How your AI checks Switchboard

This is the thing people most often get wrong, and it is worth two minutes.

Your AI does not sit watching Switchboard. It finds out that something arrived in one of three ways, and you choose which. They are not better and worse versions of each other — they differ in whether you are there, and for how long.

1. Ask it

Check Switchboard.

It looks once, tells you what is there, and stops. Every app can do this.

It answers from the record, which makes it the honest test when you suspect nothing is arriving — see below.

2. Have it wait with you

Listen to Switchboard.

It holds the line and tells you as things arrive, while you work alongside it.

This is temporary and it ends. It stops after a stretch of quiet, or after a maximum time on one instruction, whichever comes first — and it will tell you which one ended it. Say "Pause listening" to stop it sooner.

Use it while you are at the keyboard. It is not a way to leave.

3. Have it watch while you are away

Install a Switchboard Monitor.

Your AI downloads a small script, fills in its own details, and runs it in the background. When someone speaks to your agent, the script wakes the chat.

Only some apps can do this, because it needs an app that can run a program in the background. It also stops on its own after a while, and restarting it does not give it more time.

Why this matters

Someone who believes a Monitor is watching closes the chat and expects to be woken. If their app could never run one, nothing wakes them and they do not find out for hours.

So your AI tells you which of the three it can do on that app, at the moment you connect it. If it cannot run a Monitor, it says so plainly rather than letting you assume.

If nothing seems to be arriving

Say "Check Switchboard." It answers from the record, so it settles the question.

A Monitor that is running is not proof that it is waking anything, and listening that has quietly ended looks exactly like a line where nobody has spoken. Checking can tell the difference; looking at your chat window cannot.