What's new in iSellCars.ai — every update, on one timeline

Leads → Import: upload a CSV from your old CRM, match the columns, review the counts, and choose how consent is recorded (a per-row column, or one signed attestation). Imported leads land quiet: nothing texts them and follow-ups stay off until a rep opens the thread or turns them on. Numbers on your Do Not Contact list are flagged, never consented.

Inventory → Import a CSV: your lot from any DMS export, matched on VIN (or stock number), never deleting and never un-selling a car you already marked sold. Afterwards it lists the cars on your lot that weren't in the file and asks whether to mark them sold; nothing changes until you click.

Car on the lot: pin a lead to the exact vehicle from the thread panel or the lead card. Leads that came in by email or from YouBuyCars pin themselves when the VIN or stock number matches, and Demand groups by the real car. Drop the price on a pinned car and Avatar leaves a draft for every pinned lead for a rep to approve; nothing is sent on its own.

Outcome owed: a visit whose time has passed with no outcome waits in an amber band at the top of Appointments and on the Queue, and about two hours after it the rep gets a "Did Marcus show?" nudge. Show rate only counts what you marked, so this is how the unmarked get marked.

Rebook: a no-show now moves the lead to a new Rebook role that acknowledges the miss without guilt and offers two concrete times inside your hours; a hard no goes to a person. Existing stores get the role and its routing automatically.

File as a stip: when a customer texts a photo and they have an approval with paperwork outstanding, a "File as" control on the picture files it onto the right stip, marked "via text" with the time. The notification for that photo says how many stips are still outstanding, so you know why it matters before you open it.

Teach Avatar: when you rewrite one of its drafts before sending, a one-tap strip offers to teach it your wording. It lands in Memory unconfirmed, for an admin to approve, like every other memory.

Reports → After hours: how many leads arrived while the store was closed, how many got a reply, and how many of those replies Avatar sent while you were still closed.

Settings → Team → Invite a teammate: type an email, pick Admin, Manager or Rep, and they get an emailed link that sets their password and drops them straight into your store. The link itself works for about an hour; the invite stays open for 7 days, and Resend sends a fresh link any time in that week. Revoke from the same list. Deactivate a teammate who leaves: their leads stay put, Avatar stops speaking in their voice, and they can no longer sign in.

An Owner picker on every thread panel and lead card. Admins and managers can move any lead; a rep can take an unassigned lead or hand off their own. The new owner gets a notification and the change is logged.

Avatar sees the visit already on the books. A reply of C (or a plain yes when we asked) confirms it instantly, with no AI call; "can we do 4 instead" moves it within your hours if the rep's slot is free; a cancellation goes to a person so you can try to save it. It never books a second visit while one is open.

Customer appointment reminders go out 24 hours before and 2 hours before, in your timezone, on the minute. The day-before text asks "Reply C to confirm". A reminder held back by quiet hours sends the moment they lift.

If a text fails at the carrier, the thread goes back to waiting for a reply instead of looking answered; a dead number flags the lead for a call; a carrier-side STOP is honored. The red ✕ on a bubble now says why it failed.

Click-to-call asks you to press 1 before it dials the customer, so your own voicemail can never pick up and ring them. The recording notice plays to the customer, not to you. The call's outcome and length are recorded, and "wants a call" only clears when you actually connect. Calls forwarded to your cell ask for the same press 1.

The follow-up engine now checks every lead's own clock every day and nudges the longest-waiting first, fairly across stores, instead of only the oldest hundred.

Each store texts only from its own number. A store without one sees "Add your texting number under Settings → Phone" instead of quietly borrowing another's.

The Inbox and long threads load in windows, so a busy store's list never goes blank. Scroll to the top of a thread for "Load earlier messages".

Missed-call text-back: a caller who reaches voicemail (or an unanswered line) is texted right away. Write the line yourself under Settings → AI → Identity → Missed calls, and leave "Vary the wording each time" on so Avatar rephrases it. It never sends during quiet hours or to anyone who opted out, and the spoken greeting tells the caller a text is coming.

Search the Inbox by name, phone (typed any way you like), vehicle, email or the last text — the box sits right under the view chips.

"Send later" texts now leave at the minute you picked instead of at the next daily run. Timed reminders were already on the minute; scheduled texts join them.

On a phone the return key now starts a new line instead of sending — Send is the button. If the connection drops mid-send, your text stays in the box with a note to try again instead of vanishing.

Ghosted means the customer went quiet: Avatar's own follow-ups no longer keep a silent lead looking alive, so the Ghosted board fills the way its description always said it would.

Long-tail follow-ups carry the opt-out line again every 30 days, so a nudge months later always says how to stop.

Reports count a sale once (by the day it was marked sold), keep unsent drafts out of texts-sent and reply-time, and say so when a long range is showing only the most recent rows. The dashboard's Upcoming appointments no longer goes blank for a busy store.

The hour-before appointment reminder reaches every admin when the appointment has no rep yet. A no-show who rebooks loses the red "Missed appt" chip. Adding a lead whose number you already have fills in the blanks on their card instead of dropping what you typed. The Leads search finds "(313) 555-1234" however you type it.

Every dealership now gets its own timezone from the moment it signs up, and the Timezone setting is a pick-list that shows the local time. Approvals expire at midnight in your timezone, not the server's.

Avatar's memory of a conversation now holds only what was actually said between you and the customer — your private notes and the app's own markers stay out of it.

Call straight from the Queue: the Waiting-for-call rows now carry the Call button, so you don't open the thread first. New support tickets reach us the moment they're filed. Friendlier "something went wrong" and "page not found" screens.

The new mark turns up everywhere the old "iS" did: the browser-tab icon, the installed-app icon on your phone's home screen, and above the sign-in screen.

If you've added iSellCars to your home screen, the icon refreshes on its own — no need to re-add it.

It's a rounded square on purpose: easy to spot in a row of tabs, and distinct from the YouBuyCars shopping site's round icon.

Nothing about how the app works changed — this one is purely the look.

New: Settings → Dealership has a Business mailing-address field. It fills the required footer on every email your store sends — worth setting once.

Your dealership's address and opening hours now save reliably on the AI Identity page, so the assistant answers "what time are you open?" with the real answer.

Add a cell number to any lead from the lead card — including email-only leads — and texting turns on for them (adding a number doesn't change texting consent, which stays its own switch).

The Fire Pit and the Queue now agree on a lead's temperature, wait times don't get reset by an unsent draft, and a filed-away lead can't be accidentally re-opened by booking an appointment.

The AI is a touch sharper about money talk — it won't wave through a made-up figure just because a similar-looking number came up earlier — and follow-ups respect a pause you set by hand.

Edit layout unlocks the grid: drag widgets by their title bar, pull a corner to resize, ✕ to hide. Done saves; Cancel puts everything back; Reset to default starts over.

The Fire Pit widget is the real board in miniature — the same live, always-cooling Hot Meter, so a lead reads the same temperature here as everywhere else.

The Inbox widget shows your latest conversations with their unread dots, one tap from the thread.

Team pulse (admins only) counts each rep's last seven days: messages sent, appointments set, new leads assigned.

On a phone the dashboard is a single column — reorder and hide from Edit mode; sizing stays a desktop concern.

Layouts are per person: your arrangement is yours, and a new widget we ship in the future joins at the bottom instead of hiding.

One thread holds the whole relationship: texts, calls, notes and now emails, interleaved in order. Email bubbles wear their subject line and a ✉️ marker.

Replies thread back automatically — no shared mailbox to check. A reply also revives a ghosted lead and resets the follow-up clock, exactly like a text would.

Emailed-in leads without a phone number are real board rows now, not just a notification. The AI greets them by email, and asks for their cell so texting can take over.

Every email carries your dealership's name and a working unsubscribe. UNSUBSCRIBE is honored instantly and separately from texting's STOP — each channel opts out on its own. The lead card gets a mute-email control for requests made in other words.

The AI only ever emails leads it can't text — your call. Textable leads keep getting texts.

Email drafts show up in the same review card as text drafts, labeled as email with their subject shown, and a failed send puts the draft back instead of losing it.

Find your address under Settings → Phone Numbers & Calls → Email leads. One address, works with every provider that sends ADF — which is nearly all of them.

The customer's own words from the inquiry appear right in the conversation thread, along with the vehicle, stock number and VIN when the provider sent them.

Speed-to-lead: the AI texts them back immediately (through the same compliance gate as everything else — quiet hours and opt-outs still rule). Every rep who asked for new-lead alerts gets one.

A lead that arrives without a usable phone number never silently vanishes — you get a notification carrying everything the email knew, so you can add them by hand.

Repeat inquiries from a number you already know update the existing conversation instead of making a duplicate lead.

Opening a thread from the AI band marks it looked-at, exactly like reading clears unread everywhere else.

Marking a lead Spam or Disconnected also clears its band entry — triage is triage.

