Every conversation in your inbox shows a small icon on the right side of the list row. That icon is the handling status: a quick signal for who, or what, is in charge of the conversation right now.
What each icon means
There are three main handling badges, plus the lightweight replied indicator.
Automation running (yellow badge with a ⚡ bolt): A scenario or campaign is currently in control of this conversation. The contact may be mid-flow, waiting at a delay step, or waiting to reply.
AI Agent handling (purple badge with an agent icon): Your AI Agent has taken over and will respond to the contact's next message.
Human requested (orange badge with a person icon): The agent or a scenario flagged that this contact needs a person, and no one has stepped in yet. The agent stops auto-replying once this is set.
No badge: Nothing is actively handling the conversation. Either a teammate is managing it, or it's idle.
Separately, each row also shows whether you owe a reply: an Unreplied marker when the last message came from the contact and you haven't answered, and a Replied marker once you have.
Other icons you might see
A few less common icons take priority when something needs attention:
Red exclamation: a message failed to send, or another connected app has locked the conversation (Instagram lets one app control a thread at a time).
Yellow clock: an automation hit its weekly rate limit for this contact, so a step is waiting.
Grey spinner: a message is still sending.
How the status changes
Handling status updates on its own as things happen in the conversation.
When a scenario or campaign starts for a contact, the icon switches to the yellow bolt. When it finishes or is interrupted, the badge clears (or the row shows Unreplied if a message is waiting).
When you hand a conversation to your AI Agent, either with the Hand over to AI Agent action in a scenario or by the agent picking it up under its activation rules, the icon becomes the purple agent badge. See AI Smart Actions in Scenarios.
If the contact asks to speak to a person, the agent detects it and the icon switches to the orange person badge, flagging the conversation for your team. See Human Intervention: Handing Off to a Human.
A handover to the AI Agent ends on its own after 24 hours of no activity, so conversations don't sit with the agent forever.
Taking over a conversation
If a conversation shows the agent or automation badge and you want to handle it yourself, reply directly from the inbox at any time. Sending a manual message clears the agent and human-requested states, so as soon as you jump in, the conversation is yours.
You can also remove the agent on purpose. When a conversation is handled by the AI Agent, a Handled by AI Agent banner appears above the thread with a Remove Agent from conversation button.
⚠️ Whether your manual reply pauses a running scenario depends on the scenario's Interrupt when you reply manually setting (in the scenario's Settings tab). If it's off, the scenario keeps running alongside your reply.
Handling status vs contact status
These two get mixed up a lot, so it helps to keep them apart.
Handling status lives in the inbox and tells you who is managing the conversation right now. It changes often as automation and replies happen.
Contact status (Active, Inactive, and the rest) lives on the contact and tells you whether Instagram lets Inrō send DMs to that person.
The two are independent. A contact can be Active (reachable) while their conversation shows Human requested, or Inactive while showing an older Replied state. For the reachability side, see Understanding Contact Status.
🐾 Netsuke's Tips
Watch your Human requested conversations closely. These are contacts who explicitly asked for a person while the agent was running. They expect a reply and no one has answered yet.
If a conversation sits on the automation badge for a long time, open the Automation tab for that contact to see exactly where the flow is paused. A long delay step or an unanswered "Wait for reply" is usually the reason.
The Unreplied messages filter in the inbox is the fastest way to pull up every conversation that needs a human right now.
What's next?
Learn how to use folders to organise your contacts and trigger automations when someone moves into a new group.