place-call

name

place-call

description

Place an outbound Vapi phone call to the user, their spouse, a named friend from the config, or an ad-hoc number. ALWAYS attaches a context-rich `reason` (what Claude is stuck on, why the user is needed) plus optional repo / idle-minutes / last-tag. Supports round-robin calling — Claude can dial through a list of friends in sequence until someone picks up. Use when the in-room escalation cascade has failed, when the user has explicitly asked to be phoned, or when Claude has a status update important enough to warrant a phone call. NEVER place a call without a real reason — a generic "they're not at their desk" call is worse than not calling.

Place a Claude-PA phone call

The dispatcher assistant in Vapi (vapi.assistant_id in config) only knows who it's calling and what about via the variables we pass at call time. Without a reason, it falls back to a generic line. Always assemble a real reason before firing the call.

Targets

• user — rings the user's own phone (direct escalation)
• spouse — rings their spouse to passive-aggressively pass on the message
• friend — rings a named entry from config.friends[]
• adhoc — one-shot call to a number not in config (use sparingly)

Inputs

• target: one of the above
• reason (REQUIRED): one or two plain-English sentences. Examples:
  • "Claude needs approval to push a PR to Claude-PA — has been waiting twelve minutes."
  • "Daniel's still wrestling with that Python bug and hasn't moved in a while."
• For friend: name (must match a friends[].name in config; case-insensitive)
• For adhoc: name AND phone (E.164, e.g. +972...)
• Optional for any target: repo, idle_minutes, last_tag.

Steps

1. Decide the target. If the user explicitly named one ("call my wife", "call Alex", "call me"), use that. Otherwise default to user — calling the spouse or a friend is more invasive.
2. For friend calls: read $CLAUDE_PA_HOME/config.json and confirm the named friend exists in .friends[]. If they don't, ask the user for the phone number first and either add via /claude-pa:add-friend or use target=adhoc for a one-shot call.
3. Assemble the reason from the live conversation context:
   • What is Claude blocked on right now? (approval, a question, an error)
   • How long has Claude been waiting? (rough minutes is fine)
   • Which repo / project? (basename of cwd is usually enough) Write it as a short, factual sentence — the assistant will paraphrase.
4. Confirm gates in $CLAUDE_PA_HOME/config.json:
   • vapi.assistant_id is set (otherwise tell the user to run /claude-pa:setup-vapi-assistant first).
   • The target's *.enabled is true (or friends_calls.enabled for friend/adhoc).
5. Fire the call. Run:

   $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/bin/pa-phone-call.sh <target> --confirm \
       --reason "<assembled reason>" \
       [--name "<friend or adhoc name>"] \
       [--phone "<E.164 number, adhoc only>"] \
       [--repo "<repo>"] [--idle-minutes <N>] [--last-tag "<tag>"]
   

6. Report. Show the user the Vapi call_id returned by the script.

Round-robin calling

When the user says "round-robin everyone" or "keep calling people until someone picks up", iterate through .friends[] (and optionally spouse + user) in order:

1. Place the call.
2. Wait ~60 seconds (use Bash with a sleep — but offer to skip the wait if the user wants to fire all at once).
3. Check $CLAUDE_PA_LOG_DIR/phone-calls.log and, if needed, the Vapi dashboard to see if the previous call connected.
4. If still no response, move to the next target.

The same reason string can be passed to every call, or you can tailor it ("you're being escalated to because nobody else picked up") on later calls.

Do NOT machine-gun every contact in parallel — that's a bad idea both socially and for the Vapi rate limit. One call at a time, with a beat in between.

Hard rules

• Never call without a --reason. The script will exit 15 if you try.
• Never invent project status. Only convey what's actually true.
• Never call the spouse or a friend without thinking — default to user unless the user has explicitly asked to escalate further.
• Never write VAPI_API_KEY into config or any repo file.