Sandbox customers no longer appear in the In-follow-up count, report totals, the real calendar, appointment reminders, or morning briefings, and the follow-up engine no longer spends any attention on them.

A customer's texts collapse into one notification per conversation — a fresh text renews it: new words, back to unread, back to the top. The thread itself is the full history.

Voicemails land as their own notifications, transcript included.

Tapping a text or voicemail notification opens the conversation; everything else opens the lead. The unread dot goes out only when YOU read it.

Chips filter by kind — Texts, Escalations, Leads, Appointments, Reminders, System — and the list is grouped under Today / Yesterday / dates.

The Everyone tab (owner and admins only) shows the whole store's notifications, labeled by recipient — read-only: browsing it never clears a rep's unread.

Spam-marked leads never reach the inbox, the unread badge, or your phone — the mute holds here too.

Everything still stages as a draft — nothing touches the live routing until Save, and Discard puts it all back. Templates, the master switches, and the from-anywhere strip all work exactly as before.

The order rules are listed in the panel IS the order the engine tries them — the ▲▼ arrows finally make that order yours.

A switched-off rule draws nothing on the board (your call: the picture stays clean) — the Switched-off list in the side panel is where it waits, one tap from coming back.

The find box dims everything that doesn't match a role name or rule — type "cosigner" and see exactly where that route lives.

The firing pulse survives untouched: a strand lights up only when its rule genuinely fired, never as decoration.

Both statuses are yours to pick, right in the status dropdown — and picking one clears the lead out of the Queue's counts on the spot.

The Spam view is a real spam folder: those threads leave All, Active, Review and Dead, and exist only under the Spam chip. Nothing is deleted — mark them back and the thread walks right back in.

Spam and Disconnected never route, never follow up, never draft — the AI is off for them at the deepest level, before any writing happens — and any text still sitting scheduled for them is cancelled on the spot.

A text that arrives FROM a number marked Disconnected still counts as waiting work — a live text is the proof the line isn't dead. Spam texts never count, never light the unread badge, and never buzz your phone.

Un-marking turns the AI back on automatically. The per-lead Pause switch still exists when you want silence on purpose.

A dead lead's meter reads zero everywhere it appears, with the evidence kept underneath — put them back and the real temperature returns instantly.

The greeting resolves the way the call was routed: the number owner's own words first, then the store's, then the standard line.

The message is transcribed automatically — the voicemail bubble carries the words, the player, and the full call log in one place.

The lead is flagged for a call back, same as any missed call — leaving a voicemail doesn't quietly clear your obligation to return it.

One bubble per call: the voicemail replaces the bare "incoming call" marker instead of stacking a second entry in the thread.

The DNC list is admin-managed and store-wide. It never expires and it outranks everything except the law itself — STOP still stands on its own.

Every send path checks the list: hand-typed texts, scheduled sends, automation, broadcasts, and click-to-call.

Two-factor is each person's own choice, on their own Settings page — turn it on, scan, confirm one code, done. Turning it off is one click with your password still in hand.

Round-robin deals only leads that arrive unassigned, at the moment they arrive — it never reshuffles anyone's existing book.

Each rep can be taken in or out of the rotation individually on the Team page.

The band is listed, never counted — the Queue's numbers stay what they've always been: people waiting on a text, people waiting on a call.

Escalations don't land here. A reply the AI held for review is still a held draft with a loud banner, exactly as before.

Queue rows across every band now open the conversation itself rather than the lead's file card — the thread is where the answering happens.

The board once called Live is now Active, matching the Inbox chip for chip. Old links still land in the right place.

Opted out is a status the system sets and nobody can hand-pick — it's always the customer's own STOP, never a rep's guess. Filing a lead dead yourself still never touches their consent.

A sold customer who texts STOP later stays a sale in your reports — opting out of texts doesn't rewrite how the deal ended.

The Opted out chip shows up in the status filters on the All and Dead boards too, so pulling the whole list takes two clicks.

Body style is required on every new listing — SUV, Sedan, Truck, Coupe, Hatchback, Minivan, Van, Convertible, or Wagon — because it powers the marketplace's shopping filters.

The other seven specs are optional facts: fill in what you know, skip what you don't. Nothing is ever invented on your behalf.

Filling in specs on a listing that's already live never sends it back for review — facts don't knock a car off the board. Price, description, and the other substance still do.

Older listings posted before this update have no specs yet: open each one, pick the body style, save. Two clicks per car, and it joins the filters immediately.

The Language dropdown sits in the panel beside Voice and Role — fifteen languages, Spanish and Arabic up top, shown in their own script. English is simply the default; clearing the dropdown goes back to it.

Avatar is fluent: a marked lead's replies are written in their language directly, in the casual register a real person texts in — not machine-translated stiffness.

Every non-English bubble — the customer's texts AND Avatar's replies — shows its English underneath, translated once and stored, never recomputed.

Detection suggests, you decide: a clearly-foreign text raises the panel banner with one-tap Mark or Dismiss. Nothing ever flips a lead's language on its own.

The composer's ＋ menu gains Translate: your English becomes their language in the box, visible and editable before you hit Send — your original rides along as the bubble's English line. Nothing you didn't approve ever goes out.

Held drafts show "In English:" under the text, so reviewing a Spanish draft never means approving words you can't read.

Safety in every language: Avatar's replies return an English rendering of themselves and the guardrail screen checks both — a rule that can't be broken in English can't be broken in Spanish either.

Follow-up nudges speak the language too, and the Sandbox rehearses the whole thing — mark a fake customer Spanish and watch the entire flow before trusting it live.

Appointment reminders and the approval good-news text speak the language as well — dates written the way that language writes them — with the English line under the bubble like everything else.

The opt-out fine print stays in English on purpose: STOP is the carrier keyword every phone honors.

Every rule dialog gains an "Only when…" section — stack as many conditions as you like; all must hold or the route steps aside.

Five kinds of condition: Hot Meter band (computed live, never a stale reading), lead status, PreQual facts (down payment at least $N, credit in their words, employment, timeline, repo on record), assignment, and "this happened earlier" with an optional within-N-days window.

Unknown never passes: a customer who hasn't answered the credit question doesn't satisfy "credit is poor," and a lead with no meter has no temperature to be in any band. Silence isn't a yes or a no.

"This happened earlier" reads the engine's new memory — every event, situation, and status change is recorded per customer the moment it fires, whether or not routing acted on it.

Event rules go multi-pick: one rule can fire on "approval added OR approval expired," same idea as phrases.

Blocked is not silent: the canvas chips wear a "· when ×N" tail, the Journey panel spells each condition out in words, and the Sandbox says exactly why a route held back and what happened next.

A rule the engine can't read (broken conditions) shows itself as broken and never fires — it is never quietly unguarded.

Journey is the new default view; a Journey / Wires toggle sits above the canvas and your choice is remembered per browser.

Each ring is one hop of the journey, and each ring has its own shape — circle hub, boxes for the roles, then triangles, diamonds, hexagons, pentagons — so depth reads without counting.

Strand color and texture is the trigger's kind: green solid for events, red solid for status changes, blue dashed for situations Avatar notices, purple dotted for customer phrases.

From-anywhere rules draw only from the hub, wrapped in a soft halo — one strand each, not a wire from every box.

A role a customer could loop back to simply appears again further out — the journey unrolls, it never tangles.

Tap a node to focus its branch and read its rules in the side panel, breadcrumb and all; tap a trigger type in the legend to see only those strands; the depth buttons trim the view.

If a role can't be reached by any rule, the panel says so plainly — leads would only ever arrive there by hand.

The electricity is honest here too: a glow travels a strand only when that rule genuinely fired just now, never as decoration.

Every phone field formats itself as xxx-xxx-xxxx while you type — no more guessing formats. Names cap at sane lengths (First 20, Last 30, Suffix 5).

The Call button with more than one number on file arms into a picker: Main, Work, or the labeled contact (marked as a third party — Mom never consented to anything).

The panel header shows City, ST — from the address when there is one, else the area code's region, labeled honestly as such.

The PreQual sheet gains Needs / wants — the why behind the car, captured from conversation in the customer's own words, and fed back to Avatar for recommending a fitting alternative.

Repossessions are never asked about directly: Avatar walks the soft chain (financed before? paid off? still have it?) and when the answers add up, leaves a rep-only note saying "likely repossession — inferred" without touching the sheet or the meter. A human confirms; nothing negative ever enters the conversation.

The routing canvas grew a ✳ Any-role node: your from-anywhere rules are now drawn wires like every other rule, spark included, and you can add one straight from the node.

The trigger is per person, not per conversation — one notice at the start of the relationship, the carrier-clean way.

The finance moment re-carries it: any text with the credit-app link wears the footer even mid-conversation.

The dealership name comes from your Identity settings — keep it current there and the footer follows.

Call bubbles: place or receive a call and the thread's bubble now shows the recording player, the AI's summary once grading finishes, and a Full log link to the complete transcript. Past calls were re-linked in the same pass — direction-aware, so an incoming call's bubble can never wear an outbound voicemail.

