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Capabilities are the switches on the agent page that give the agent tools and behaviours beyond answering from its knowledge. They live on three tabs: Instructions (How it replies), Actions (Selling and orders, Follow-ups, Safety) and Handoff (with Handover topics). Like every other agent setting, a change is saved as a draft and reaches customers’ conversations when you publish.
The two follow-up switches, Close resolved chats and Follow up when customers go quiet, are the exception: Popcorn’s background checks read the settings you last saved, so changes to those two switches and their timings apply as soon as you click Save and review, without waiting for Publish changes.
Check replies before sending has its own page: Check replies before sending. Alerts are covered in Connect knowledge, tools, channels and notifications.

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Handoff tab

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Hand over to your team

“Passes the chat to a person when the customer asks or your rule applies.” With it on, the agent has a tool to stop answering and pass the conversation to your team. It uses the tool when the customer asks for a person, when the knowledge base tells it to forward something, when one of your handover topics or rules applies, or when a custom agent’s instructions say so. An agent on Popcorn’s rules also offers your team when Knowledge does not cover a question.
  • With the switch on, the tab also shows Team hours (your workspace’s working hours from Settings → General; Change opens them there) and Handover topics (below).
  • Tick Add your own handover rules to write free-text triggers under When to hand over, for example “when a customer asks for a refund”. The text is attached to the handover tool itself. Once the agent has handover topics, the tick box reads Add other rules and the field Other rules (“For anything the topics don’t cover.”), up to 2,000 characters.
  • If you use conversation tags (Settings → Conversation tags), the agent picks the tag that best describes the reason and applies it to the conversation, or the tag a matching topic names.
  • Once a chat is handed over, the agent stops replying there until someone hands it back.
What happens on handover:
  1. The conversation leaves the AI and appears in Unassigned, which also counts in the Needs you folder of the Inbox, with a line in the conversation saying why it came to your team (see How the Inbox names the reason).
  2. The customer gets a short message in their language confirming the handover, with your words when a topic’s What the agent says applies. It is sent even if the customer writes again while the agent is handing over. If the message cannot be written, Popcorn sends “One moment — let me get a team member to help you with this.” or its Arabic equivalent, in the customer’s language (both when it cannot tell).
  3. Slack and email alerts are sent if you switched them on under Alerts, and your team gets an in-app notification titled Conversation Handover with the reason and a link to the conversation.
Hand over to your team after the last retry, under Check replies before sending, depends on this switch. Turning Hand over to your team off while it is on shows Handing over after the last retry is off too and switches that option off.

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Handover topics

“Chats about these always go to your team. The agent tells the customer what you wrote and tags the chat.” Use topics for the kinds of chats your team always takes, such as bulk orders or complaints. They work on both agent types, while Hand over to your team is on.
1

Add a topic

On the Handoff tab, click Add topic. The New topic dialog opens: “The agent hands these chats to your team instead of answering them.”
2

Describe the chats

Fill in the fields in the table below, then click Add topic. The topic joins the list; use the buttons on its row to edit or remove it.
3

Save and publish

Topics are saved with the agent: click Save and review, then Publish changes.
An agent can have up to 20 topics. A topic marked From your instructions was moved there from the agent’s old instructions by the Knowledge check; one marked Suggested was added from a suggestion. Suggested topics. When the Knowledge check finds chats your team took over that fit a topic the agent does not have, the Handoff tab lists it under Suggested topics, with what the agent would say, the tag and how many chats it was seen in. Add adds the topic and publishes the agent right away (Topic added and published). It waits while the page has changes you have not saved (Save or discard your changes to add a suggested topic.) or a saved draft you have not published (Publish your saved changes to add a suggested topic.). The same suggestions come up in the review on Knowledge as Should your team take these chats?, where Yes, hand them over adds the topic the same way (see Review what your agent learned).

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Actions tab

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Safety

Block spam and off-topic chats — “Stops the agent replying to spam, fraud and attempts to pull it off topic.” The agent flags messages that try to change its behaviour, hijack its instructions, or are spam, fraud, or off-topic, and refuses to answer them instead of replying.
  • Flags are counted per conversation. On the third flagged message, the conversation is handed over to your team exactly like a handover: it moves to Unassigned and Needs you, notifications go out, and the count resets.
  • It has no settings of its own. If legitimate customers are being refused, review the conversations it handed over in Needs you before deciding whether to keep it on.
Let customers opt out — “Customers who ask to stop get no more campaign messages.” When a customer tells the agent they no longer want messages, the agent marks them as unsubscribed. Campaigns leave unsubscribed customers out unless you choose to send to them (see Customers), and how opt-outs count against a campaign is on Delivery and reachability. The agent does not stop replying to the customer’s own messages. New agents start with it on, including the one onboarding creates. Agents that existed before were switched on once by Popcorn while their store had an active plan: an agent with nothing unpublished got a new published version, which open chats also moved to, with the note “Unsubscribe turned on: customers who ask to stop getting campaigns are unsubscribed.”; an agent with a saved draft got it added to that draft, which you publish. If you turn it off, it stays off.

