The SMS Agent is Joby AI working on your text channel. It auto-replies to customers within seconds, answers simple questions, collects missing details, and books appointments without anyone on your team lifting a finger. This walkthrough takes you through every setting on the SMS Agent page.
1. Open Joby AI Hub
You'll find Joby AI Hub under Settings. This is the central place for AI chat, conversation replies, the voice agent, and the agent's knowledge base. All channel agents — SMS, email, voice — live here under their own tabs.
2. Open Prompt Setup
Prompt Setup is where you tell the agent who it is, what it should do, and what it should know. Each channel (SMS, email, voice) has its own prompt, so the SMS agent can sound different from the voice agent if you want.
3. Set the agent's personality
The Personality field shapes how the agent writes. For SMS, keep it short, friendly, and human — texts that sound like a robot get ignored. Example: "Short, friendly, and helpful. Sound like a real office team member, not a robot."
4. Set the agent's goal
The Goal is what you want the agent to accomplish in every conversation. Most home-service businesses want: "Reply to customers quickly, answer simple questions, collect missing details, and move the conversation toward booking or follow-up." Write it in plain English.
5. Add the agent's knowledge in Additional Information
This is the agent's operating manual. Put your appointment rules, service area, pricing rules, warranty terms, and anything else the agent needs to answer correctly. Useful patterns: "Never create past appointments. If a customer asks for Friday, use the next upcoming Friday. If you don't know an answer, ask one short follow-up instead of inventing."
6. Choose who Joby can reply to
Check the contact types this agent is allowed to talk to: Clients (known CRM customers), Jobs (people tied to an open job), Technicians (your team), and Unknown numbers (cold inbound). Most businesses start with just Clients and Jobs, then add Unknown numbers once they've tested the agent.
7. Set the timing rules
Timing controls how often and how fast the agent replies. Reply window: when the agent is allowed to respond (Always, business hours only, etc.). Sleep after human reply: how long to back off after a teammate jumps in. Max AI replies: a safety cap per conversation. Wait before reply: a 0–60 second delay so replies feel natural and your team has a chance to take over first.
8. Pick the agent's allowed actions
Choose what the agent can actually do, not just talk about. Options include Read customer details (look up CRM info), Read appointments (when asked), Book appointments, Send bell notifications (alert your team inside Joby), and Send SMS (let it message the team or customer). Use the Action instructions box to spell out rules like "If a customer confirms an appointment, send a bell notification to dispatch."
9. Turn on Use SMS Agent
Toggle Use SMS Agent on and the agent starts replying to incoming texts. You can flip this off at any time without losing your configuration — useful if you want to pause AI replies overnight or during a busy stretch.
