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

# Autopilot settings

> The three account-wide settings behind every Autopilot — how long a lead waits for a match, when a late message is dropped, and which addresses are skipped outright.

**Dashboard → Autopilot → the gear icon.** These apply to every Autopilot on the
account, not to one of them.

***

## Queue wait time

**2, 6, 12, 24 or 48 hours. Default: 6.**

Contacts are often created *before* the data that qualifies them — someone signs
up, the contact appears, and the onboarding answers your filter needs arrive
minutes or hours later.

So a contact that matches nothing yet waits in the queue and is re-checked as its
CRM data arrives: every minute for the first quarter of an hour, then less often,
until this window runs out. Then it is **abandoned** — never researched, no credit
spent.

| Set it shorter if                                                                              | Set it longer if                                                                           |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Your filter uses properties that are set at creation time, and waiting only delays the obvious | Your filter uses onboarding answers, enrichment fields, or anything a human fills in later |

<Note>
  If you have a **fallback Autopilot**, it gets the last look at the lead at the
  end of this window, and takes it if its own filter matches.
</Note>

***

## Drop messages that fall too far behind

**Off, 7, 14, 30 or 60 days. Default: off.**

When there is more to send than the daily limits allow, messages move forward
rather than being dropped. Usually that is right. But a follow-up written for
"three days after the intro" landing five weeks later is worse than not landing:
it reads as though nobody was paying attention.

This is **lateness, not age** — how far past its planned date a message is. Fourteen
days behind plan means the same thing in a two-week sequence and a two-month one.

Leads dropped this way end with *Fell too far behind its schedule* in
[Activity](/autopilot/activity).

<Tip>
  Turning this on is a symptom fix. If messages routinely fall weeks behind, the
  real answer is a higher daily limit, another mailbox or seat, or fewer leads
  entering at once — check the capacity bars.
</Tip>

***

## Addresses to skip

**Both off by default.** Each one narrows who your Autopilots contact, and
narrowing is a choice — so neither is on unless you say so.

| Setting                         | Skips                                                                                                                        |
| ------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Skip role-based addresses**   | Mailboxes named after a function, not a person: `info@`, `contact@`, `kontakt@`, `office@`, `sales@`, `support@` and similar |
| **Skip free mailbox providers** | Personal mailbox domains: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, Proton, wp.pl and similar                                           |

Both are checked **before anything else**, so a skipped lead costs no research and
no credit, and appears with its reason in the HubSpot intake log.

<Warning>
  Free-provider skipping is blunter than it looks: a founder on Gmail is still a
  founder. Only switch it on if your product genuinely does not sell to people at
  a personal address.
</Warning>

Turning either setting on does not touch leads already enrolled, and turning one
off does not go back for leads it skipped earlier — those come back the way any
lead does, through your CRM.

***

## Related settings elsewhere

| Setting                                  | Where                           | What it does                                                                                       |
| ---------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Excluded domains**                     | Settings → Outreach             | Companies never researched or contacted at all — your own domain, partners, customers              |
| **Research each contact only once**      | Settings → Outreach             | Stops a re-created or re-fired contact from spending a second credit. On by default                |
| **Content language**                     | Settings → Language             | The language every generated message is written in                                                 |
| **Email signature and sender identity**  | Settings → Outreach             | Required before any email step can send                                                            |
| **Daily limits, sending hours, warm-up** | Each channel's integration page | Per seat and per mailbox — see [LinkedIn](/integrations/linkedin) and [Email](/integrations/email) |

***

## Frequently asked questions

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Does the queue wait time cost me anything?">
    No. A lead in the queue has not been researched — that is the whole point of the
    wait. Credits are spent at the moment a filter matches.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="I set the wait to 48 hours. Do leads sit unresearched for two days?">
    Only leads that match nothing. A lead matching a filter is researched and
    enrolled within about a minute, whatever the wait time is set to.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Are these settings per Autopilot?">
    No — all three are account-wide. Per-Autopilot decisions (filter, channels,
    voice, stop conditions) live in the builder.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>