> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.fapost.in/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Conversations

> Reading what contacts sent, and replying when the flow cannot.

Every exchange between a contact and this assistant, newest activity first.

## The list

Each row summarises one conversation: which **contact**, over which **channel**,
the **last message**, how many are **unread**, the total **messages**, the
**status**, and when it was **last active**.

**View** opens the full transcript.

<Note>
  A contact is identified by the id the messaging platform gave them until the
  assistant learns something better — a name collected in a flow, for instance.
  A list of numbers is not a bug; it means those conversations have not reached
  a point where a name was asked for.
</Note>

## Unread and status

**Unread** counts inbound messages nobody has looked at. It is the queue for a
human, and it does not go down on its own.

**Status** is the conversation's state — open, or closed. Open means the exchange
is considered ongoing, whether or not a flow is currently running inside it.

<Note>
  A conversation and a [session](/using/sessions) are different things and are
  easy to confuse. The conversation is the whole relationship with that contact
  on that channel. A session is one pass through one flow. A conversation can
  have had many sessions, or none at all.
</Note>

## Replying

Where a person replies from — the operator inbox — the message goes out **under
the assistant's identity**. The contact sees the assistant, not the individual
typing.

That is usually what you want, and it is exactly why the permission to do it is
marked sensitive: reading transcripts and speaking as the company are two
separate grants, and neither is routine. See
[Roles and permissions](/using/roles-and-permissions).

## When to read them

Transcripts answer the question flow logs cannot: *what did the person actually
want*. A flow that technically completed while the contact rephrased the same
question four times is working and failing at once, and only the transcript shows
it.

For the mechanical side — which node ran, what it returned, where execution
stopped — see [Flow logs](/using/flow-logs).