comms.resolve_contact

Find the customer a number belongs to, and whether we may message them

Read-onlyRead budget

REST

Shipping

POST /api/v1/comms/resolve_contact

MCP tool

Live

comms.resolve_contact

Exposed on: REST API · Shop MCP server · Claude connector · Dash (in-app copilot) · Zapier. Part of the Comms domain.

Operating contract

THE FIRST CALL WHEN SOMETHING COMES IN. A number just rang, or a text just landed, and this answers the three things needed before anything else happens: who is it, is there an open thread, and are we allowed to write back.

IT IS THE VARIANT-TOLERANT MATCH, which is what makes it different from customers.find_by_contact — and both exist on purpose. That one is an EXACT match on the normalised value and is the right call before customers.create, because a fuzzy match there would merge two people. This one tries every shape the same number is stored in across a shop's history — +14035550134, 14035550134, 4035550134, (403) 555-0134, 403-555-0134 — because an imported book and a decade of hand-typed rows do not agree on a format, and a call from a customer the shop has had for five years must still find them.

texting_blocked IS THE FIELD TO ACT ON. True means a STOP or a staff block is on file and comms.send_message will refuse — so do not draft a text, and do not treat the later refusal as an error to retry. comms.send_email may still be right if there is an address.

conversation is the customer's most recent open thread, or null when they have never had one. Pass it to comms.list_messages to read the history before replying, and to comms.send_message to land the reply in the same place instead of opening a second thread beside it.

found: null is a normal answer meaning nobody on file matches — a genuinely new caller. customers.create is what turns them into a record; do not invent one from a number alone unless the shop asked you to.

Who may call it

Permission: inbox.accessThe caller must hold Inbox at the ACT level. A read-only dashboard grant on the same section is refused.
Plan: Every planNo plan gate. Available on every Service VIN plan.
Retries: naturalNaturally idempotent — running it twice leaves the same world as running it once. A retrying integration needs no key.
Rate class: readCounted against the read budget — the widest of the four.

Input

Field	Type	Description
phone	stringmax 40 chars	A phone number in any format — the `from` on a call or a message.
email	stringmax 200 chars	An email address, matched case-insensitively.

Output

Field	Type	Description
found	object \| null	—
found.customer_id	string	—
found.name	string \| null	—
found.phone	string \| null	—
found.email	string \| null	—
matched_on	string \| null	— One of: `phone`, `email`
texting_blocked	boolean	—
marketing_consent	boolean	—
conversation	string \| null	—

Examples

Built from this capability's own schema — required fields and the ones carrying a default, and nothing invented. Paste one and it validates.

curl

export SERVICEVIN_API_KEY=svk_live_…

curl -X POST https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/comms/resolve_contact \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERVICEVIN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{}'

TypeScript (fetch)

const res = await fetch("https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/comms/resolve_contact", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SERVICEVIN_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({}),
});

// Success and failure are both envelopes. Switch on error.code, never
// on error.message — the codes are stable, the messages are for people.
const payload = await res.json();
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(payload.error.code);
const data = payload.data;

Python (requests)

import os, requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/comms/resolve_contact",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SERVICEVIN_API_KEY']}"},
    json={},
    timeout=30,
)
payload = res.json()
if not res.ok:
    raise RuntimeError(payload["error"]["code"])
data = payload["data"]

MCP tools/call — https://www.servicevin.com/api/mcp

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "comms.resolve_contact",
    "arguments": {}
  }
}

Refusals

The four gates run in this order on every surface, and the order is not arbitrary — see Authentication.

Status	Code	When
404	`not_found`	The id is unknown, or the feature is not enabled for this account. Deliberately the same answer for both.
403	`forbidden`	This login does not hold inbox.access.
422	`validation_error`	An argument was wrong. The message names the field.
429	`rate_limited`	Too many read calls. Back off and retry.
500	`internal_error`	Something failed on our side. Nothing was changed.

Operating contract#

Who may call it#

Input#

Output#

Examples#