Recordings play in one tap now: the audio streams through the app itself instead of Twilio's own servers, which had been demanding an account login just to listen.

Off means off: the per-lead "Turn off AI" now stops the AI from even composing — webhook, follow-ups, everywhere. Reps tighten, nothing loosens.

Avatar's patience: a burst of back-to-back customer texts gets a single reply written with the whole burst in view — about six seconds of "reading" first, like a person.

The Fire Pit is for active customers: sold, lost, ghosted and dead leads no longer appear, however hot their old score.

Notifications channel: call requests, credit-app submissions and Fire Pit crossings now land as cards that stay after you've seen them. The VoIP tell shows on inbox rows too, and the panel's Pause/Routing controls grey out with a reason when the AI is off.

Showtime privileges, guide only: draft mode, AI-off and auto-pause all stand aside for the opener so every new account sees the real feel. Opt-outs and the demo spend ceiling still hold — those are law, not presentation.

Two story beats: the conversation stops, an arrow bounces toward the right panel ("the Hot Meter is climbing"), then toward the Queue after the missed call. Tap to dismiss; reduced-motion gets a still arrow.

The customer bar is an accordion: one slim "🧪 Play the customer" line, tap to slide open. A running show holds it open so Stop is always reachable.

Settings → Get the app: one-click install where the browser allows it, honest per-device steps everywhere else — and the browser's own install pop-up no longer interrupts any other screen.

Everything the beta earned ships with 1.0: the AI trio (Identity, voices, roles), the routing canvas, guardrails you control, the follow-up engine, PreQual that fills itself, credit apps with e-sign, appointments and briefings, call grading, the Sandbox, the installable app with push notifications, and YouBuyCars feeding leads in.

Nothing about your account changes — same login, same data, same everything. The number now simply tells the truth.

From here: update batches tick the patch number, bigger feature waves bump 1.1, 1.2, and onward.

Thank you for building this with us — every note, every correction, every "this looks weird on my phone" is in here somewhere.

The opening minute is the product's whole story: texting, scoring, and the promise that nothing falls through — shown, not explained.

The checklist knows who you are: admins get org setup (roles, identity), reps get the shorter personal list. The last item is always the ask.

Enabling phone banners checks itself off; so does watching the show. Hide-forever means forever — even upgrading a demo account to the real thing won't bring it back.

Panel housekeeping: the bot controls now read top-down in the order you reach for them — Pause AI, Turn off AI, Turn off Routing, Follow-ups, Draft mode.

Avatar is the product's name, not a setting — the old "name it texts under" box in Identity is now a plaque. Nothing can rename it: not a voice, not a store. One brand, every dealership.

New banners: 📞 when a customer asks for a call or a real person (the AI steps back and your phone lights up), 📄 the moment a credit application is finished, and 🔥 when a lead crosses the fire line — each with its own switch in Settings → Notifications.

The thread composer settled into its final shape: Text/Note tabs and the AI Draft button share the top line; the bottom line is just ＋, your message, and Send.

The sandbox's customer bar is two tidy lines: the customer's message on top; Show off, the event picker and Make-it-happen together beneath.

Tune each role's follow-ups on its edit page (Settings → AI → Roles): on/off, quiet days before a nudge, number of tries, and an optional line telling the role what its follow-ups are about. Stips opens at 2 days, everyone else at 3 — every number is yours.

The clock resets when the customer replies AND when you text them yourself — the bot never piles onto a conversation you're already working. And it never follows up while the customer is waiting on YOUR answer; that debt belongs to the Queue.

Follow-ups obey the master bot mode: auto sends them, draft mode leaves each one for your approval — never more than one waiting draft per conversation.

The thread's right panel has the per-lead switch, next to the other bot controls: "Follow-ups — next nudge Tuesday, from the Stips bot." Turn it off to leave one lead alone without touching anyone else. On is the default for everyone.

You now choose what buzzes: Settings → Notifications has per-category switches (new texts, escalations, new leads, AI timers, appointments, everything else). Everything still lands in the feed — the switches only decide what interrupts you.

The composer's AI Draft button moved above Send, giving the message box the full width of the row.

The thread panel's Voice picker now says which voice an automatic lead resolves to — "Automatic — currently Jessica" — so the fallback is never a mystery. It's a label, not a prompt: nothing to confirm, and picking a voice still pins it.

Turn banners on per device in Settings → Notifications on this device — your phone and your desk computer each get their own switch, and a Send-a-test button proves the wiring before you rely on it.

What buzzes: new customer texts (to the assigned rep, or every admin when unassigned), AI escalations, new leads, AI follow-up reminders, morning briefs and your own timed reminders. Tapping a banner lands on the exact conversation.

Install as an app: on Android Chrome, menu → "Add to home screen" / "Install app"; on desktop Chrome, the install icon in the address bar. Same CRM, its own window, its own icon.

The composer's ＋ bubble opens a small stack — Photos, Saved replies, Send later — and closes when you tap anywhere else. Enter still sends, Shift+Enter makes a new line.

The wait math follows the same law as the Queue itself: only a real text (or on-site chat reply) answers a text — a call or an internal note leaves the clock running. Pinned by a new 21-check test suite.

Business-hours waiting uses your dealership's own quiet-hours setting, so the number means what it says at 8 a.m.

Training (Help → Training): six lessons — the Queue, drafts and escalations, the Hot Meter, teaching the AI, the Sandbox, closing leads out — each one opens the actual screen it teaches.

Audit trail visibility is now top-down: admins and managers see the store's whole log; each rep sees their own actions — what you did is always yours to see.

Follow-up bot card on every lead page: see what's running and when the next text goes, stop it, or start a sequence — one tap when you have one sequence, a small picker when you have several. Restarting begins the sequence over from step one.

Escalation texts now read like a briefing: who, why the AI held the reply, what the customer said in their own words, and the lead's meter, stage and vehicle.

Filter any lead board by several statuses and several sources at once — the filters still live in the URL, so a filtered board is still a link you can bookmark or send.

Dead sign-off: an agent's "mark dead" becomes a request with the reason attached. It shows on the lead page, in a band on the Dead board, and in every admin's notification feed. Nothing changes for the lead until an admin approves — approve files it credited to the rep; decline keeps it working. Admins and managers still file instantly.

The monthly-payment filter uses the exact same math as the cards' payment estimates, so filtering by "$260/mo" shows precisely the cars whose cards say $260 or less. Saved-search alerts understand it too.

Compare picks live where the cars are: a ⇄ button under every card's heart, two picks max, and the tray at the bottom arms the Compare button.

For sellers: your listing links now unfurl with the car's photo when texted or posted, your other inventory cross-sells at the bottom of every listing you own, and buyers can subscribe to be emailed when you list similar cars.

The guides send readers at your cars the whole way through: the calculator, saved-search alerts, compare, and the board itself are woven into the advice.

Nothing in them goes stale on purpose — no fee amounts, no invented statistics, Michigan facts stated at the level that stays true.

✦ Ask AI (youbuycars.com/ask) is a preview page today; the real conversational search lands there when it's built.

Also fixed: the hamburger menu, which was silently confined inside the header bar by a browser quirk — the drawer now opens full-screen everywhere.

The header sticks to the top at every screen size. On phones it's icons only — heart, account, menu — with all the text destinations in a slide-out drawer; on desktop the text links sit beside the same icons.

Hearts float on every car photo, exactly the big-site pattern. The shortlist lives on the buyer's own device — private, no signup wall between a buyer and saving a car.

For sellers this means buyers can now shortlist your cars and come back to them — one more way a listing keeps working after the first visit.

Posting a car gains one required question — body style — and seven optional ones. Blank specs simply don't show; a fully-specced listing reads like the big sites. Adding specs to a live listing does NOT send it back to review.

Price history is written by the database itself the moment a price changes, from any path. Drops show as "↓ $500 price drop" chips; increases are recorded but never badged. Listings carry "Listed N days ago · No price changes."

Search titles are now keyword pages for Google: every filtered view of the board names itself — make, body style, price cap, and the metro.

Nothing on the site points at the YouBuyCars phone line anymore except the Contact page. Sellers with a published number get the consent-gated Text/Call box; sellers without one get on-site chat as the front door.

Contact (youbuycars.com/contact) is now where a conversation starts: the Text-START section in a calm sky-blue card with a phone mock of the real flow, a button that opens the text app with START pre-typed, plus call and email. Every carrier-registered sentence moved verbatim; the registered consent proof page is untouched.

The inquiry form ("ask this seller about a car") now appears only on dealer pages whose seller is a CRM dealership or on the Pro/Ultimate plan — it's part of what the paid tiers buy. Free sellers keep the on-site Message button.

Mobile was measured, not eyeballed: the header was 84 pixels of wrapped links; it's now one 56-pixel row at every screen size, and the homepage search stacks full-width on phones. Every page was swept at phone width — zero sideways scroll anywhere.

