AI auto-reply, the pause switch and translation in the WACRM Inbox

WACRM’s AI agent can read a WhatsApp conversation, draft a reply, and — only under specific conditions — send it without a person touching it. A pause switch in your workspace can stop all of that instantly, and a separate, unrelated one-tap button lets your team translate any message a customer sends. This tutorial walks through exactly what each of these does today, what an AI call costs in tokens, and which parts — a screen to review a draft before it sends, Messenger and Instagram, Facebook comments — aren’t built yet.

What you need before you start

• A WACRM Workspace account with a project connected to a live WhatsApp number. AI auto-reply and message translation both only run in a connected project’s real Inbox, not the sample/demo preview.
• To turn on auto-send (see below), an API key with the agent:approve scope from Developer / API & MCP — Workspace’s own switch only controls pause, not auto-send.

The pause switch: where it is, and what it actually stops

1. Open Messaging → Automations.
2. Find the card titled AI auto-reply — “Let the AI agent draft and send WhatsApp replies for this workspace.” The switch shows On when the agent is allowed to act for this project, and Paused when it isn’t.

Flipping it to Paused overrides everything else the AI agent does, not just auto-replies: the moment your project’s pause setting is true, every agent action — a reply, a note, a booking, anything — evaluates to denied, no matter its risk level or any other setting. That check runs again at the instant an action is about to execute, so pausing also blocks an action that was approved a minute earlier and hasn’t sent yet. The switch is per project — your whole workspace — not per conversation; there’s no way to pause the AI for a single chat only.

When the AI is actually allowed to send a reply by itself

A reply to a new customer message only sends itself automatically — with no person involved — when all of the following are true:

1. WACRM has turned on the auto-reply loop for the service. This is off by default; a project can’t switch it on itself, the same way the pause switch above can only turn the AI off, never on for the whole service.
2. Your project isn’t paused (see above).
3. Your project has auto-send turned on, and the conversation’s 24-hour customer-service window is open. Outside that window, or with auto-send off, a drafted reply always needs a human decision instead of sending itself.

Auto-send has no switch in the Automations screen today — the pause card there only reads and writes the pause setting. Turning auto-send on needs a direct call to PUT /v1/crm-projects/{project}/ai-pause with {"auto_send": true}, using an API key with the agent:approve scope.

When a reply does get drafted — whether it ends up auto-sent or not — there’s no screen in Workspace yet to read that draft or approve/reject it by hand. The “Agent activity” and “Needs approval” cards on the Home screen show fixed sample data today, not a live feed of your project’s actual proposals. So with auto-send off (true for every project unless you’ve called the API above), a drafted reply is saved as a pending proposal that currently has no customer-facing way to review and send — it simply sits until it expires.

What it drafts, and what it costs: for each new inbound message, WACRM asks the AI for one suggested reply, using the conversation’s last 10 messages as context — billed as 1 AI token by default. If the conditions above let that reply send itself, the send is billed separately as its own action — another 1 token by default. So a fully automatic reply costs 2 tokens by default: one to draft it, one to send it. To avoid flooding a customer, WACRM also self-stops after 3 automatic replies to the same conversation within 5 minutes, and processes at most 8 unanswered messages in a single pass.

Translate a message in the Inbox

1. Open Conversations → Inbox and open a conversation.
2. Under any message the customer sent you, click Translate. (It only appears on messages from the customer — not on your own replies.)
3. The translated text replaces the original in place, and a Show original link lets you toggle back and forth.

Translating costs AI tokens: 1 token per 500 characters of the original message, rounded up, with a minimum of 1 token — the default price, which WACRM can change. Asking to translate the exact same text again, to the same language, costs nothing; it’s served from a cache instead of calling the AI a second time. There’s no way to translate the reply you’re about to type — only messages a customer already sent you.

What works today vs. what needs WACRM

What you want to do	Works today?
Translate a message a customer sent you, in the Inbox	Yes — Conversations → Inbox, Translate under the message
Pause everything the AI agent can do for your project	Yes — Messaging → Automations, the AI auto-reply switch
See an AI-drafted reply and approve or edit it before it sends	Not yet — no review screen exists in Workspace today
Turn on auto-send for a project (reply without review, inside the 24h window)	API only, via PUT .../ai-pause — no switch in Workspace yet
Have the AI auto-reply loop running for your project at all	Not yet — off for the whole service; WACRM turns this on, not a per-project setting
Receive and reply to Messenger or Instagram DMs in the Inbox	Not available yet — Channels shows the option, marked “Not sending live”
Have the AI reply to a public Facebook or Instagram comment	Not available yet — no screen in Workspace for this at all
Translate the reply you’re about to send, before sending it	Not available yet — translation only works on messages from the customer

Ready to put this into practice? Request early access to get a Workspace, or have WACRM’s team set up your project for you with Quick Setup.