Josh Goodman

I build AI for local businesses, in public.
Latest build: an AI receptionist for plumbers.
Ring it and my AI answers: 07455 702608

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

Ring [phone]. An AI answers, and a few seconds later it texts you back and tries to book you in.

It's a receptionist I built for UK plumbing firms in two weeks. £424.86 all in, no funding, barely any code.

It's a real company now. Incorporated, insured, Stripe live.

Here's the whole build, every pound spent and every bug found. 🧵

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

@IGTreal He used to coach me, absolute sicko

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

@Tokabu777 NEED

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

@everestchris6 SITE

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

Tuesday I shared the three bugs a merchant found before launch. Here's the one I didn't see coming.

Launch day, someone outside the UK rang the demo line. One unhandled foreign number tripped an error and the whole missed-call flow quietly stopped. No crash, no alert. Just off, until I noticed.

Screenshot attached: the actual email that told me.

Fixes: per-module error handlers so one odd call can't stop the scenario, and it only answers UK numbers now, since it serves UK trades.

The lesson still rewiring my head: it failed silently, and silent is the worst possible failure mode for a tool whose whole job is catching what people miss.

Question for anyone running automations in production: how do you find out the moment a scenario dies? Polling feels dumb. What's your setup?

Full post-mortem is on my timeline if you want the gory version.

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

@circuitoftmrw The launch this all pays off, if you missed Tuesday: https://t.co/XhmLeRcTeq

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

Ring [phone]. An AI answers, and a few seconds later it texts you back and tries to book you in.

It's a receptionist I built for UK plumbing firms in two weeks. £424.86 all in, no funding, barely any code.

It's a real company now. Incorporated, insured, Stripe live.

Here's the whole build, every pound spent and every bug found. 🧵

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

An ex-developer broke my AI receptionist in four texts.

Then on launch day, one foreign phone number quietly switched the whole thing off while the demo line was public.

I promised the post-mortem on Tuesday. It's Friday. Here it is. 🧵

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

So, harder to break than it was on Tuesday. That's the honest state.

Want to help? Do what the merchant did, or what @circuitoftmrw managed by accident. Text the demo line, UK numbers only, and try to confuse it: 07455 702608.

Last time someone did that, his fix shipped the same day. Whatever you find, I'll fix it and tell you how.

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

Under the hood it's deliberately boring:

1. Plumber misses a call. @twilio answers, plays a recorded greeting (@ElevenLabs voice), and hits a tiny relay function, the only real code in the whole thing.

2. That kicks a @make_hq scenario which texts the caller back within seconds and runs the conversation from there.

3. Every incoming SMS goes to GPT-5-mini with the full conversation history injected each turn and a strict JSON schema on the output. It works out the problem, name and postcode, one question at a time.

4. Booking is real: @make_hq pulls live free slots from the @calcom API, offers them numbered, and replying "1" writes it straight into the diary.

5. The important bits sit OUTSIDE the model. A shape check so raw JSON or an empty message can never reach a customer.

One re-offer max before it hands to a human. And any mention of gas overrides whatever the model wanted to say: fixed script, official emergency number, owner alerted.

Hardest-earned lesson so far: don't trust the model to remember or behave. Design the pipeline assuming it won't. Full post-mortem of it failing exactly that way coming Friday.

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

@nezbuilds CallRescue - AI receptionist for plumbing & heating firms, turning missed calls into booked jobs.

https://t.co/qZNSmr06mp

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

@danellisona CallRescue - AI receptionist for plumbing & heating firms, turning missed calls into booked jobs.

https://t.co/qZNSmr06mp

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

@kushmergedeck CallRescue: The AI receptionist for plumbing & heating firms.

It catches missed calls and turns them directly into booked jobs.

https://t.co/qZNSmr06mp

[Josh Goodman @holdembuilds]

@markproduct CallRescue: The AI receptionist for plumbing & heating firms.

It catches missed calls and turns them directly into booked jobs.

https://t.co/qZNSmr06mp