Compare cars (youbuycars.com/compare, also in the top nav): pick two cars off the board and see price, estimated payment, miles, trim, seller and rating side by side in one clean table. Every comparison is a shareable link.

The homepage remembers: run a search, come back later, and a "Pick up where you left off" chip offers that exact search back. Stored on the visitor's own device, no account involved.

For Dealers (youbuycars.com/dealers): the page that sells what you already have — the free dealer page, inquiries that land in a CRM within the minute, and the Pro listing plan included free with iSellCars.ai. Send a dealer friend there.

The footer went premium: dark, organized into groups, with a Text-us button — and a new Site index page linking every listing, every seller, and every page from one place, which is exactly what search engines reward.

Sell your car got the big-site treatment too: a dark hero, one clear card with the two ways in, and numbered steps.

The browse page grew up: a filter rail (make, keyword, year range, price, mileage, financing) with removable filter chips, a result count, and sorting. Every filtered view is a shareable link.

Save-this-search: a buyer leaves an email and gets one daily letter when NEW matching cars go live — matched from the moment a listing is approved, with a one-click unsubscribe in every letter. The financing filter respects your seller-wide financing switch.

Listing pages: tapping a photo opens a full-screen gallery (counter, thumbnails, arrow keys). Scroll down and a slim bar keeps the car's name, price and the Text button in reach. Long descriptions show a "Show full description" reveal instead of burying the page — dealer pages give your about text the same treatment.

Your add-a-car form is now a wizard: sections with status pills (green ✓ Completed, red ⚠ Errors), the exact failing field flagged in red under the box, and the page scrolls you back to the first problem instead of failing silently.

One design system across the whole site: a single pill shape for every button, calmer hovers, a cleaner section rhythm, and a new typeface.

Marketplace letters — inquiry emails to non-CRM sellers and the new alert letters — now wear the YouBuyCars wordmark instead of the CRM's.

Every listing and dealer page has a "Message on-site" button. A buyer enters their email, clicks the sign-in link, and they're in the conversation — the lightest real account there is, and enough to keep drive-by spam out of your inbox.

Chats with your dealership mirror into the CRM within the minute: a lead (source "youbuycars_chat"), their messages as customer texts in the thread, and the new YouBuyCars view under Inbox collecting them all. Waiting buyers count in the Queue's blue number exactly like waiting texters.

Reply from the thread like any conversation — your words go to the site's chat, never to a phone. The thread labels every bubble "On-site chat" so nobody ever guesses wrong about where a reply lands, and the AI deliberately stays out of chat conversations.

Marketplace sellers without a CRM get the same chats in a Messages page on their dashboard.

Solo dealerships get a usage banner only when it matters — amber from 400 texts ("heads up, you're getting close"), red past 500 ("keep selling; the overage settles later"). Under 400, nothing: an always-on banner is wallpaper by Friday.

The count is honest: real customer texts only — sandbox practice and unsent drafts never count against the month.

Marketplace groundwork: when a buyer inquires on a non-CRM seller's dealer page, that seller gets an email with the inquiry and the opt-in status — armed the moment the email service is connected. Seller emails are locked to the delivery system alone; no public page or API can read them.

The form lives on your dealer page ("Ask [your name] about a car"): name, cell, what they're after, and a never-pre-checked consent checkbox naming YOU, not the platform. Submissions land on your marketplace dashboard's new Inquiries page — and if you're a CRM dealership, they arrive in your CRM as a lead with source "youbuycars", their words as the opening message (so they light up the Queue), and "OK to text" or "call first" stated plainly.

The consent checkbox on their form is real written consent, recorded as its own source on the lead — the compliance gate treats it exactly like your web form's.

On listing pages, contacting a seller directly now takes one tick: "I agree the seller may text or call me back about this car" unlocks both buttons. A stronger consent record for your own texting campaigns; the platform-line fallback keeps its registered one-tap flow.

The AI deliberately does NOT auto-reply to form leads — the first move is yours, same as any web form. Turn the conversation over to it whenever you're ready.

Anyone can submit a review of a seller — name, the number they made contact from, stars, and their words — but nothing shows until it's approved at Owner → YouBuyCars → Ratings, where the reviewer's number is displayed so you can check they actually dealt with that seller. No drive-by ratings, and the site says so.

Approved ratings appear everywhere the seller does: a ★ average on their dealer page, and beside their name on every listing card.

Financing now has a master switch on the seller profile (marketplace and CRM → YouBuyCars → Profile): off means every listing drops its monthly estimate and calculator, whatever each listing's own checkbox says. The per-listing box stays for the fine-grained case.

The homepage gained shop-by-style tiles (SUVs, Trucks, Sedans, Under $15k) and the trust strip — reviewed listings, text-first, local — the furniture that makes a marketplace read established.

The homepage leads with a search bar and the six newest cars on the board — shoppers see inventory before anything else, the way the big sites do it. All the carrier-registered consent language is unchanged, word for word.

Every listing card carries a green monthly estimate next to the price, computed with real loan math from stated assumptions — and every listing page has the full calculator, where the shopper picks their own down payment, term, and credit range. Its only button texts you.

Analytics count real shoppers, not search-engine crawlers: views (once per visitor session), taps on your Call and Text buttons, and calculator runs. Your marketplace dashboard shows each listing's numbers with a ▲ this-week delta; the CRM's YouBuyCars channel shows the week's total views and contact taps.

Financing is per-listing and yours to switch: an "Offer financing on this car" checkbox on the listing form (on by default). Untick it for a cash-only sale and that listing shows no monthly estimate and no calculator — a car you won't finance never wears a payment.

Still ahead in Phase 2, in order: dealership ratings (with your approval desk), buyer-to-seller messaging, and video.

When a customer commits to a time that isn't a visit — "I'll call you in an hour," "call me tomorrow at 3," "check back next week" — the AI sets a reminder for that moment. It goes to the assigned rep (or every admin if nobody's assigned), lands in the Notifications feed, and texts your cell on schedule.

If the commitment is about a phone call in either direction, the lead is also flagged needs-a-call — the Queue's amber side — and placing the call clears it, as always. The bot keeps working the conversation meanwhile; this isn't a handoff.

Every reminder is on the thread's record: "⏰ Reminder set by AI for 3:15 PM — they said they'll call." The AI can't set one in the past or more than 30 days out, and a reply held by the guardrails never sets one.

You're in control: a new "AI-set reminders" toggle in Settings → Reminders turns the texts off per person; the in-app copy still lands. The sandbox shows what WOULD be set without ever setting real ones.

Show Off mode: the typing dots now never appear while the fake customer is composing (that's not the AI typing), and the exchange breathes — a beat to read, a beat to pick up the phone, then the dots run while the reply is genuinely being written.

The buttons appear on any listing whose seller has a public phone on their marketplace profile (YouBuyCars → Profile in your CRM). No phone set? The listing keeps the YouBuyCars line as before — nothing breaks.

The pre-written text names the car and carries the listing link, so when it lands in your CRM the AI knows exactly which vehicle they mean — and with vehicle sharing on, it can send photos or the listing right back.

Buyer-initiated contact carries its own consent — a buyer who texts you first is opted in the moment they do, which is exactly how the CRM already records it.

Listing descriptions grew to 5,500 characters — deliberately a little more than Facebook Marketplace's 5,000, so a description you wrote there pastes here whole with room to spare.

One briefing per appointment (not a digest), built from the CRM's real facts — nothing AI-generated, so it's instant, free, and never wrong in a new way. Lines the CRM doesn't know simply don't appear.

The hour-before reminder graduated from a bare "Appointment at 3:00" to a one-line brief: time, name, car, money down, credit, approval. It also now shows the time in YOUR timezone — it was quietly using the server's clock before.

Unassigned appointments brief every admin, so somebody always owns the morning — and it's a nudge to assign.

Every member opts in or out independently: the briefings have their own "Morning briefings" toggle in reminder settings, separate from the hour-before pings — so an admin can quiet the mornings without losing their own appointment nudges. The feed copy always lands either way.

Readiness is the trigger, not the role: a "cash buyer" who mentions money down, or a returning customer asking about monthly payments, gets the offer — the AI reads the situation, and can keep prequalifying first if it needs more context.

The dial lives in Settings → AI Assistant → "Offer the credit application": off until you enable it, plus a nudge score (default 65) — at or above it, the AI is encouraged to offer even without an obvious opening.

It offers once, as a helpful next step, never as pressure. A customer who already has their link only gets it re-sent if they ask; one who submitted is never asked again; and the lead panel's Credit section has a "No credit app" button that shuts it off for that customer entirely.

The link is the same secure application your "Start a credit app" button makes — the AI re-uses an open one rather than creating a second application a lender would read as two enquiries. Every offer lands in the AI Log.

Also in this drop: the Growth → YouBuyCars → Listings board matches the owner's — cover thumbnails in list view, and a Gallery toggle that lays your cars out photos-first.

