Excluding Contacts from the AI Bot #

Sometimes you don’t want the AI to reply on your behalf — a contact might be your business partner, a family member, or a VIP client who expects a personal touch. This page covers the two ways to keep the bot quiet for specific people while it keeps working normally for everyone else.

When to use this #

Common reasons to exclude a contact from the bot:

• Personal contacts mixed into a WhatsApp Web account. If you connected your everyday WhatsApp number, your friends and family are now in the system too — and you almost certainly don’t want the AI DMing them.
• Internal team members. Colleagues, partners, suppliers, your accountant — anyone you chat with as a human, not as a business.
• VIP contacts. High-value clients where every reply needs your personal attention.
• Anyone who’s explicitly asked to talk to a person. Flip the bot off for them and take over manually from the chat.

In every case below, incoming messages still arrive, get stored, and trigger notifications. The only thing that changes is the AI stays quiet. You can always reply yourself from Chats.

Method 1: Control the bot at pair time (WhatsApp Web only) #

When you pair a WhatsApp Web number for the first time (Settings → Channels, or the Connect flow), the pairing dialog asks for a phone number and then shows an Import existing contacts toggle. Turning it on reveals three more toggles underneath:

Turning on Make contacts private automatically switches Import chat history off and Keep AI paused for imported contacts on — private contacts never get their messages imported or the AI turned loose on them.

Leave “Keep AI paused for imported contacts” on when pairing a personal number — that’s the default, and it’s what keeps the bot from messaging your friends and family. New leads who message you afterwards on that number still get the bot normally; this toggle only affects contacts pulled in at pairing time.

Heads-up: These toggles only apply at the moment you pair the number and don’t change retroactively. A reconnect or re-pair of an already-connected number skips this step and always uses the defaults above — it never shows these toggles again. If the bot ends up replying to contacts you didn’t want it to, use Method 2 below to flip individuals off.

Method 2: Per-contact toggle (works for any contact, any time) #

Every contact has a Bot Active toggle, available any time, on any channel.

1. In the left sidebar, click Contacts.
2. Click the contact’s row to open the quick-view panel.
3. Find Bot Active under Settings in the panel.
4. Flip it off to silence the bot for that person. Flip it back on whenever you want the AI to handle them again.

This is the per-contact “human-only mode” switch — use it for one-off exceptions after the fact.

Bulk version #

To flip Bot Active for many contacts at once:

1. Open the Contacts page.
2. Tick the checkboxes for the contacts you want to change — or select a list first, then tick the header checkbox to select everyone in it.
3. In the floating action bar that appears at the bottom, click Bot off (or Bot on to turn it back on for the selection).

What “bot inactive” actually means #

Bot inactive does not mean the contact is muted, blocked, or hidden. When a contact has the bot turned off:

• Their incoming messages still arrive in your inbox.
• The messages are still stored in the chat history (unless the contact is also marked Private).
• You still get notifications (email, in-app, push — whatever you’ve set up).
• The contact still counts as a normal contact in your lists, tags, and reports.
• Their conversations are still included in Daily Summaries — and because nobody automated is handling them, the summary is more likely to suggest a manual follow-up task for them.

If you want a contact to stay out of everything — chat history, reports and Daily Summaries alike — mark them Private instead: a private contact’s messages are not stored at all from that moment on (messages stored before you set it stay). Marking a contact private also switches their bot off automatically. Use Private for personal contacts and team members; use Bot Active off for customers you want to handle yourself.

The only thing that changes: the AI doesn’t draft or send a reply on its own. Replying is now your job, from Chats — on your phone, however you normally work.

Quick decision guide #

If you’re not sure which to use, start with Method 1 when you pair a personal number, and reach for Method 2 whenever an exception pops up later.

Note on CSV imports: there’s no per-row column to mark imported contacts as bot-inactive when importing a spreadsheet. Import the list first, then use Method 2’s bulk version on the imported batch — see Importing Contacts from a File.

Using it as a test whitelist #

A common onboarding setup: you want the AI live on a real channel, but replying only to a handful of test numbers (you, your client, their helpers) while you validate the setup — silent for everyone else. There’s no single “whitelist” switch for this yet, but the Bot Active toggle gets you there:

1. On the Contacts page, select all existing contacts and use the bulk Bot off action, then flip Bot Active back on for just your testers.
2. New people who message you start with the bot on, so cover them with an automation: trigger New contact → action Turn AI on or off for a contact, set to off. See Automations.

One honest caveat on step 2: the automation and the AI’s reply race on a brand-new contact’s very first message, so occasionally that first message still gets an answer before the switch lands. From the second message on, the contact stays silent until you enable them.

Keyword Entry Points are not a way to do this: keywords only decide which agent picks up a new conversation. Once a contact is routed, the AI answers all their follow-up messages whether they contain the keyword or not — and keyword matching is deliberately forgiving (typos, the keyword inside a longer sentence), so it can’t act as a strict filter.

Next Steps #

• Adding a New Contact — a contact you add manually starts with the bot turned off; flip it on from the quick-view panel when you want the AI to reply to them.
• Organizing Lists & Contacts — build a list of contacts you plan to bulk-exclude.
• AI Agents — configure how the bot behaves for the contacts it does handle.