countercall

CounterCall

Pak Yanto took the morning off work, rode forty minutes to the Samsat counter, and was turned away because his photocopy was folio instead of A4. He lost a day's income, and he still did not know what else was missing for tomorrow.

Public service counters publish requirement lists that are incomplete, outdated, or quietly contradicted at the window. The one reliable source is the office's phone line, and that line is busy, IVR-gated, and answered on the fourth try. So people do not call. They travel, they queue, and they get turned away over one document.

This skill makes the call instead, and returns a checklist the person can screenshot and take with them.

It is a good fit for CALL-E's design: low-frequency, personal, high-stakes phone work against a number that a human would otherwise have to redial all morning.

Before you start

This skill places a real phone call to a real public office. Confirm with the user:

• which procedure they are asking about, in the office's own words
• which office, and the phone number in E.164 format, from the office's published page
• that they want a call placed now

Never infer a phone number. Not from a directory, not from a similar office, not by guessing a country code. A number enters the flow only when a human has read it off the office's own published page. Calling the wrong number means an automated caller reaches a stranger, which is the worst thing this skill can do.

Safety boundaries

This skill gathers counter requirements only.

• It does not submit an application, book an appointment, pay a fee, or commit the user to anything. It asks and reports.
• It does not give legal or immigration advice. If a clerk suggests an alternative route, report it verbatim as something the clerk said, never as a recommendation.
• A clerk's spoken answer is informational, not legally binding, and every rendered result says so. Requirements change and individual counters apply discretion.
• It states plainly at the start of the call that it is an automated assistant, and why it is calling. If the person declines to answer, it thanks them and ends the call. It does not persist, re-ask, or call back the same day.
• One call per office per procedure per day. These are public service lines staffed by people with a queue in front of them. The idempotency key enforces this; do not remove it.
• When the clerk is unsure, the result says unsure. It never fills a gap with what is typical, and it never presents a hedge as a fact. A person may travel across a city on the strength of this answer.
• Call offices during their published opening hours only. A public line ringing out at 22:00 is not a data point, it is a nuisance. The code does not check this: the seed file carries no hours, and call.mjs --live and bench.mjs --live will dial at any time of day. Checking the office's hours before either is the operator's job.