The composer grew a 📷 button (texts only, not notes): pick photos, they shrink automatically and preview in a strip above the box — remove any before sending. Send with or without a caption; the photos ride the same message as MMS.

It works everywhere the composer does, including sandbox threads, where nothing actually transmits — so you can see exactly what a photo text looks like before sending a real one.

Show Off mode was generating both sides of the exchange before showing you either — a long silence, then two bubbles at once. Now it's paced like the real thing: the shopper's text appears, the dots start (that's the AI 'typing' as your rep), and the reply lands when it's written.

Every vehicle row grows a Photos button: upload straight from your phone (big shots are shrunk automatically, no visible quality loss), drag into order, first is the cover. The first three photos are what the AI texts when it shares that car.

The switch lives in Settings → AI Assistant → "Show customers the car they ask about": Off, YouBuyCars link, or Inventory photos. In link mode, a car you never posted falls back to its photos — the customer always gets something visual if you have it.

It fires when a customer asks about a specific car on your lot — once per car per conversation, never repeating itself every reply. If they ask to see it again, it sends again. The AI also finally knows what's actually on the lot, so "got any trucks under 20?" gets answered from your real inventory instead of dodged.

It plays by every existing rule: in review-and-approve mode the link or photos ride the draft (you see the photos on the draft card before you approve), a held reply never carries an attachment, and posting a vehicle to YouBuyCars now also copies its gallery onto the listing and remembers the link — mark it sold and the AI stops sending it.

Owner desk, from the same batch of your notes: the all-members Listings view now shows a cover thumbnail on every row, and a Gallery toggle lays the whole board out photos-first, the way a buyer would see it.

The inbox got the sandbox's instant feel: your text paints the moment you hit send, marked "sending…", then the real message takes over with a delivery tick beside the timestamp — green check when the carrier accepts or delivers it, red X when it bounces. A refused send puts your words back in the composer instead of losing them.

Every active lot-inventory vehicle has a "Post to YouBuyCars" button that opens the listing form pre-filled — year, make, model, trim, VIN, price carried over; you add mileage, photos and a description. Every gate still applies: the tier cap, photo compression, and the owner's skip-review.

Owner desk: YouBuyCars gains a Listings subchannel showing every member's listings with status filter and price sorting; every dealership page gets a rename button (the new name follows through to the marketplace storefront); and WhatsApp appears in Growth as a coming-soon channel, so the plan is visible.

The approval clock learned your rule: an approval alone doesn't make a customer hot — they also need the down payment. Each approval card now shows the lender's required down beside the customer's actual stated cash, flags the shortfall in red, and the meter's countdown caps at 70 until the money's there. One number, one source of truth: it's the same money-down the PreQual tracks.

Same drag-anywhere canvas you know — the change is the wires. Right-angle elbows with automatic corridor separation: parallel routes spread into train tracks instead of stacking, and arrowheads always land visibly on a box's edge.

Color is meaning: roles are auto-assigned one of five families from what they plainly are (Ghost reads as revival, Stips as money, Approved as closing). Wrong guess? Every role's editor has a "Colour on the routing canvas" picker to override it.

The trigger chip riding each wire is colored by kind — events violet, keywords blue, AI situations teal, the new status triggers orange — so you can read what drives a flow at arm's length.

The electricity is real, not decoration: a wire pulses only when its rule actually fired (you'll see it moments after it happens, since the page updates live). Opening the page never replays history, and it stays off for anyone whose device asks for reduced motion.

One rule, one edge, same as ever: pick "Lead status becomes…", pick the status, pick the role. Every existing guard still applies — pinned leads stay put, Turn off Routing is respected, and nothing routes into Approved without a real approval on file.

It fires everywhere a status genuinely changes: you moving a lead by hand, the nightly ghosting sweep, appointments getting booked, missed, or cancelled, a dead lead going back on the board, a ghost coming back to life.

"Ghost after (days of total silence)" lives in Settings → AI Assistant now — 7 by default, 1 to 60. Total silence still means TOTAL: a customer waiting on your reply never ghosts, whatever the number says.

The thread marker keeps the paper trail honest: "Status became Ghosted — switched to Ghost role," right where it happened.

The check-in pool asks three kinds of question: light vehicle preferences (dream car, favorite brand), safe small talk (coffee or energy drink, dog or cat person), and how you negotiate (the stall, price vs. payment, the lowball). Kids, family, health, money — never asked, and previously collected family facts were cleared to match.

Negotiation answers do double duty: they sharpen your AI voice like any answer, and their content goes to Memory → Negotiate for an admin to approve — through the same guardrail screen every house position passes, so a throwaway line can't become policy.

Photo uploads were freezing because raw phone photos are huge — a dozen of them overran the upload limit and the failure hid behind the Save button. Photos now compress in your browser first (same look, a fraction of the size), you see them in a gallery before submitting, and both galleries drag into order — first photo is the cover, marked so.

The platform owner's listings go straight to live, and his edits skip re-review — reviewing your own posts was a note to self.

The approval opener is a fixed template, deliberately: it can't hallucinate terms, and it fires only when routing genuinely lands the lead on the Approved role. In Review & approve mode it waits as a ready-made draft; in Fully automatic it sends — quiet hours and every other compliance gate still apply.

The bug: the role and status boxes loaded once and never listened again, so a routing switch announced itself in the thread while the panel kept showing the old role. Both now follow the server's truth the moment it changes.

Turn off Routing is the rep's per-thread veto: the AI keeps replying, but automatic role switching leaves that conversation alone. Flip it back and routing resumes.

Under the hood it's the same pin that hand-picking a role always set — which is why the switch honestly shows ON for threads where you've picked a role yourself.

The moment you send a manual text, the bot benches itself on that lead — no more AI talking over you mid-conversation, which is exactly what made full-auto mode feel risky. When the window expires, it picks the lead back up automatically, so nothing ever goes quiet forever by accident.

Only a text you typed yourself triggers it. Approving the AI's own draft doesn't (that's endorsing the bot, not replacing it), internal notes don't, and a scheduled text firing at 9am while you sleep doesn't either.

The panel shows the state in amber — "AI paused, standing back until 2:40pm" — with a Resume now button, and a ⏸ Pause button for when you want the nap without sending a text first. The pause always lasts the set window, even started by hand: for anything longer there's the Turn off AI switch right below it, which stays off until you say otherwise.

The window lives in Settings → AI → the assistant page, next to business hours: "Step back after your reply." Set it to 0 to turn the whole behavior off.

The sandbox plays along — text your fake customer by hand and the AI announces it's standing back, exactly as it would live.

The check runs once, when the lead is created — a text-in, a website inquiry, or one you add by hand — using Twilio's number intelligence (about a penny per lead, and never a text or call to anyone).

VoIP isn't a verdict: plenty of real buyers text from Google Voice. The chip is amber caution, not red alarm — worth an eye, not a write-off.

It's an internal signal all the way: the AI never hears about it, the Hot Meter never scores it, and the customer never sees anything.

Also today: the YouBuyCars Free plan now lists 1 car (down from 5) — Free is for selling your own car; selling several is what the plans are for. Anyone already holding more keeps them, since the cap only gates new listings. Your CRM's included Pro plan (25) and Ultimate (200) are unchanged.

When a customer texts in and the AI starts composing, anyone watching that thread sees the dots go up — and the same live update that delivers the reply takes them down. No gap, no guessing whether the bot is on it.

When a teammate is typing in a thread you have open, you see the dots too (you never see your own). Customers never see any of this — texting has no typing channel, and nothing here leaves the building.

The early-blink is fixed: the dots used to stop when the server finished thinking, a beat before the bubble painted. Now the thread itself takes them down only when the reply is actually on screen — including across Show Off turns, where they hold steady through the whole run.

Honesty rules intact: dots never show for a STOP (the compliance marker answers that), and a crashed generation can't leave them bouncing — they expire on their own within a minute.

The choppiness had a cause: the sandbox waited for the whole AI reply before showing anything, so both bubbles popped in together after the think. Now the customer's bubble paints the instant you hit Send — no server wait at all, with the real record swapping in behind it — and the typing dots ride inside the thread, right where the reply will land. Show Off mode gets the same treatment between turns.

The dots are the texting world's own signal and they never lie: they show only while the AI is genuinely composing, and never after a STOP — a compliance marker answers that, not the bot.

Change email lives in Settings → Account. Your current password unlocks it, then Supabase mails a confirmation link to BOTH addresses — the switch only lands when both are clicked. Until then you keep signing in with the old one.

Every change request goes on the audit log as exactly what it is — requested, pending both confirmations — so an account-takeover review has the row it needs.

The Leads boards — All, Live, Ghosted, Dead — share one new sort dropdown in the filter bar. "Usual order" stays each board's own smart default: Live reads by last activity, Ghosted surfaces the longest-quiet leads for review, Dead shows the freshest filings.

Hottest-first is deliberately not on the Leads boards — ranking by heat is the Fire Pit's whole job, and it already does it live.

