How does InsertLead hand off hot leads to a human?

The three triggers

1. Explicit ask from the lead.

The strongest signal. If the lead says any of "call me," "can a person text me," "what's your number," "I want to talk to someone real," "give me a callback," the AI hands off without trying to qualify further. The lead has decided they want a human; arguing with them is bad UX and bad for the conversation.

2. Two of four qualification fields filled in.

As the AI talks to the lead, it extracts four fields: motivation (why selling), condition (property state), timeline (when), and price (asking or open-to). If two of those four are filled with confident values, that's a strong-enough signal that the lead is real and the conversation is productive. Better to hand off warm than to keep extracting until the lead loses interest.

Example: lead says "Yeah, I inherited it from my dad. The roof leaks but otherwise it's fine." Motivation = "inherited," condition = "roof leaks." Two fields, handoff.

3. Intent score crosses 70.

The score is the AI's running estimate of how warm the lead is. See the autoresponder page for how scoring works. 70+ means the lead is engaged enough that the AI's job is largely done.

Practically, a score of 70 usually shows up alongside one of the first two triggers anyway, so this is a backstop more than a primary trigger. It catches the case where a lead is enthusiastic but hasn't yet asked for a call OR filled fields — "Yes, definitely, what's the next step?"

The bridge text (and why it matters)

When handoff fires, the AI sends one final automated text before going quiet. The bridge text says something like:

Appreciate it, my partner will reach out within the hour. What's your best time?

Or:

Got it, real quick can I get a partner of mine to reach out today? Best time to call?

The phrasing varies (Claude generates it in your voice each time), but the function is constant: tell the lead a real human is picking up, ask for a callback time, and stop the AI thread cleanly.

Why the bridge matters: without it, a lead who just said "yes, I want to talk" would suddenly stop hearing back. From their side, it would feel like the AI ghosted them at the moment they engaged. The bridge text closes that gap and tees up your phone call with information you actually need (their best callback time).

What changes when handoff fires

Three database updates happen atomically:

1. lead.ai_state flips from ai_active to handoff. The autoresponder will not draft another reply on this lead until you (a) take over manually, or (b) explicitly resume AI on the conversation.
2. lead.status flips to "Hot." This is the CRM pipeline status. Your inbox sidebar's Hot count goes up by 1. Hot inbox tab gets the lead at the top.
3. The bridge text gets sent. Counted as an outbound message in the conversation log, marked AI-generated.

All three happen in a single database transaction so you never see "lead is in Hot but the AI also sent another reply" or "AI handed off but the bridge text didn't go." Either everything succeeds or nothing does.

What you see in the Hot inbox

Open the lead and you'll see, at the top of the conversation pane:

• The four qualification fields rendered as chips: Motivation, Condition, Timeline, Price. Each shows the value the AI extracted (or "not yet" if blank).
• The handoff reason (which trigger fired): "Explicit ask," "Two qualification fields filled (motivation + condition)," or "Score crossed 70."
• The full conversation thread with bubbles colored: gray for inbound from the lead, blue for outbound from your number, with a small "AI" tag on the AI-drafted ones so you know which messages were yours and which were Claude's.
• The bridge text at the bottom, marked AI, with a timestamp.

From there you call the lead, text them, or punt to the next day. The AI stays out unless you re-enable it.

Common handoff mistakes (and how we prevent them)

Premature handoff.

Handing off after a single "maybe" or "sure" without real qualification. We prevent this by requiring at least 2 of 4 fields OR an explicit ask — soft yeses don't trigger handoff alone.

Late handoff.

Letting the AI grind through 8 turns when the lead said "call me" on turn 2. The score-based trigger and the explicit-ask trigger both fire fast, so this case is rare.

Silent handoff.

Lead engages, AI flips state, but no bridge text goes — the lead hears nothing back and assumes the seller ghosted. Prevented by the atomic transaction described above.

Handoff after STOP.

Lead replies "actually never mind, stop texting me" on turn 5; the AI's old plan was to hand off. We resolve this by running DNC defenses BEFORE the handoff check, so any opt-out trigger short-circuits the whole flow and no handoff happens.