The Inbox

Sidebar: Daily → Inbox. Every conversation across every connected channel, live. New messages appear without a refresh.

The sidebar row carries a red count badge when conversations need a human. Above 99 the pill reads 99+, but the screen-reader label keeps the true number.

The layout

Three panes on desktop:

1. List (left) — search, filter chips, and every conversation newest-first.
2. Thread (middle) — the messages, the handling bar, the snooze bar, and the composer.
3. Context (right) — channel, opt-in, window state, tags, and a link to the full contact.

On a phone it is list-first, like a native messenger: tap a row and the thread covers the screen; the ← button returns you; the ⓘ button raises the context pane as a bottom sheet.

Before the first conversation arrives, the whole screen is a single "No conversations yet" state. If Instagram is not connected yet it points you to Settings to connect; if it already is, it simply confirms the connection and tells you incoming DMs will appear here in real time.

In the list, a coral dot marks conversations where the customer sent the last message, and rows you've taken over carry a small You pill.

Find a conversation

Filter chips

All, Needs reply, then one chip per channel — IG, WA, TT. Needs reply shows conversations where the customer sent the last message; it clears when a reply goes out (yours or the agent's), not when you open the thread. The chips scroll sideways on a phone rather than wrapping.

Search

Type in the box at the top of the list. It searches contact identity only — name, @handle, and the raw channel id shown on unnamed rows. There is no message-body search, and the placeholder says so.

Search works in two halves:

• The list filters instantly over the conversations already loaded.
• A server pass then tells you whether there are matches outside the most recent 200 conversations. When there are, a line at the bottom of the list says so and links to open in Contacts, which is a surface that can actually show them.

That disclosure exists so a search never silently returns fewer results than exist.

Read a thread

• Customer messages sit left, in grey.
• Your messages and the agent's sit right, in blue, tagged ◆ HyperDM AI or You.
• Under an agent message you may see grounded · <sources> or ⚠ unsourced — review. Read the unsourced ones — the agent could not trace that answer to your knowledge. See concepts.md.
• Seen appears under the most recent outbound message the recipient actually opened. It is stamped once, on the latest read message — the watermark covers everything before it. "Sent" means Instagram accepted it; "Seen" means the person opened it.
• On the Free plan, agent messages carry the "Powered by HyperDM" note, matching what is actually appended on the wire.

The header shows the contact's name, a lead-score chip if they have one (Hot / Warm / Cold with the number), and 24h window open or outside 24h window.

Reply by hand

1. Select the conversation.
2. Type in the Type a reply… box at the bottom.
3. Press Send.

Replying by hand takes the conversation over automatically — HyperDM stands down on that thread until you click Resume HyperDM now. Sending a product by hand does the same.

Your reply goes through the same compliance gate as everything else — the 24-hour window, consent and rate caps all apply to a human reply too.

TikTok threads cannot be replied to by hand. The reply box is replaced with a notice explaining why, rather than being left live and failing on send: a TikTok reply is addressed by a conversation id that arrives once on the inbound webhook and is never stored, so a hand-typed reply has nowhere to go.

Send a product

1. Click the ＋ button to the left of the reply box.
2. Pick a product from the list. If you have 12 or more, a search box appears at the top of the picker. The picker holds up to 100 active products (your hand-added ones first, then Shopify-synced alphabetically), and its search looks only within those.
3. The product card — image, price and buy link — is sent into the thread. Like a typed reply, this takes the conversation over.

If you have no active products the picker says so and links to Add one. If the thread can't receive a hand-sent message (TikTok), the button is disabled rather than failing.

Products come from Products; only Active ones appear here.

Take over a conversation

Taking over stands the AI down for that one thread so you can handle it yourself.

1. In the bar above the thread, choose how long from the dropdown: until I resume (the default), or for 30 minutes / 1 hour / 3 hours / 6 hours / 12 hours / 1 day.
2. Click Take over.

The bar then reads "You're handling this — HyperDM is paused", and for a timed takeover adds "Auto-resumes in N min / N hours / N days".

To hand back, click Resume HyperDM now. That clears both the forever flag and any timer.

The durations are the same vocabulary as everywhere else in the product — "3 hours" means the same thing here, in a flow's Pause automations step, in the Contacts drawer, and in Settings' pause-everything control.

Snooze a conversation

Snoozing is "bring this back in front of me later". It is a different axis from taking over, and it deliberately does not pause the AI.

1. In the row below the handling bar, choose for 1 hour or until tomorrow morning.
2. Click Snooze.

"Tomorrow morning" means 09:00 in your workspace's timezone — the start of a working day, not midnight. The timezone is the one set in Settings → Workspace, never your browser's.

To bring it back early, click Wake now.

Because the two axes are separate: snoozing does not silence the agent, and taking over does not cancel a reminder. The banner always says which of the two is currently true, so "snoozed" never quietly reads as "handled".

The context pane

At the bottom, Open full contact → takes you to the contact drawer in Contacts, where the custom fields, sequence subscriptions and pause controls live. The pane is deliberately a thin slice — the full profile is one click away rather than duplicated here.

Common questions

Why is a conversation not in the list? The list holds the 200 most recent conversations. Search tells you when there are matches beyond it and links you to Contacts.

Does replying by hand pause the agent? Yes — a hand-typed reply (or a hand-sent product) automatically takes the conversation over, and HyperDM stands down on that thread until you click Resume HyperDM now.

Why can't I send to someone? Their 24-hour window has closed. You cannot reach them until they message you again. See concepts.md.

Who can work the Inbox? Every role, including client. Replying as a human and pausing the AI are both available to client — that is the role a merchant pays to sit in the inbox all day.