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Gumball has its own phone number. Text it from a phone number you’ve verified in Gumloop and your own Gumball picks up the request, works on it with your connectors and skills, and texts you back.
Gumball home screen with the Where to reach me section showing the Email, Text, and Slack rows

iMessage, RCS, or SMS

Text from your phone’s messaging app. The same number works over iMessage, RCS, and SMS.

Your own Gumball

Everyone texts the same number. Each verified sender reaches their own Gumball, running on their own connectors and skills.

Follow-ups stay together

A reply continues the current task. A new request after a break starts a fresh one.

Approve by text

When a tool call needs your approval, reply approve instead of opening Gumloop.

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Get Started

1

Open the Gumball home screen

Find the Text row under Where to reach me in the right-hand rail. It shows Gumball’s phone number.
2

Verify your phone number

If you haven’t verified a number yet, clicking the Text row opens Add a phone number. Enter your mobile number, click Text me a code, then enter the 6-digit code under Enter your code and click Verify number.
3

Text Gumball

Once you have a verified number, clicking the Text row copies Gumball’s number. Save it as a contact and send it a message from your verified phone.
The Text row only shows when texting Gumball is available on your deployment. If your role isn’t allowed to text Gumball, the row reads Texting Gumball is off for your role and clicking it lets you request access. See Availability and Permissions.

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Verifying Your Phone Number

Gumball only answers phone numbers verified in Gumloop. The sender’s number is how Gumloop knows which account — and which Gumball — a text belongs to.

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Texting Before You Verify

If you text Gumball from a number that isn’t linked to a Gumloop account, Gumball doesn’t run. It texts back instead:
This number isn’t linked to a Gumloop account. New to Gumloop? Get started at … Already have an account? Verify this number at …
The verification link opens a Gumloop page with your number already filled in. Sign in, confirm the code, and once you see Number linked, text Gumball again. The page also has an Open Gumball button.

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Managing Your Numbers

Verified numbers are listed under Phone numbers at Settings → Profile → General.
  • Add phone number opens the same verification flow.
  • Each number’s menu has Copy number and Remove number.
  • Removing a number means agents with texting enabled stop answering texts from it. You can verify it again later.
You can verify more than one number. Gumball answers any of them.

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What You Can Send

Each sender can send up to 20 texts per minute and 200 per hour. Over that, Gumball replies “You’re texting faster than I can keep up. Give it a minute and try again.” instead of starting a task.

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How a Conversation Works

1

Gumball sees your text

Your message is marked as read as soon as it’s picked up. On iMessage, you also see a typing indicator while Gumball works. SMS and RCS don’t get typing indicators.
2

Gumball decides: same task or new task

Texts have no threads, so Gumball decides whether your message continues the current task or starts a new one. See Follow-ups and New Tasks.
3

Gumball works on it

It runs like any other Gumball chat, with your connectors, skills, and history. If the task has to wait for a workflow run to finish, you first get “Working on it. I’ll text you when it’s done.”
4

Gumball texts back

The answer arrives in the same chat, written for a phone. Typing stops when the reply is sent.

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Follow-ups and New Tasks

Gumball uses the time since your last message, and what you wrote, to decide: When a new task starts, Gumball still gets a short recap of your last text conversation as background, so you can refer back to it. Older conversations aren’t lost either: Gumball can search your past conversations.
There’s no command to force a new task. Just send your new request — or wait, since anything 7 days after the last activity starts fresh.

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What Replies Look Like

Gumball is told it’s writing a text, not an email: short, plain sentences that match your length and tone, no Markdown, tables, lists, or headers, and links on their own line.
Gumball won’t use a messaging tool to send its reply — your answer always comes back to the phone that asked. It only uses messaging tools when you ask it to message someone else.

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Approving Actions by Text

When a tool call needs your approval, Gumball texts you what it wants to do, followed by:
Reply “approve” to approve, or review in Gumloop: …
The approval is always sent as its own text, after the rest of the reply, so it’s never cut off.
Reply approve. Capitalization and surrounding spaces don’t matter. Every pending tool approval on that task is approved, and Gumball carries on and texts you the result. Your approve text isn’t added to the conversation as a new request.
There’s no decline keyword. Open the review link and decline in Gumloop.
Some steps need more than a yes — for example, questions Gumball asked you. Those texts only include Review in Gumloop with a link. If you reply approve anyway, you get “This one needs answers I can’t take by text. Open the task in Gumloop to respond.”
While a task is waiting for approval, the typing indicator pauses.

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Opting Out

Text any of these to stop receiving texts from Gumloop: STOP · UNSUBSCRIBE · OPTOUT · CANCEL · END · QUIT · opt out · opt-out The single-word keywords must match exactly (all caps, nothing else in the message). opt out and opt-out match in any capitalization.
  • An opt-out text never starts a task.
  • Once you’ve opted out, Gumloop stops sending texts to your number.
  • Sending any other text afterwards turns texts back on, unless the messaging provider still reports your chat as opted out.
  • A number that has opted out can’t receive a verification code: “This number has opted out of texts from Gumloop, so we can’t send a code to it.”

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Availability and Permissions

For custom roles, Gumball text messaging (“Users can text Gumball from a phone number they verified.”) is restricted by default. An admin has to grant it explicitly.

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Messages When Access Is Missing

If Gumball can’t take your text, you get one of these instead. Each is sent at most once per hour per chat, so you won’t get the same one repeatedly.

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Credits

There’s no per-message charge for texting. The work Gumball does for a text uses credits like any other Gumball task.

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FAQ

Yes. Gumball has one shared number. Gumloop looks up who sent each text by their verified number and routes it to that person’s own Gumball, so you never see anyone else’s conversations.
No. Group chats are ignored. Text Gumball one-to-one.
Typing indicators only work over iMessage. Over SMS and RCS, your message is still marked as read and Gumball still replies.
Replies are capped at 6 texts of up to 1,500 characters each. Anything longer ends with “The full reply is too long for a text. Open it in Gumloop.”
Just text the new request. If it’s been more than 20 minutes and your message stands on its own, Gumball starts a new task. After 7 days, every message starts a new task.
Yes. Photos and files you text are passed to Gumball as attachments, up to 32 MB each.
Send Gumball any other message. That clears the opt-out.