Calls answered when you can’t.
A Callable is a phone line run by an AI agent.
- Callable
Fern and Post, front desk. How can I help?
- Caller
Ballpark me — what would a full wall of planters cost?
- Callable
Custom work is priced by the owners after a look at the space, so I can’t quote it. I can take your details for a visit this week, or a message for the owners. Which would you like?
- Caller
A visit works. Thursday afternoon?
- Callable
Thursday afternoon. I have your number from this call, and the owners will confirm the time by text. Anything else?
- Caller
No, that’s it. Thanks.
- Callable
Thank you. Goodbye.
It answers what you told it. The rest goes to a person.
You describe the desk in one paragraph. That paragraph is the whole rulebook.
“Answer for Fern & Post, a plant shop in Madison. Take repotting appointment requests Tuesday to Saturday, answer hours and price-range questions, take a message for anything else. Never quote a price for custom work.”
- Hours and price-range questions
- Repotting appointment requests, Tuesday to Saturday
- A message for anything else
- A price for custom work
- Anything the brief did not cover
Straight answers
A Callable is a phone line run by an AI agent. For a front desk, that means a brief you write in plain language — the hours, what it answers, and what goes to a person — tested before it publishes.
Yes. A one-person front desk uses the same brief as any other — hours, what it answers, what goes to a person. Sign up and start with $5 of free credit, no card required. See /cost for pricing.
No. When a call needs a person, it takes down the caller’s name, number, and what they wanted, then tells the caller plainly that someone will follow up — it doesn’t connect the call, forward it, or ring anyone else’s phone. That’s deliberate: a call transferred to an empty desk is worse than one taken down as a message.
Only the ones the brief covers. Whatever you write in — hours, price ranges, what’s in stock, how to book a repotting visit, like the example above — becomes what it can answer on a live call. Anything outside that brief, or anything it’s unsure about, gets a message taken down instead of a guess.
Yes. Edit the draft and publish it again. The line changes only when you approve a publish.
It keeps answering exactly the way it does during the day. Hours, price questions, and anything else the brief covers get handled the same at midnight as at noon; whatever falls outside the brief becomes a message waiting in the morning instead of a call that rang out unanswered.
About $0.062 a minute on the default stack, at the providers’ published rates, itemized by layer on every call: carrier, transcription, model, voice.
After you publish. The builder tests the draft against caller scenarios before the number goes live.
It’s software you describe, build, test, and publish as a line that answers. The dashboard keeps the calls, transcripts, and editable brief.
How fast it answers.
Measured on four real phone calls, July 2026.
First-reply timing was measured locally, not on the public phone network.
Four providers run each call.
The default stack. Any provider can be swapped.
Caller
Twilio
Carries the call
Soniox
Hears
OpenAI
Decides what to say
Cartesia
Speaks
Caller
For several locations, or an existing phone system to untangle: talk to us instead.
Built the same way, other industries.
A front desk is one example of Callable’s AI answering service — the same pattern also covers after hours, medical practices, and contractor calls.
The pattern stays: describe it, test it, publish it.
About $0.062 a minute on the default stack, at the providers’ published rates, itemized by layer on every call: carrier, transcription, model, voice.
Each receipt row includes its unit, source, and price-book version.
See the full cost breakdownAn AI receptionist for a small business.
Built for a one-person front desk.
You’re with a customer
The phone doesn’t wait for the sale to finish.
The line answers
Hours, prices, whatever the brief covers — nothing it wasn’t told.
Then it takes the message
Name, number, what they wanted, waiting when you’re free.
The same line covers after hours, too.