An AI Agent normally replies to the guest itself. Draft mode changes that. With draft mode on, the agent still reads the conversation and still writes the reply, but instead of sending it, it saves the reply as a draft for one of your operators to review before it goes out.
Why you would use it
To start safely. The hardest part of turning on an AI Agent is the first week, when nobody yet knows how it will answer. Draft mode lets the agent work on real guest conversations while a human stays between it and the guest. Nothing reaches a guest that an operator has not read.
To find the gaps quickly. Every draft your operators heavily edit is a knowledge item that needs work. Reviewing drafts surfaces those gaps faster than reading escalations after the fact, because you see the agent's attempt rather than just its silence.
To keep a human in the loop where it matters. Some conversations should always be answered by a person even when the agent could handle them — complaints, anything involving a bill, anything a VIP guest sends. Running the agent for those in draft mode gives you its speed with your team's judgement.
Turning it on
Draft mode has to be enabled explicitly on each agent. It is off unless you switch it on.
Go to Inbox Settings > Bots and open the agent you want to change.
On the General tab, switch on Enable draft mode. Its description reads: The bot saves replies as drafts for operator review before sending.
Click Activate and confirm.
Turning it off is the same in reverse. The agent then sends its replies directly.
Tell your team before you switch it on. An operator who does not know draft mode is on will find a pre-written reply waiting in the composer and not know where it came from.
What your operators see
When the agent has written a reply, it appears in the operator's composer inside the ticket — the reply is waiting there rather than already sent. Your operator has three choices:
Send | Approve the draft and send it to the guest as written. |
Edit | Change the draft first, then send the edited version. |
Reject | Discard the draft entirely and handle the conversation yourself. |
This works the same way across channels, including email, SMS and WhatsApp.
The work does not disappear, it changes shape. Your team stops writing routine answers from scratch and starts checking them. For most properties that is the point: the slow part of answering a guest is composing the message, not deciding whether it is right.
Draft mode is also available for webhook bots, not only the Bookboost AI Agent. See Letting a webhook bot reply, not just draft.
What draft mode does not change
Draft mode governs the last step only. Everything else about the agent works exactly as it did.
It does not change what the agent knows. It reads the same knowledge and reaches the same answer.
The agent still leaves conversations it cannot handle. When it has no confident answer it steps out and hands over to a human, exactly as described in How handover works. In the ticket this shows as Bot Left.
The agent still solves conversations. When the guest indicates they need nothing more, the agent closes the ticket and it shows as Ticket Solved.
It is not per conversation. It is a setting on the agent. If you want some conversations drafted and others sent automatically, that is two agents with different assignment rules. See Running multiple AI Agents for different scenarios.
So draft mode is not an alternative to handover. Handover is what the agent does when it cannot answer; draft mode is what happens to the answers it can write.
Moving off draft mode
Draft mode is meant to be temporary for most agents. Watch two things before you turn it off:
How often your operators send the draft unchanged. When most drafts go out as written rather than being edited or rejected, the agent is answering well enough to send for itself.
What the edits are. If operators keep correcting the same detail, that is a knowledge gap, not a reason to stay in draft mode. Fix the knowledge item, then look again.
Some agents should stay in draft mode permanently. An agent handling billing questions, or one covering a channel where a wrong answer is expensive, is a reasonable place to keep a person in the loop indefinitely.
Need Help?
Please contact us through the 'Talk to Us' option on the left menu in the platform, or through the Bookboost Support email at support@bookboost.io if you have questions or need additional support.