Inventory keeps its "what can I sell first" grouping as the default, and adds Newest, Oldest, and Price both ways for the days you're answering a different question.

Calls adds Oldest, Longest, and Best graded — Longest is the fastest way to find the conversations where a deal actually moved.

Sorts live in the page address, same as the lead filters: bookmark your favorite view, paste it to a teammate, and the back button just works.

Repossession moved out of the financed-before question into its own field. A repo on record deducts from the Hot Meter — a strong-ish penalty, and a harder one when the lender was Credit Acceptance — with its own line in the breakdown, so the number still adds up in front of you.

Financed-before now reads like the real conversation: have they financed, with which bank, paid off or still paying — plus a spare line for customers who've financed more than once.

"What do you drive today?" is its own question feeding the trade-in talk. When the answer is nothing at all, the panel quietly points out what that means: somebody is driving them to the dealership, and that somebody might co-sign.

The payment they want is captured like any other answer — but judged in private. If the number can't buy the car they're describing, the field wears a red "unrealistic" mark for you and the meter cools a touch. The customer is never told, never corrected, and never given payment math by text — that conversation belongs to a person.

The AI captures all of it from the thread the same way it already captures a down payment: only what was plainly said, approximations marked, dodges flagged red, and nothing a human typed ever overwritten.

Also in this batch: both YouBuyCars channels open to a real overview now. The Growth one greets you with your live-listing count, your slots, and whether your public dealer page has a face yet — Listings moved to its own subchannel underneath. The Owner one shows signups, reviews and members at a glance. And clicking either no longer unfolds the channel beside it.

The big one: customers tapping a credit application link were being bounced to a login screen they could never pass. That door is open now — the secure link in their text is the key, as designed.

The application reads right, too: "Credit Application – [Your Dealership]" as the title, and "Sign and send to [Your Salesperson]" on the button — customers apply to a person at a store, not to software.

Sandbox conversations now update live as the AI answers — including Show Off mode, which plays out message by message instead of all at once at the end.

Small but real: exactly one nav channel lights up at a time again; the collapsing rail keeps its icons in place under your cursor; the inactivity sign-out shows a 15-second countdown and then genuinely takes you to sign in; approved demo signups can be re-sent a fresh join link; and the Growth channel's profile page is now called Business Card.

The new YouBuyCars channel (Growth section, admins) has two rooms: Listings, where you post cars — year, make, model, price, photos — straight to the public marketplace, and Profile, where you shape your public dealer page: store name, logo, city, about, and your live inventory, automatically.

Every listing is reviewed by a person before it goes live (usually same day), and each one gets a permanent link that survives the sale — a sold car shows SOLD at the same address forever, which is exactly what search engines reward.

Buyer inquiries come through YouBuyCars and get connected to your car — you sell, the marketplace brings the buyer.

The plans, for everyone else: Free lists 1 car, Pro is $100/month for 25, and the new Ultimate is $500/month for 200. Your CRM includes Pro, period — and upgrading to Ultimate is available at the standard price.

On a phone, the crowded row of links across the top is gone. A bottom tab bar puts the big four under your thumb — with the same colored count pills the desktop nav wears — and the Menu button slides your entire channel rail in from the left, Fire Pit and all, with a smooth action. Tap any channel and it puts itself away.

Texting on the lot finally has the customer at hand: in any thread, a small arrow rides the right edge. Pull it and the full customer panel — meter, status, voice, role, appointments — slides over the conversation; tap outside and you're back to texting at full width.

On desktop, the rail collapses to a slim column of icons when you want the room — counts shrink onto the icon corners so nothing waiting ever disappears. Settings → Appearance adds "Auto-collapse the left rail": it folds when your mouse leaves and opens when you return.

Two cleanups while we were in there: scrollbars app-wide are now thin, rounded and quiet instead of the chunky gray machine parts Windows ships, and a closed channel now wears ONE combined count — Fire Pit's red total, the Queue's blue total — splitting into per-board numbers only when you open the section.

Your customizations are never overwritten silently. The Updates page (Settings → Platform updates) splits every release in two: what updates automatically because you never touched it, and what waits on you because you did. Each waiting item shows the exact change — your version struck through, the new version beside it — and stays yours until you check its box.

The banner is for admins only and knows when to be quiet: dismiss it and it stays gone until the next release, take the update and it clears for the whole store. Either way the release stays findable on the Settings page, so dismissing the nag never loses the news.

Routing flows are now named templates. The standard flow ships as "default1", and the canvas's Apply picker loads any saved template — replacing the whole canvas, because one flow runs at a time, behind a red confirm that says so. The Flow chip names whichever template you're running, admits "— edited" when you've tuned it, and says "custom" when the drawing is all yours.

Updates cover content only — roles and routing templates. The app itself improves for everyone at once, announced right here on What's New.

The canvas is a place to think now: move boxes, add routes, edit triggers, delete arrows — nothing touches your live routing until you press Save. An amber "unsaved changes" tag appears the moment you start, with Save and Discard beside it. Discard puts everything back the way it was; Save applies the whole draft at once, and a draft with an invalid route saves nothing rather than half of something.

A chip above the canvas names the flow you're running — "default1" when your canvas is exactly the standard flow, "default1 — edited" once you've tuned it, "custom" when it's all yours. It's the foundation for selectable flow templates, where one flow is live at a time and choosing another replaces the canvas.

Crowded flows got navigable: every arrow now wears a clearly visible head so direction is never a guess, and the canvas zooms — scroll wheel over the board, or the +/− control in the corner — down to 50% at most, so the labels always stay words.

The original roles (General, PreQual, Cash Buyer, Ghosted, Approved, Stips and the rest) run your routing and hand-offs, so they're locked down: reps see them read-only, admins edit them behind a red summary of exactly what's changing, and a Reset button restores the factory spec whenever a role has drifted too far. Deleting one is impossible — deactivate instead.

Reps still build: a rep's new role is a proposal — paused and invisible to the AI until an admin approves it (admins get a notification the moment one is filed). If the rep later rewords it, it pauses again for re-approval: the admin approved specific words, not the role forever. And a rep can mark their role Private, keeping it off other reps' screens — admins always see everything.

Demo accounts stop opening on an empty screen: three practice customers are already texting when you first sign in — Cassie Cashbuyer, Barbara BadCredit, and Greg GoodCredit — one for each of the big conversations, sitting in the Inbox with the Queue lit.

And follow-ups now say the quiet part out loud: a standing caution on the page, plus a stop-and-read warning when you switch a sequence on — a scheduled follow-up can land mid-conversation with a customer your AI is already handling, and you should choose that on purpose.

Generalities get captured with a grain of salt: when a customer speaks loosely — "around $2,000", "maybe fifteen hundred" — the answer lands on the form marked <2000. Every surface shows the <, the meter counts it at 60%, and the rep is told to verify. When the customer firms it up (or a rep confirms it by hand), the mark clears and full points land.

"I can't remember" is a red flag, recorded as one: can't remember if they financed a car, which bank, whether there was a repo — those get ICR in red on the field and in the breakdown, with a small negative (−2 each, capped) because sometimes "can't remember" is embarrassment protecting itself. The points are the footnote; the red flag the rep addresses in person is the message. A dodged question also stops earning benefit-of-the-doubt points — dodging never pays.

The TTL question: when a stated down payment is small (10% or less of a known price, or under a dollar floor you set) and credit reads challenged, the AI asks one natural follow-up — could you also cover tax, title and plates on top of that? A yes means potential extra money: the down payment reads "$1,000 + TTL" and the meter credits a small bonus. The trigger numbers are editable per role, and only roles you've armed ever ask.

The one rule still holds everywhere: the AI may add knowledge, only a human may change it — and now it may also firm up its own provisional captures, while anything a person entered stays untouchable.

Until now the AI asked the qualifying questions and a person copied the answers into the form. That middle step is gone: the AI reports what the customer plainly stated — money down, timeline, employment, credit in their words, trade details — and the form fills itself, stamping the PreQual date and moving the meter in real time. Your routing rules and the Fire Pit react immediately, because the score they read just got real evidence.

One rule governs it, and it's strict: the AI may add knowledge, but only a human may change it. An empty field fills instantly, with a marker in the thread ("📋 PreQual updated by AI: Money down — $2,000"). A field somebody already filled is never touched — if the customer contradicts it, the thread gets a note ("customer now says $1,500 — the form has $3,000, worth updating?") and a person decides.

It never invents: the AI is held to exactly the panel's own answer choices, told to skip anything not plainly stated, and everything it reports is scrubbed again in code — junk, out-of-range numbers, and anything resembling your internal appraisal are discarded. Every capture lands in the AI Log, which also gained a Live / Sandbox filter — practice customers' events are there when you want them and out of the way when you don't.

It works in the Sandbox too — tell a practice customer your budget and watch the meter jump. That's the whole machine, demonstrated in one text.

