Pause the AI for a contact

Stop the AI from answering ONE person’s texts so your own system — your software, or your team working through the API — can handle the conversation, then turn the AI back on with resumeSMSContactAI when you are done. The pause is per person and covers their texts to any of your numbers that an agent answers. It silences the AI, not your team: a number that routes straight to your team keeps ringing your team, and the person’s texts to it reach your team as before (the event says handledBy: direct_dial). WHILE THE PAUSE IS ON:

• Every text the person sends is still received, recorded on its conversation and shown in Observe. The AI just does not reply.
• Each of those texts is delivered to your webhooks subscribed to sms.message.received (createWebhook), with aiPaused: true and handledBy: api — that is your system’s cue to answer.
• Answer with sendSMSMessage (POST /sms/messages) from the number they texted. A message to a person who texted you within the last 24 hours is a reply (kind: reply on the receipt), so it is not held to quiet hours unless your workspace uses the strict posture. Consent, opt-outs (STOP), the send cap and the first-contact disclosure apply exactly as they do to every send.
• The pause holds until you clear it. It never expires on its own. * If the AI is already composing a reply to the person when you pause, that reply is not sent: their text is recorded and delivered to your webhooks with handledBy: api, like every text during the pause. The races either way are a few milliseconds wide: a reply already being sent at the instant you pause still goes out, and a text that arrives at the instant you resume can still be delivered to you as paused. CHECK THE RESPONSE’S webhookSubscribed. It is true when the workspace has an active webhook subscribed to sms.message.received. When it is false, nothing will tell your system that the person texted — their texts are still recorded and shown in Observe, but no one answers them. Create a webhook for the event (createWebhook), or re-enable a disabled or auto-disabled one (updateWebhook with status: active), then rely on the pause. WHAT OUTRANKS THE PAUSE. A teammate who has taken the thread over keeps it: the person’s texts go to that teammate, not to your system (the event says handledBy: seat), and sendSMSMessage answers 409 conversation_busy (seat_owns_thread) for that person from any of your numbers, so your system never talks over a person. A conversation handed to an external agent through the Agent Bridge stays with that agent, and group texts are always handled by your team. The pause covers text messages only — calls from the number still reach your agent. MARKER. When the pause begins and the person has an open text conversation, an “AI paused” marker is added to it, so Observe shows when the AI was paused and by whom. Idempotent: pausing a contact that is already paused keeps the original pausedAt and pausedBy (who first paused it) and adds no second marker. A non-empty note replaces the stored note; an empty or omitted note keeps it. You may pause a number that has never texted you — the pause is in place for their first text.