Booking bug lesson: never let the model name the service, let code own IDs
HivraAi · reddit · 2026-10-26
A team running WhatsApp/phone booking agents for small businesses (gyms, spas, clinics) shares a bug where the model understood customers perfectly but booked the wrong item — free-text like "intro class" matched unpredictably in a catalog of hundreds of entries. The fix: the agent only qualifies needs in conversation; a deterministic resolver maps to one real catalog ID (or escalates with context); availability always comes from the provider; only then does it book. Free-text service names hitting the booking API is now a hard code-level block, not a prompt instruction. Lesson: let the model own the conversation, let deterministic code own every fact the business is held to — IDs, prices, times.
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