Approved deals were getting lost among the merely warm, so the Fire Pit is two boards now: Approved — every lead holding an active lender approval, sorted by soonest expiration, because those close or die on a date — and Prequalified, the temperature board it always was. Each is its own subchannel in the sidebar, and a search box covers names, vehicles, reps and reasons.

The Queue splits the same way: Text and Calls subchannels, each wearing the colour its number always had in the sidebar — blue for people owed a reply, amber for flagged calls.

The new AI Log (admins only, inside AI Assistant settings — same home as the audit log) is the receipt tape: every reply sent, draft written, reply held for review, role switch, appointment booked and handoff, newest first, filterable and searchable, each row one click from where it happened. The right panel now also says plainly which role the AI is working as on every lead — and whether that was picked by hand or chosen automatically.

And a seatbelt: saving AI settings — identity, operating mode, guardrails — now shows a red summary of exactly what's changing ("Automation mode: Review & approve → Fully automatic") before anything takes effect. Saves that change nothing skip the popup entirely.

The meter used to stop cooling at a quarter of a lead's score, which made old leads look mysteriously warm and the decay look stuck. Gone: silence now cools a lead all the way to 0.00. How fast is yours to choose — on the Fire Pit page, pick whether a quiet lead loses half its heat every 3, 5, or 7 days (5 is the data-backed recommendation).

An upcoming appointment now scores like the strong signal it is — its own line in the breakdown — priced by the law of returns: a confirmed visit tomorrow is worth nearly the full 20 points, the same visit three weeks out is crumbs, and the points grow day by day as the date approaches, so a lead heats up toward their appointment on its own. Unconfirmed visits earn 60% until somebody hears the word yes — confirming is real meter work now — and the points vanish the moment a visit is cancelled, missed, or past. The physics never pause; the appointment is simply warmth while it's real.

An approval with an expiration turns the bar into a countdown: full when the approval is written, gliding straight to zero on its last good day, and the panel says so in plain words. Past expiry, the lead reads stone cold until the customer texts back — and the Fire Pit refuses to let a dying deal hide: an approval in its final week is pinned to the top of the board flagged "Approval expiring," whatever the countdown reads.

The new Support channel sits just above Settings, wearing a headset. A ticket isn't a form you fire into the void anymore — it's a thread: your request, then the reply from iSellCars.ai Support, then your follow-up, all in one place. A blue badge on the channel means a reply is waiting; replying to a handled ticket reopens it, so nothing you say lands on a closed door.

And when the problem lives inside a customer conversation, you don't have to leave it: write an internal note with @support in it, and a ticket files itself carrying a link to that exact thread. The note stays in the conversation for your team — tagged so everyone can see support already knows.

Who sees what follows the store's shape: reps see the tickets they filed, admins see the whole store's. You'll also get a notification the moment support answers.

Every dealership runs differently, and now the app can match: in Settings → Team, an admin sees everyone at the store and, for each rep, a checklist of channels. Untick one and it vanishes from that rep's sidebar — and from their address bar too; typed links land safely back on the dashboard. Admins always keep everything, including the surfaces that were always theirs alone: the audit trail, the AI's house rules, phone settings.

And when something's broken or confusing, Settings → Support now sends a note straight to the iSellCars.ai team — with a status you can watch, so "did anyone see this?" has an answer on the page.

A small change that draws a useful line: iSellCars.ai is the software company, distinct from the dealerships that use it to sell. The wordmark now reads iSellCars.ai across the app, the sign-in screens, the emails, and this site.

Nothing else moves — same product, same address, same everything. Just the right name on the door.

In any test thread, press ▶ Show off and the conversation runs itself: an AI-played customer — with a consistent story, maybe rebuilding credit, maybe holding a trade-in — texts in, and the AI you configured answers with your voice, your rules, your guardrails. A few exchanges per press, with a stop button when you've seen enough.

The best moment is when it stops on its own: if the customer pushes somewhere sensitive, the AI holds its reply for human approval mid-show — which is exactly what it does with real customers, demonstrated instead of promised.

Demo accounts get a fuel gauge in the corner showing remaining AI replies, so you always know how much playtime is left. Upgrading removes the ceiling — and keeps everything you built.

A demo account is the real product, not a tour: your own walled-off workspace with every channel visible, and the Sandbox at the center. Spawn fake customers, chat with the AI as them, fill in a PreQual and watch the Hot Meter climb, record a made-up approval and hear the AI quote it — then open the routing canvas, draw your own flow, and watch the sandbox follow it, switch by switch.

It's safe to hand out because the walls are structural: a demo account cannot send a text or place a call to any real phone, period, and demo activity never touches anyone's real data. There's a generous ceiling on AI replies — enough that you'll never notice it exploring in good faith.

The best part: when you upgrade, you keep everything. The flows you drew, the voices you tuned, the test customers you trained against — your demo workspace becomes your real one with a flip of a switch. Request access from the sign-in page.

Spawn a test customer and you get the genuine article: the same conversation thread your real leads live in, with the same side panel — the Hot Meter actually moves as you fill in their PreQual, a made-up approval actually unlocks what the AI is allowed to quote, your routing rules actually fire with every pin and gate honored, and your bot's real mode applies, drafts and escalation banners included. An amber bar underneath lets you type as the customer; a "make it happen" button fires events like a submitted credit app or a no-show straight into your routing.

The guarantee is structural, not a promise: the one door every outgoing text in the system passes through recognizes a sandbox customer and records the message without sending it. Fake customers never appear in your inbox, leads, queue, reports or Fire Pit, and nothing that happens to them pages anyone. Even STOP works — text it as the customer and watch the compliance gate slam, which is exactly the kind of thing worth seeing before a real customer does it.

Spawn as many test customers as you like — a cash buyer, a bad-credit cosigner story, a ghoster — and delete them when you're done. Deleting is the reset.

Notifications is the feed of what happened to YOU: the AI held a reply, a fresh lead texted in, a rule moved someone to a new role, an approval landed, a reminder you set went off. A count on the channel shows what you haven't seen, and opening it clears the count — unlike the Queue's numbers, which only ever fall when a customer actually gets what they're owed. The two keep their jobs on purpose.

Every event now reaches the feed whether or not you've asked it to text your phone — the text toggles in Settings decide what buzzes, not what you get to know about.

And the sidebar got two rows tidier: Appointments and Reminders now live under Calendar, where the grid is the parent and the lists are its views — the same everything-then-filtered shape the Inbox and Leads sections taught. Old links and bookmarks follow along automatically, and long appointment lists now scroll in their own box instead of stretching the page.

The sandbox already talked like the live AI; now it routes like it too. Type as the customer, and when a message trips one of your keyword rules — or the AI reads the situation, like a cash buyer — the conversation actually switches roles right there, with the same 🔀 note a real thread gets, and the next reply comes from the new role. Walk your whole flow end to end before any customer does.

Events that can't happen in a typed chat get a button: pick "credit app submitted" or "appointment no-show" and make it happen — the sandbox jumps the way a real lead would, so multi-step chains are walkable in a minute. Prefer to just look before touching? Switch auto-route off and the panel reports what each rule would have done instead.

Same contract as ever: nothing is saved, nothing moves, no one gets texted. The switches live only in your test conversation.

The calendar grew up and moved out: instead of living inside the Appointments page, it's now its own channel in the sidebar, sitting right above your daily work where your eyes already are. Appointments render as the color-coded blocks they always were; your reminders join them as small time-stamped marks, red when overdue — with a switch for each layer, so the two kinds of time never have to fight for your attention.

The click that changes how you plan: any day on the grid opens in full, and future days offer a time-and-sentence box right there — "remind me Tuesday at 9 to call the bank about ABC" finally has a home. Reminders were minutes-and-hours creatures before; now they reach as far ahead as your week does.

The Appointments page keeps its list and walks you to the calendar with one tab; old calendar bookmarks follow automatically.

Every dealership runs its pipeline differently, so yours is now drawable: each role is a box, and every arrow between them is a rule — "when the credit app is submitted, move to Stips", "when an approval lands, move to Approved", "when a ghosted lead texts back, start fresh at PreQual". Nine built-in events, customer keyword triggers ("cosigner" can route a thread the moment it's typed), and the AI's own read of the conversation all fire the arrows. Chains, branches, even deliberate loops — your call.

The safety rails are built into the engine, not the drawing: a role a rep pinned by hand always beats the arrows, nothing can route into Approved without a real approval on file, and every switch leaves a note in the thread saying exactly why. One click seeds the classic chain to start from.

And for stores that want the opposite of all this: Generic mode. One switch, one bot, one voice — routing off, role pickers hidden, every conversation handled the same way.

Empty screens now greet you with a large drawing from the same icon family instead of a bare line of gray text — an empty inbox shows the bubble, an empty reminders list the clock, nothing starred the outline of a star. Status chips across the app went sharp-cornered while every count keeps its round pill, so shape itself now tells you whether you're looking at a state or a number.

