--- title: "KaiCalls Product Updates - September 18, 2026" date: "2026-09-18" author: "KaiCalls Team" category: "Product Updates" description: "What's new in KaiCalls: features, improvements, and bug fixes from the past week" --- # KaiCalls Product Updates **Week of September 18, 2026** ## ✨ New Features - **Phone system: owner accepts the carrier service agreement inside KaiCalls** - **Public booking page: customers book, reschedule and cancel online without calling** - **First SMS asks for a call, not a forward: move the forwarding ask to touch 2** - **Thumbtack Pro integration: OAuth connect, lead + message webhooks, business phone number API** - **Deploy advertorial 01: /learn/missed-calls-on-the-job (still 307β†’login)** - **launch phone-company presale at $35 per month** - **Refine call details into quiet borderless property rows** - **Simplify call details to filled answers with compact expandable rows** - **Phone book: browseable public directory of verified businesses (by service, state, city)** - **Redesign homepage layout around customer conversations and industry demos** - **Update intake and lifecycle messaging to earn trust before connecting calls** - **Demo-line setup call ends by doing the forward live, not describing it** - **Rewrite activation SMS copy around "Let it ring. Kai picks up. You're texted."** - **Per-business A2P 10DLC registration: brand + campaign filed via Twilio, paid add-on, real status in dashboard** - **Business profile: FAQ / special-instructions field + a re-runnable "Autofill from my website"** - **fix(compare): update CallRail comparison page to highlight native DNI and qualified attribution** - **route-auth-guard: flag mutating API routes with no authority check at all** - **add FAQ/special-instructions field and website autofill button** - **launch phone plans, hardware selection and mobile reservations** - **show contact intake answers with source call dates** ## πŸ“ˆ Improvements - stop retrying blocked phone-verification destinations - Get KaiCalls into 'best AI answering service' listicles - dental ai receptionist β€” page exists but unranked - ai medical receptionist β€” page exists but unranked - answering service for property management β€” page exists but unranked - answering service for law firms β€” page exists but unranked - ai phone answering service β€” page exists but unranked - ai receptionist for small business β€” page exists but unranked - after-hours answering service β€” page exists but unranked - virtual receptionist β€” page exists but unranked - ai answering service β€” page exists but unranked - ai voice agent β€” page exists but unranked - ai receptionist β€” page exists but unranked - show current custom intake answers below each contact - editable contact details, usage tracking, and browser callback failure - contact header editing and dark business switcher contrast - improve dark transcripts and order dashboard by latest call - show complete request summaries and 30 contacts per page - give contact transcripts visual priority over request summaries - allow Messages conversations to be handled and contact status updated - show every contact latest call transcript inline - [Compact dashboard] Replace oversized settings and integration cards with compact grouped rows - [Compact dashboard] Make scheduled calls and follow-ups compact actionable lists - [Compact dashboard] Simplify existing messages list and conversation context - [Compact dashboard] Compact existing call log and progressively reveal call details - [Compact dashboard] Make existing context and business knowledge sections scannable - [Compact dashboard] Rework existing agent editor around editable fields and accessible testing - [Dashboard polish] Make routing, hours and test distinctions clear within existing pages - [Dashboard polish] Prioritize next action on contact detail and simplify timeline presentation - [Dashboard polish] Improve existing Overview and contact-list scanning without removing filters - [Dashboard correctness] Hide synthetic contact emails consistently and clarify status provenance - [Dashboard correctness] Make overview and inbox attention claims evidence-based - [Dashboard polish] Fix dark/light contrast and overflowing agent cards - [Dashboard polish] Compact mobile header and remove overlapping call controls - fix(phone-system): credit a phone-system call to the number the customer dialed - fix(phone-system): always link Kai's answer to the phone-system call - fix(seo): self-referencing canonicals on /help pages + sitemap coverage - fix(forwarding): one source of truth for carrier codes; conditional forwarding by default - feat(phone-system): calls-off banner on top, and a setup-progress view of the phone system - Move contact row actions under the heat pill; text from the softphone - Phone system: owner accepts the phone service agreement inside KaiCalls - Fix the inverted pricing ladder, and add the comparison matrix that exposed it - fix(setup-callin): unblock intro texts, stop false setup alarms - chore(dialstack): carrier-side readiness diagnostics β€” and why inbound is refused - fix(trust-window): two more reads asked for a column user_businesses lacks - fix(phone-system): owner link asked for a column user_businesses lacks - Link the free book from the footer and pricing FAQ - fix(call-router): a failed routing lookup is not an empty routing_cache - Business pages in the KaiCalls phone book: book online, or chat/call/text (#2268) - chore(home): delete the unused AntiAppStatement component - fix(bridge): the bridge tool still told Kai to transfer the call - test(marketing): point the homepage CRO guard at the redesigned page - fix(site): make public copy match billing, trial, forwarding and integration truth - feat(thumbtack): instant reply to new leads in the Thumbtack thread - fix(leads): label the mark-contacted button as an action, not a status - fix(vault): revoke EXECUTE on vault_* admin functions from PUBLIC/anon - fix(leads): reject implausible caller phone numbers instead of storing them - fix(vault): repair vault_update_secret_admin and the dead LSA message routes - fix(leads): list newest leads and calls first - feat(compare): Reception (ElevenLabs) page + stop naming plans we don't sell - feat(escalation): put a human on a hot call without ever holding the caller - fix(thumbtack): let webhook deliveries past Vercel login on staging - fix(thumbtack): save connection state and register numbers past a rejected one - fix(intake): tell an owner their country is unavailable when they type the number - Restore social links in the footer - Setup call ends by doing the forward, not describing it (#2092) - Signup asks how customers should reach Kai, instead of assuming forwarding - fix(escalation): one-segment owner alerts that