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Selling and orders

These switches need a connected store (Shopify, Salla or Zid; see Integrations). Without one, the tools are created for Shopify by default and fail when the agent calls them. Recommend products — “Suggests products from your catalog.” Gives the agent a catalog search and a way to send product cards. The agent searches by keywords or by a product link the customer shares, then sends the matching products as cards instead of describing them in text. Customers can also send a photo of a product; the agent searches by image and asks the customer to confirm the match.
  • With the cards, the agent writes a short text in short lines: the answer to the customer’s question, why these products fit, and a closing question on its own line, such as which one they want. When it sends a single product from your WhatsApp catalog, the text goes inside the product card.
  • For a product with options, such as colours or sizes, search results tell the agent which options are for sale now and which are not, so it does not offer one your description names but you no longer sell.
  • A product that is not active, or out of stock while Product quantities is on in Settings → General, is never sent as a card. The agent can still answer about it and offers something available instead. Shopify products are never treated as out of stock.
  • A product counts as on sale only when its sale price is below its price; otherwise the agent and the card show the one price checkout charges.
When this switch is on, a Manage rules button appears beside it. Rules decide which products to show first or exclusively for a given request; product weights (Boost, Normal, Hide) shape the results too. See Recommendation rules and Product catalog. Take orders in chat — “Lets the agent place orders for customers.” The agent can take an order inside the conversation:
  1. Build a cart from the products it recommended, and add the product’s custom options if it has any (required options must be chosen before ordering).
  2. Collect the delivery address through a form (on WhatsApp, a form the customer fills in; Saudi customers can give their national address short code and the agent resolves it to a full address).
  3. Prepare the order with the shipping and payment methods you set under Settings → Shipping and Settings → Payment, then send the customer a confirmation button. The order is only created in your store after the customer taps that button; a typed “yes” is not enough.
When a customer shows interest in a product (names or picks one, asks its price, delivery or payment, or says yes after seeing it), the agent offers to prepare the order; when they agree, it starts the cart and asks only for what is still missing. It keeps the sale in the chat rather than sending the customer to your website or a branch. If your store has no payment method turned on, the agent does not create the order: it tells the customer your team will confirm how they can pay, and hands the conversation over. If a customer asks to pay with a method you have turned off, the order is refused. Orders created this way appear under Orders and link back to the conversation. See Orders and Shipping and payment. Track orders — “Answers where an order is.” Lets the agent look up the status of the customer’s orders. The customer’s phone number is used automatically, so a customer can simply ask “where is my order?”; if they give an order number, it is checked against the phone number. On Shopify, the agent asks for the email used at checkout only if the phone number does not match. Send images in chat — “Lets the agent send images, like product photos.” Onboarding switches this on for your first agent.

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Follow-ups

Close resolved chats — “Closes a chat the agent has resolved once the customer goes quiet.” Popcorn closes conversations the agent has finished with, so the Inbox only shows what is still open.
  • Close after (hours): how long a conversation must be quiet before it is closed, counted from the last message in the chat. Enter at least 1; new agents start at 24.
  • A conversation on one of the agent’s WhatsApp numbers is closed when it is assigned to the AI, the last message came from the agent or your team (never when the customer wrote last, since a chat never closes while the customer is waiting on a reply), it is not snoozed, and no handover is pending. The check runs every 30 minutes.
  • The close is recorded in the conversation’s activity history in the Inbox. If the customer writes again, a new conversation starts.
  • It cannot be switched off while Follow up when customers go quiet is on: the switch is locked and reads Turn off follow-ups first.
Onboarding switches this on with a 24-hour window. Follow up when customers go quiet — “Sends a message when a customer stops replying before the chat is resolved.” When a customer goes quiet with something still open, the agent sends one short follow-up that picks up where the chat stopped: the question it asked them, or the step they were about to take. It does not greet them again, repeat what it already said or start a new topic. How it runs:
  • Popcorn checks every 15 minutes, on WhatsApp only, for open conversations assigned to the AI on the agent’s numbers where the customer wrote in the last 24 hours and the agent or your team replied after. Once the customer’s last message is more than 24 hours old, no more follow-ups are sent, so the waits add up to less than a day in practice.
  • Before sending, Popcorn reads the conversation and follows up only when something is open: a question the customer has not answered, products they were sent but have not chosen from, an order, booking or details they stopped partway through, or a greeting they never followed with what they want. When it is unsure, it sends nothing.
  • It skips the follow-up when the conversation had ended (the question was answered, the customer ordered or said thanks or goodbye), the customer said no or asked not to be contacted, the sender is not a customer (a sales pitch, a job application, a supplier, an automatic reply, spam or a wrong number), or the chat was handed to your team or sent to another channel. The conversation then shows a line such as Follow-up skipped: the customer said no (see See what the agent did), and Popcorn does not check it again until the conversation moves on.
  • No follow-up is sent if the last reply was a template or failed to deliver, or if you replied to the customer from the WhatsApp Business app in the last 24 hours.
  • It requires Close resolved chats: while that is off the switch is locked and reads Turn on closing resolved chats first. The Close after (hours) value must also be longer than your longest follow-up wait, or the page shows Enter more than N hours, so your last follow-up can send first.
Onboarding switches this on with one follow-up after 1 hour.

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Instructions tab: How it replies

Share customer details with the agent — “Gives the agent details like the customer’s phone number.” The agent is told the customer’s phone number, so it can quote it back or use it in tools. The customer’s name and last delivery address are given to the agent regardless of this switch. Onboarding switches this on. Split long replies — “Sends a long reply as a few shorter messages, at no extra cost.” A reply is sent as one message per paragraph (text separated by a blank line), so a list or an answer laid out over several lines stays in one message. It has no effect on a reply written as a single paragraph. Delay replies — “Waits a few seconds before replying, like a person typing.” Before each reply, the agent waits a random number of seconds within the range you set with Reply delay, in seconds (1 to 60; new agents start at 14 to 34). On WhatsApp the customer’s message shows as read and “typing…” appears through the wait, so the pause looks like someone writing. Leave it off if response time matters more than the human feel. Check replies before sending — “Scores each reply and tries again when it falls below your target.” See Check replies before sending.

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Quick reference

On the Create agent page the How it replies switches, including Send images in chat, are on the Actions tab.