Numbers that tick — queue counts, dashboard stats, badges — hold their width as they change instead of wiggling. And exactly two things animate: the star pops when you watch a lead, and a queue count ticks softly when it changes. The restraint is the point: the Fire Pit's flame stays the only splash of fire in the building.

Eighteen icons, drawn for this CRM rather than pulled from a library: sharp corners, one consistent stroke weight, and a single drawing per icon that takes the row's color — so light mode, dark mode, and the active-channel highlight all come free. The Fire Pit keeps its fire: its flame carries the same ember-to-flame gradient as the wordmark beside it.

The family comes with its own rulebook, so every icon added from here on — new channels, new tools — is drawn to the same grid and weight and looks like it was always there.

The dashboard card was the glance; this is the whole picture. Coming up and already-handled reminders in one place, each tagged by where it came from — one you set yourself, an appointment an hour out, a reply the AI held, a fresh lead. A status strip shows which event texts you've switched on and warns if no phone is on file, with settings staying where settings live.

Your starred leads ride along at the bottom, so "what am I keeping an eye on" is one channel, not two cards. And a small polish that mattered: exactly one sidebar channel lights up at a time now — Settings pages used to light two rows at once.

Every AI reply has always been read by a set of built-in rules before it goes anywhere — no payment quotes, no rate quotes, no approval promises, no manufactured urgency. Those rules now have dials. A new Guardrails page under AI settings lets an admin set the store-wide floor for each rule, from strict to off, with finer levels where nuance matters: payments can allow budget questions, or repeating the customer's own number back, while still holding any figure the AI would invent.

Reps get their own layer: any salesperson can make their AI stricter than the store floor for conversations answered in their voice — never looser. One rep's preference can't loosen anyone else's rules, and the AI's instructions and the output filter always move together, so what the AI is told matches what's enforced.

The test conversation panel runs under the same settings as live texting, so what you see there is exactly what a customer would get.

The one place a salesperson always looks is the same place their customers live: their own phone. So reminders here are texts to your cell — timed ones you set in plain language from the dashboard, and event ones you opt into per rep: appointments coming up, AI-held replies, brand-new leads. Your number is never treated as a customer, and the dashboard card mirrors everything in-app.

Watched leads ride along: star any lead and it sits on your dashboard, in your face — a manual pin that complements the Fire Pit's automatic heat ranking rather than competing with it.

Trade-ins shows every trade across all your active leads in one view — the vehicle, its VIN, what the customer hopes to get, your number, and the payoff — with a warning line whenever their hopes and your appraisal are far enough apart to be worth a conversation before they drive over.

Demand groups active leads by the vehicle they asked about, most-wanted first — the question gut feeling usually answers alone, answered from your own data. Both boards build themselves from what's already on each lead; there's nothing new to fill in.

Inventory joins the nav: active, pending, and sold vehicles in one list, added by hand with the VIN decoder doing most of the typing — paste the VIN and year, make, model, and trim fill themselves in.

The channel is built feed-first: when a dealership's inventory system is connected, vehicles land here automatically and the manual typing simply stops being needed. It also unlocks what's coming next — an AI that can reference the actual cars on the lot.

The system was already recording its most sensitive moments — now there's a place to read them. The new audit log in Settings shows every sign-in, every screen unlock, every time sensitive customer data was viewed, every reply the AI held for review, and every handoff — each as a plain sentence with who and when.

It's admin-only and read-only by construction: there is no edit and no delete on the page at all, because an audit log with an eraser isn't one.

"Today only." "Last chance." "These are selling fast." The AI has no way to know any of that is true — so it's no longer allowed to say it. Urgency has to come from something real, like a date actually on file, or not at all.

Fear and guilt tactics are banned the same way: if a customer hesitates, the AI gives them room and a reason to come in, never pressure. And like every rule here, it's enforced twice — written into what the AI is asked to do, then checked against what it actually wrote, with anything that trips it held for a human.

Somebody's third purchase shouldn't start with a stranger's greeting. Two new marks on every lead — returning customer, and who referred them — tell the AI to acknowledge the relationship naturally, once, and then get on with the conversation.

The main conversation also learned a shape: most customers are stuck behind one of three doubts — am I doing the right thing, are you good people to deal with, and what if I'm not happy? The AI now notices which wall a customer is behind and answers that, instead of pushing past it.

Some answers belong to the store, not to whoever typed them: your warranty policy, your discount floor, how you handle out-of-state buyers. Those can now be locked as house rules — visible to every rep with a padlock on them, editable only by the admin.

The AI reads house rules first and treats them as the position nothing else may contradict, so a well-meaning rep-taught answer can never quietly water down store policy.

A CRM left open on the sales floor shows customer names and numbers to whoever walks past. Now the screen locks after a period of inactivity you control, and unlocking with your password puts you back mid-sentence — nothing typed is lost.

If the lock goes unanswered long enough, the session signs out fully. Every threshold is configurable per dealership in Settings, and the whole feature can be switched off.

The system now knows whether a forwarded call was actually picked up. Missed, busy, or rang out: the lead lands in your work queue's call count by itself. Answered: nothing to clear, because nothing is owed.

Callers you miss also hear a courtesy message inviting them to text, instead of dead air.

The trade-in conversation starts with what the car actually is. Paste the VIN from a door jamb photo and the government's own vehicle database fills in the description; the VIN stays on file for whatever valuation tools come later.

A mistyped VIN that still decodes gets a warning — because a wrong VIN doesn't fail, it confidently describes somebody else's car.

Leads, Live, Ghosted, and Dead all share one set of controls, so learning it once is learning it everywhere. Filters live in the address bar, which means a filtered board is a link you can bookmark or send to a teammate.

Signing in now happens at the bare app domain — no stray paths in the address bar — on a redesigned screen built for the way it's actually used: fast, on whatever device is nearest.

The public site grew up the same day: platform overview, pricing, blog, and the page you're reading now.

You set the temperature that counts as hot; the Fire Pit shows everyone above it, ranked, with the strongest signals each customer gave right on the row. Pick up the phone without opening a single thread.

The threshold is per dealership, because hot is not a universal number.

A score that only changes when you refresh is a photograph. The Hot Meter is live: it cools the entire time a customer is silent, warms with every real signal, and runs blue through red so a glance reads the temperature before the number does.

Open it and the breakdown adds up to exactly the number shown — money down, timeline, trade, employment, engagement — plus what the biggest unanswered question is worth, so it tells you what to ask next.

When you type an answer worth keeping, tap the teach button on the bubble and it's captured into the store's memory — categorized, reviewable, and never used until a person approves it.

The same guardrails that screen outgoing texts screen what gets learned, so a claim the AI wouldn't be allowed to send can't become something it believes.

Asked for a call, they're queued for a call; asked for a person to text, they're queued for a text. The AI's last message confirms the handoff so the customer is never left wondering, and the bot stands down.

Answers your reps actually give, facts about the store, positions on negotiation — all captured into a memory you can open, read, edit, and retire. Seven channels keep a financing position distinct from small talk.

The rule that keeps it honest: nothing the AI captures is ever used in a conversation until a human confirms it, and editing an answer sends it back for approval.

Type what a customer might say and the real AI — your voices, your roles, your store's memory — writes back. Replay real leads read-only to see how it would have handled them. It runs the same code as the live path, so what you see is what customers get.

"You got kids?" deserves a real answer, even when the AI is doing the texting. A daily check-in on the dashboard collects who you actually are — one question, skippable — and your AI voice grows more confident as it learns, never inventing what it wasn't told.

Voices are separate from jobs: the same rep's voice can greet a fresh lead or re-engage a ghost, each with its own objective. Sliders tune the tone; the voice is tempered toward neutral until it has genuinely learned its rep.

The same day, enforcement got real: every reply is screened after it's written. A message that quotes what it shouldn't is held as a draft with the reason attached — asked nicely was never enough.

Quiet for a week with nothing scheduled? The lead is shelved as Ghosted — visibly, reversibly — and the re-engagement bot keeps a slow drumbeat going: weekly, then monthly, then quarterly, forever. One reply brings them straight back.

No cron job ever buries a customer. Filing a lead as dead is a human decision with a reason attached, and a dead lead who texts back surfaces for review instead of being resurrected by a robot.

The calendar colors outcomes so a month tells a story; customers can text photos of trade-ins straight into the thread; and the whole app went live — new texts, new leads, and queue counts appear without a refresh, on every screen.

The Queue asks one question — has anyone answered this customer? — and its counts only come down when the answer is yes. Scheduled sends respect quiet hours. Reports opened the first window into how the store is actually doing.

The same day, every path a text can take was routed through one compliance gate: opt-outs, quiet hours, and consent are enforced in a single place no feature can forget to check.

Calls forward to your cell showing the business number, and every recorded call comes back transcribed, summarized, and coached. Follow-up sequences chase the leads you can't. The AI books appointments customers agree to by text.

Every salesperson got a shareable capture page with their photo and bio — leads from it arrive already assigned. Saved reply templates, a home dashboard, and a proper dark mode rounded out the day.