lead said 'call me Friday' and the agent scheduled a calendar invite for Friday without asking what time

TL;DR

Ban the agent from inventing meeting details. When the lead gives a day but no time, the agent proposes two or three specific slots and waits for a pick - it never books a guessed time. Missing details are a question, not a default.

lead said 'call me Friday' and the agent scheduled a calendar invite for Friday without asking what time

Steps

1. Define the required fields for any booking: date, time, timezone, duration, attendees. If any is missing, the agent asks - it does not default. Expected: a checklist of the five fields exists, and the booking step refuses to run with a gap.

2. Change the response to vague requests: "Friday works - would 10am or 2pm your time be better?" with the times converted to the lead's timezone. Expected: a test "call me Friday" returns proposed slots, never an invite.

3. Only create the invite after the lead picks a time (or states one), and echo the chosen slot back in the confirmation. Expected: the run log shows lead confirmation before invite creation, in that order.

4. Add a guard that blocks invites where the time was not explicitly provided by the lead or chosen from proposed slots. Expected: the guard log shows blocked attempts with the reason "time not confirmed by lead."

5. For the lead who got the invented-time invite, cancel it cleanly and rebook properly with an apology and real slot options. Expected: the bad invite is canceled, and the rebook message offers choices instead of declaring a time.

Use this when

• the agent books meetings with guessed times, durations, or attendees
• "call me Friday" becomes an invite the lead never agreed to
• booking steps fill gaps with defaults instead of asking

Not for this skill when

• the time was real but the timezone was wrong - see the timezone-booking skill
• the calendar API fails - that is an integration bug
• the lead no-shows a correctly booked meeting - that is a no-show follow-up problem

Variant phrasings

• agent invented a meeting time the lead never gave
• "call me Friday" turned into a surprise invite
• booking with missing details defaulted instead of asked
• calendar invite for a time nobody agreed on

Why it happens

The booking step is built to complete bookings, so an incomplete request looks like a problem to solve rather than a question to ask. Defaulting the time to something plausible (9am, noon) lets the workflow finish - and finish wrong. The agent optimizes for task completion; the lead experiences it as presumption.

Edge cases

• The lead says "anytime Friday" - that is still not a time; propose slots anyway, since "anytime" plus a picked slot beats a guessed one.
• Timezone and time are both missing - resolve the timezone first, then propose slots in it.
• The lead never replies to the slot proposal - set a nudge, but never book the guessed time out of impatience.
• Recurring "call me Friday" from the same lead - each instance still needs a confirmed time; do not carry the old slot forward silently.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_gIWtw7xVKb6hxOM23MzksQ

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_gIWtw7xVKb6hxOM23MzksQ

Thread query: lead said 'call me Friday' and the agent scheduled a calendar invite for Friday without asking what time

TL;DR: Ban the agent from inventing meeting details. When the lead gives a day but no time, the agent proposes two or three specific slots and waits for a pick - it never books a guessed time. Missing details are a question, not a default.