
There are 25 voices: 15 Reception AI voices (Eve, Carina, Luna, Ara, Aurora, Celeste, Iris, Liora, Ursa, Helix, Leo, Rex, Orion, Atlas, Sal) and 10 OpenAI voices (Marin, Coral, Sage, Shimmer, Alloy, Cedar, Ash, Echo, Ballad, Verse).
- On live phone calls only the 10 OpenAI voices exist. Each Reception AI voice is mapped to its nearest OpenAI voice, so some sound alike on a call. For a predictable call voice, pick one of the OpenAI voices.
- In the widget, voice previews and the turn-based phone path, Reception AI voices are synthesised by xAI and OpenAI voices by OpenAI's
gpt-4o-mini-tts. - Hear previews need
XAI_API_KEY.
There are 10 languages: English, Spanish, French, Hindi, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Arabic. On live calls the receptionist is told to answer in the caller's language. Speech recognition on the turn-based Twilio path is English (US) only.
Prompt or workflow
Under Phone setup, How it thinks offers two brains:
- Prompt. One set of instructions; the model handles the conversation freely. Best for open conversation, and what every new receptionist starts with.
- Workflow. A visual graph built in Call flow. The conversation walks the steps you connect. Opening the Call flow tab switches the receptionist to the workflow brain.
The workflow builder
The palette has Start, Conversation, Action (run a tool), Condition (branch), Transfer, Text and Hang up. Branches are chosen by keyword first ("says", "contains", "equals", "else"); if no keyword matches, an xAI model picks the branch.
Note
In 1.0.0 the Transfer and Text (SMS) nodes do not perform a transfer or send a message. Use a Conversation or Action step to take a message instead.
Where each brain runs
| Channel | Prompt | Workflow | Knowledge documents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workspace chat (Talk panel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Website widget | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Turn-based phone path (Twilio outbound, Twilio inbound without APP_URL) |
Yes | Yes | Yes |
Live phone calls (Twilio or Plivo inbound with APP_URL, SIP) |
Yes | No | Only via search_catalog |
| Practice (rehearsal) | Yes | No | Yes |
A live call uses OpenAI's speech-to-speech Realtime model. It receives:
- your instructions, plus built-in phone rules (short turns, read numbers digit by digit, read back the confirmation code, never invent a price or a time);
- your boundaries;
- the next open booking slots;
- the receptionist's enabled tools.
It does not receive uploaded knowledge, the workflow graph or connectors.
Tip
Turn on the search_catalog tool for any receptionist that answers live calls. It lets the call look up your knowledge (the four best matches, about 600 characters each) when a caller asks something your instructions do not cover. Also put the essentials (prices, address, policies) directly in the instructions, which every channel sees.
Knowledge
Add knowledge under Knowledge on the receptionist, or in the workspace library.
| Source | Details |
|---|---|
| Files | .txt, .md, .csv, .tsv, .json, .html, .xml, .log, .pdf, .docx. Up to 12 MB for PDF and Word files, 1.5 MB for text. Spreadsheets (.xlsx) are not supported; export to CSV. |
| Web page | Imports one page from a URL (no crawling, no JavaScript rendering). Private and local addresses are refused. |
| Note | A title and some text. |
Each document is stored up to 80,000 characters and split into chunks of about 900 characters. When someone asks a question, Postgres full-text search finds the eight best chunks and adds them to the model's context. A document added from the library without choosing a receptionist is linked to all of them.
Tools
Tools are switched on per receptionist under Personality.
| Tool | What it does | On live calls |
|---|---|---|
list_slots |
Offers up to 8 open appointment times | Yes |
book_appointment |
Books a slot (one per conversation) and returns a confirmation code | Yes |
capture_lead |
Saves a lead and fires lead.created |
Yes |
create_ticket |
Opens a follow-up ticket for your team | Yes |
transfer_human |
Records a handoff to your transfer number (see below) | Yes |
search_catalog |
Searches your knowledge | Yes |
lookup_order |
Looks up an order in a connected Shopify or Stripe | No |
send_sms |
Sends a text from a Twilio number | No |
use_connector |
Uses an attached connector (Gmail, HubSpot, Slack…) | No (chat and turn-based only) |
api_request |
Calls a public URL (GET or POST, 8-second timeout, reply trimmed to 1,500 characters) | Yes |
web_search, x_search |
Asks an xAI model with a "search" instruction; this is not a live search API | No |
Hours and bookings
Set opening hours per receptionist under Settings → Hours, together with the workspace timezone (required). Defaults are 30-minute appointments over a 14-day horizon; appointment length can be 5 to 480 minutes and the horizon 1 to 120 days.
- Slots are generated in your timezone, only where a whole appointment fits before closing.
- Saving hours or the timezone rebuilds the open slots and keeps existing bookings.
- The Hours tab on a receptionist shows open and booked times; Generate week rebuilds the open slots for the whole horizon, not just one week.
- A booking gets a six-character confirmation code and fires
appointment.bookedto your webhooks.
Tip
Open slots are created when you save hours; there is no rolling job that extends them. Re-save your hours (or press Generate week on the Hours tab) every week or two to keep the diary open as far ahead as you want.
Bookings live in Reception AI's own diary. They are not written to Google Calendar automatically.
Handoff to a person
When a caller asks for a person, the transfer_human tool records a handoff with a short brief on the conversation (filter Conversations by handed-off conversations to find them), and your team calls back. Set a Transfer number under Phone setup so the handoff records where it should go; with none set, the receptionist is told to take a message instead.
Warning
Reception AI 1.0.0 does not bridge a live call to another phone. "Transfer" means a recorded follow-up, not a connected call. Because the tool reports the handoff as done, add a line to the instructions such as "When someone asks for a person, take their name and number and say the team will call them back", so the receptionist does not tell callers they are being put through. If callers must reach a human immediately, give your direct number in the greeting.
Boundaries (guardrails)
Your boundaries is a list of things the receptionist must refuse, offering a person instead. Nine presets cover common cases (no medical, legal or financial advice, no prices for unseen work, no discounts, no card details, no promised outcomes, no reading back personal details, escalate emergencies, no offer or salary decisions), and you can add your own lines.
Boundaries are instructions to the model, included on every channel including live calls. They are not a separate content filter, so test the cases that matter to you.
Practice and testing
- Talk panel. Chat with the receptionist as you edit it.
- Practice. Runs scripted callers for the receptionist's job (four for Book, three for Support, two for Sell and Present) and checks which tools were used and whether replies contain required or forbidden phrases. Nothing is saved to your inbox. It uses the prompt brain and needs
XAI_API_KEY. - Share → Run simulation. Three quick scenarios: refund request, new booking and an angry caller.
- Ring in (Phone setup) simulates an inbound call. It never rings a real phone.
Going live
The workspace home shows a setup checklist:
- Meet your first receptionist
- Tell it what it needs to know
- Set your opening hours
- Connect a phone number
- Hear it for yourself
- Take it live
Optional steps: import your contact list, connect your other tools, and plan your first outreach. Then press Publish, connect a real number (Phone numbers and carriers) and embed the website widget.
Phone setup options that are not active yet
Some fields on Phone setup are saved but not applied to calls in version 1.0.0:
- After hours and the after-hours message (calls are answered the same way at any hour)
- Record the call
- Detect answering machines and "If a machine answers"
- Speak first
- Maximum call duration (calls end at the built-in caps: 15 minutes on the relay, 10 on SIP)
- The per-channel toggles
The caller ID override is applied, and the calling window and maximum attempts are copied into new campaigns. See Known limitations for the full list.