reach every recipient - fix(phone): stop rewriting foreign numbers into fake +1 numbers, everywhere - fix(agents): personal agents introduced themselves as "Kai" whatever their name (#2245) - feat(activation): make "live" mean a real caller got through (#2235) - fix(onboarding): the forward-calls nudge could never send, and touch 1 asked for the wrong thing - feat(dashboard): setup checklist counts required steps, not every step - feat(mcp): measure the connector channel β€” PostHog analytics on both MCP surfaces - Signup funnel: caller detail capture, persona detection, owner SMS reach, deployment intent - fix(contacts): show the intake answers the agent actually collects - perf(dashboard): one database call for the contacts overview, and a contact row that says each thing once - feat(calls): one CallStatusLine component tags a call the same way on every list - fix(contacts): put status, note and actions where the owner clicks - fix(contacts): the row's follow-up badge no longer jumps to an external mail app - feat(sms): short links, saved messages and drafts in the lead SMS composer - fix(phone-system): surface the carrier's rejection reason on account-create 400s - fix(setup-callin): demo businesses can claim their setup number again - fix(onboarding): rewrite forward-calls SMS copy around "let it ring, I pick up, you're texted" - feat(integrations): Thumbtack connector β€” lead webhooks + business phone number API - fix(dashboard): never let the server snapshot stand in for the query - perf(dashboard): serve the session with the page and keep lists live - fix(onboarding): fire the forward-calls first touch and onboarding SMS on the signup provisioning path - feat(seo): add authentic editorial photojournalism to advertorial and hub - fix(seo): remove duplicate inline footer from advertorial page - feat(seo): rebuild advertorial using native design system, tokens, and components - feat(seo): redesign advertorial to authentic trade investigation layout and register in sitemap - feat(seo): publish missed-call advertorial as public /learn page (#2198) - fix(agent-health): stop counting owner call-ins and ghost calls as silent failures - iOS + Android app PRD and technical spec (Kai work line / eSIM + companion) - fix(compare): highlight native DNI and AI-qualified attribution vs CallRail - fix(phone): make idle-number reclaim actually release dead-account numbers - Promote call forwarding on the dashboard, unblock it from E911 - Verify signup email with an OTP code before /intake creates the account - rbac-guard: flag mutating API routes with no authority check at all - fix(dashboard): every recent call, each with its contact and full transcript - fix(calls): the calls page opens on the full transcript - fix(phone): scope phone hub lines to the selected business; dialer first - fix(calls): put the full call transcript back in front of the owner ## πŸ”§ Bug Fixes - SEO: /help pages canonicalize to the homepage (root layout canonical inherited) - Phone system: Kai-answered calls are logged as voicemail β€” handoff stitching is off in production - vault_update_secret_admin is unconditionally broken in production (cannot cast type bytea to uuid) - Setup follow-up SMS rewrites international numbers into invalid +1 numbers - Escalation alerts: owner texts are 7-segment rule dumps and often reach only some recipients - Personal-assistant agents always introduce themselves as "Kai", whatever they are named β€” and rename cannot fix it - No server-side plausibility check on caller phone numbers written from customer calls - `is_live` means "phone assigned", not "answering calls" β€” 177 accounts read live with zero real traffic - Dashboard home is slow for large accounts and the contact row repeats itself - Contact profile doesn't carry the call tags (Missed / Incoming / Outgoing) the contact cards show - Contacts: setting a status takes four interactions, and status reads last - Setup line can't provision a number: capacity gate rejects demo businesses - reduce redundant GitHub Actions spending - Onboarding SMS is dead in the trial-first funnel: only fires from the Stripe webhook, 0 of 157 signups got it - Idle-number reclaim is blind: seeded welcome call counts as usage, dead statuses never eligible β€” 203 of 335 numbers have zero real calls - Forward-calls nudge burns all 3 touches in ~30 minutes when a business is discovered late - Restore blank custom extraction fields across accounts and truthful processing states - admin check-in categorization and conversation continuity - Phone hub lists unassigned pool numbers for platform admins; dialer hidden behind a button - keep voice model catalog current and qualify configuration upgrades - Prevent delayed browser signup capture from duplicating an authenticated contact - Signup never verifies email: mailer_autoconfirm=true on the live /intake path - The only step that routes a real business line to Kai is buried behind e911 on a surface 21 users saw in 90 days (143 reached /dashboard) - the contact row owners actually use, signup phone-gate recovery, kill switch, CI diet - stop recurring prod error noise from 2026-09-14 daily report - fire the onboarding SMS from phone provisioning, not just the Stripe webhook - space forward-calls nudge stages against the last send, not provisionedAt - reduce redundant Actions work and paid replay triggers - stop resending verification texts to blocked destinations - reconcile applied migration versions and pending schema repairs - clear every failing CI error check on main - send the weekly summary at 9 AM in the owner's timezone, not 5 AM Eastern - quiet call detail property rows - show compact filled call details - preserve reviewed field rejections and verify answer meaning - reject unsupported custom field interpretations - resolve enrichment retries after contact identity repair - require caller speech as evidence for custom answers - budget cron runtime for custom transcript extraction - preserve existing answers in historical custom field recovery - restore custom call fields and production cron execution - block unavailable signup countries - edit contact details at top, track usage, and recover blocked callbacks - edit contact names inline and compact the contact header - order dashboard by latest calls and improve transcript contrast - show full request summaries and thirty contacts per page - prioritize transcript cards over request summaries - add handled and contact status actions to Messages - show latest call transcripts in contact rows - separate admin check-ins and preserve conversation continuity --- Have questions about these updates? [Contact our support team](https://kaicalls.com/contact) or reply to our weekly email. Want to stay updated? [Subscribe to our newsletter](https://kaicalls.com/newsletter)