> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.coval.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# SMS Simulations
> Simulate SMS conversations with your agent
## Overview
The SMS Simulator enables you to test and evaluate SMS-based AI agents by conducting automated text message conversations. It simulates a real customer interacting with your SMS agent, sending messages and receiving responses just as an actual user would.
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## How It Works
1. **Test Case Delivery**: Each test case from your test set is sent as an SMS message to your configured phone number
2. **Agent Response**: Your SMS agent receives the message and responds
3. **Conversation Flow**: The simulator continues the conversation naturally, responding to your agent's messages as a realistic customer would
4. **Completion**: The conversation ends when the test scenario objective is achieved, the conversation reaches a natural conclusion, or the maximum simulation time (15 minutes) is reached
5. **Evaluation**: The complete message exchange is captured and evaluated against your configured metrics
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## Setup
### 1. Create an SMS Agent
1. Navigate to **Agents** in your dashboard
2. Click **Create Agent**
3. Under the **Text** section, select **SMS**
4. Enter a **Display Name** for your agent (e.g., "Customer Support SMS Bot")
5. Enter your agent's **Phone Number** in E.164 format:
* Format: `+[country code][number]`
* Example: `+14155551234` (US number)
* Example: `+442071234567` (UK number)
### 2. Configure Your Agent (Optional)
You can add additional configuration:
* **System Prompt**: Context that will not affect the simulation but allows better context for generating test sets, workflows, and metrics for this agent
* **Attributes**: Custom metadata tags for organizing your agents
### 3. Run an Evaluation
1. Go to **Evaluations** and click **New Evaluation**
2. Select your SMS agent
3. Choose a **Test Set** containing the conversations you want to simulate
4. Select **Metrics** to evaluate (e.g., response quality, task completion)
5. Configure run settings:
* **Iterations**: Number of times to run each test case (default: 10)
* **Concurrency**: Parallel simulations (default: 5)
6. Click **Launch**
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## Key Features
* **SMS-Optimized**: Responses are kept short and concise to reflect real SMS communication patterns
* **Full Transcripts**: Every message is captured with timestamps for detailed analysis
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## Metrics Compatibility
SMS simulations generate text transcripts that are compatible with all standard text-based metrics, including:
* Response accuracy
* Conversation completion rate
* Goal achievement
* Custom LLM-judged metrics
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## Best Practices
1. **Phone Number Format**: Always use E.164 format for phone numbers (e.g., `+1` followed by 10 digits for US numbers)
2. **Use Test Numbers**: Use a test/staging number rather than production during initial testing
3. **Start with Low Concurrency**: Begin with low concurrency to avoid rate limiting on your SMS provider
4. **Design Realistic Scenarios**: Include varied test cases that cover different user intents and edge cases
5. **Keep Messages Concise**: Your agent's responses should be brief—SMS has character limitations and customers expect short messages
6. **Response Time**: Your agent should respond within a reasonable timeframe for accurate simulation flow
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## Limitations
* Maximum simulation duration: 15 minutes per conversation
* Agent must be accessible via standard SMS messaging