AI phone assistant

Connect any phone line to any AI model. Self-hosted, bring your own keys.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Connect them over MCP — and get full control.

tel-agent.com · maintained by Dpro GmbH, Vienna

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What it is

Tel-Agent is an open-source gateway that sits between a phone line and an AI agent.

A call arrives over SIP. Tel-Agent checks the caller against your routing rules and either passes it through to a human, blocks it, or hands it to an AI agent. The agent speaks with the caller in real time, can invoke tools — transfer the call, take a message, check a calendar, call any HTTP endpoint — and every call is recorded, transcribed, and searchable.

It runs on your own hardware, on your own LAN, with your own API keys.

The same agent handles phone calls and answers on web chat, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Instagram, Discord and Slack — connected with your own credentials from each platform, never a shared application of ours. The official channel scope now covers 24 channels including the phone, with additional channels built on the extension contract. A channel is a route a customer uses to reach you; a system you run your own business on is an integration, and those are reached through webhooks and the HTTP tool.

What it is not

• Not a PBX replacement. It connects to your existing PBX (3CX, Asterisk, FreePBX) as an extension.
• Not a workflow automation platform. Webhooks and a generic HTTP tool reach n8n and Home Assistant, which do that job better. A channel is where the conversation happens; an integration is a system the agent acts on. We own the first and reach the second through the HTTP tool.
• Not a CRM.
• Not analog-capable. Bridge an analog line with an ATA; Tel-Agent only speaks SIP.

Why it exists

Well-funded closed products already do "AI receptionist for business". What does not exist is a good open, self-hosted one — where you own the recordings, choose the models, and decide which callers ever reach the AI at all.

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Project status

Alpha. Native installers and container images are available today. Choose a platform on the download page, or get the packages from the releases page: a Windows installer, macOS packages for Apple Silicon and Intel, DEB and RPM packages for Linux, and a docker-compose.release.yml that pulls the published images. The installers are unsigned while code signing is not yet configured, so the operating system will ask once before it runs.