Sending rules

BlueBot sends from your own number, so it sends the way a careful person would. A handful of settings decide how: how far apart texts go, how many new people you text in a day, when the quiet hours are, how long a text may wait, and whether STOP works. Each one starts at a safe default, and each one is yours to change, under Settings → Sending rules in the dashboard or with PATCH/v1/settings.

A text that a rule holds back isn't refused. It's accepted and waits with a hold that says why, then goes by itself.

The settings

One more number isn't yours to change: platform_daily_limit, BlueBot's ceiling of 1,000 texts a day from one account. It's there to protect your number, and Limits says why.

Pace

pace_seconds is the time between two texts leaving the Mac. At the default of 20 seconds, a hundred texts take about 33 minutes. Each text waiting its turn has hold.reason: "pacing" with an estimated time in hold.until, and the estimate moves as texts ahead of it go.

People don't send texts a second apart. Texts that go out at a machine's rhythm are what Apple and the carriers look for, so the default is slower than you might expect. Anything under 10 seconds gets a warning.

Pace is one queue for the whole account. A text you send now goes after the texts already waiting, unless you schedule the others for later.

New people per day

new_people_per_day caps how many people you text for the first time each day, counted from midnight in your time_zone. A new person is someone with no text in BlueBot yet, in either direction. Five texts to the same new person count once.

When the day's count is reached, texts to more new people wait with daily_new_people_limit until midnight. Texts to people you already know keep going. Group chats never count.

Set it to 0 to text only people you already know. Over 200 gets a warning, because a personal number that reaches hundreds of strangers a day is the pattern that gets numbers flagged.

Quiet hours

While it's quiet hours in your time_zone, every text waits with quiet_hours and goes when they end. The default is 9:00 PM to 8:00 AM. Quiet hours covers windows that cross midnight, daylight saving time and turning them off.

Expiry

Every text has an expires_at. Unless you set one on the send, it's the time the text was due plus expiry_hours. A text still waiting at that moment becomes expired, message.expired fires, and it never goes. A Mac that's away for a weekend won't send Friday's "Your table is ready" on Monday.

Choose a short expires_at on texts that only make sense soon, and a long one for texts that can wait. expiry_hours sets the default for texts made after you change it; texts already waiting keep the expires_at they were given.

Stop words

With stop words on, a reply of only STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END or QUIT puts that person on your stop list, and BlueBot cancels every text still waiting for them. Stop words has the rules and the stop list API.

Pausing

Set paused_until to a time to stop all sending until then, and to null to resume. While paused, texts are accepted and wait with paused. The Mac's menu has Pause for an hour and Pause until tomorrow morning, and the dashboard can pause until you resume; a pause with no end reads back as a date far in the future.

Read the settings

curl "https://usebluebot.com/api/v1/settings" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BLUEBOT_API_KEY"

{
  "object": "settings",
  "business_name": "Dana's Salon",
  "time_zone": "America/Chicago",
  "pace_seconds": 20,
  "new_people_per_day": 50,
  "quiet_hours": {
    "enabled": true,
    "start": "21:00",
    "end": "08:00"
  },
  "smart_quiet_hours": false,
  "stop_words": {
    "enabled": true,
    "words": [
      "stop",
      "stopall",
      "unsubscribe",
      "cancel",
      "end",
      "quit"
    ],
    "start_words": [
      "start",
      "unstop",
      "yes"
    ]
  },
  "expiry_hours": 24,
  "inbound_mode": "replies",
  "paused_until": null,
  "platform_daily_limit": 1000,
  "warnings": []
}

Reading needs a key with the account:read scope.

Change them

Send only the settings you're changing. Everything you leave out stays as it is. Changing needs the messages:send scope, since these settings decide what goes out.

Dana runs a small salon in Austin. She names her business, moves her account to Central time, slows the pace to 30 seconds, and starts quiet hours an hour earlier:

curl -X PATCH "https://usebluebot.com/api/v1/settings" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BLUEBOT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "business_name": "Dana'\''s Salon",
    "time_zone": "America/Chicago",
    "pace_seconds": 30,
    "quiet_hours": {
      "start": "20:00"
    }
  }'

The answer is the whole settings object as it now stands. A change takes effect at once: BlueBot works out every waiting text's hold again in the same step, so a text waiting on daily_new_people_limit after you raise the limit is ready on the Mac's next check-in, about 10 seconds later.

Warnings

Loosening a rule is allowed, and BlueBot says what it costs. warnings holds a sentence for each setting past the safe line:

The same warnings show in the dashboard beside each setting.

What the rules can't do

The rules lower the chance that Apple or a carrier flags your number. They can't remove it, and Apple doesn't publish what it looks for. The rules also don't decide whether you may text someone. That's up to the law where they live and BlueBot's acceptable use policy, which Capabilities sums up. Text people who know you and expect to hear from you, and keep the defaults unless you have a reason.