How to Have NOVA Make Phone Calls

Some things still happen by phone.

The restaurant with no booking page. The vendor who wants a quote conversation. The office that only takes appointments on the line.

That is the gap NOVA (Native Omnimodal Voice Agent) closes. You can have NOVA make phone calls for you: a real outbound call, placed from your own number, with NOVA doing the talking and the listening.

You hand it one objective. It dials. It reports back.

This is two parts. Setup, which you do once. Use, which you do whenever you want a call made.

Part 1: Setup (you do this once)

NOVA places calls through Twilio, and Twilio is BYOK; you bring your own keys.

Your account, your number, your minutes. NOVA never sits between you and the carrier.

Here is the order that works.

1. Create a Twilio account

Go to twilio.com and sign up.

You will land on a trial account. Trial is fine for kicking the tires, but it has rails: it can only call numbers you have verified, and it injects a "this call is from a Twilio trial account" message at the start.

Good enough to prove it works. Not good enough for real calls.

2. Buy a phone number

In the Twilio console, buy a number with voice capability.

This is the number NOVA calls from. Pick one in your area code if local caller ID matters to you.

Write it down in E.164 format, which means the plus sign and country code: +15551234567, not (555) 123-4567. NOVA wants E.164.

3. Upgrade from trial to a production account

Add a payment method and upgrade.

This drops the trial restrictions: no more verified-numbers-only, no more trial preamble. Now NOVA can call anyone you point it at.

4. Add funds and buy minutes

Twilio is pay-as-you-go. Load some balance.

Calls are cheap, usually cents per minute, but a call with zero balance is a call that does not connect. Top it up and set auto-recharge if you want to never think about it again.

5. Paste your credentials into the NOVA Comms tab

Open Settings in NOVA and go to the Comms tab. You will paste three things from your Twilio console:

• Account SID (your account identifier)
• Auth Token (your secret; treat it like a password)
• From Number (the number you bought, in E.164)

Each field has an info icon with a "get your key" link, so you are never hunting through the Twilio dashboard blind.

One more piece works automatically: the relay.

NOVA needs a public endpoint Twilio can reach to bridge the call to your desktop. It ships pointed at the NOVA call relay by default, so you do not have to configure anything. If you self-host your own relay, you can override it. Most people never touch it.

Save. That is setup. You do not repeat any of this.

If you are new to NOVA and have not done the first-run pass yet, start with How to Set Up NOVA: A Beginner Guide, then come back here for phone.

Part 2: Use (this is the good part)

Now you just ask.

The simplest version: give NOVA an objective and a number.

"Call +15551234567, the dentist on Main, and book me a cleaning next week. Tuesday or Thursday afternoon is best. Mornings are out."

NOVA dials. NOVA talks. NOVA listens.

When the receptionist offers Thursday at 2, NOVA takes it, because you told it Thursday afternoon was good. When they push a Monday morning, NOVA declines and asks for something else, because you told it mornings are out.

You do not have to know the number, either. NOVA can find one.

"Find the best-rated plumber near me, call them, and get a quote for a leaking water heater. Ask about same-day availability."

NOVA searches the web, pulls the number off the listing, and makes the call. If you want to see how the search side works on its own, NOVA Can Search the Web covers it.

What actually happens on the line

NOVA speaks in your configured ElevenLabs voice and hears the other side in real time.

Twilio's ConversationRelay bridges the call: it streams the audio to and from your desktop while ElevenLabs handles the voice. That keeps the latency low and the conversation natural.

If the person on the line starts talking, NOVA hears it and adjusts, the way a real conversation flows.

The way NOVA represents you on a call is set by guardrails you control:

• NOVA opens by disclosing it is an AI assistant calling on your behalf. This is the default posture, and it is the one to keep.
• NOVA speaks about you in the third person. "I am calling on behalf of Mr. Olson." It represents you; it does not impersonate you.
• NOVA pursues exactly one objective. One call, one mission. No drift.

You control what it is allowed to say

This is the part most "AI calling" demos skip, and it is the part that matters.

When NOVA makes a call, the facts it carries are tiered. You decide what goes in each tier:

• Open: volunteer freely. Your name, party size, the dates you want, a callback number.
• On request: share only if asked. Email, street address, an insurance carrier name.
• Never: the line that does not exist. Payment cards, SSNs, member IDs. The call agent has no way to say these. If the business asks, NOVA's answer is "Mr. Olson will provide that directly."

And the call itself runs in a sandbox.

The voice agent on the line is a separate, locked-down session with zero tools. Nothing anyone says on the phone can reach into your machine or your real assistant. Whatever the call agent hears is treated as data, never as instructions.

A brief goes in. A clean outcome comes out.

That is the local-first posture you bought NOVA for, extended to the phone line. Your keys, your number, your rules about what leaves your mouth. Get NOVA if you have not yet; it is a one-time $999, and phone calling is built in.

Hand it more than one

You are not limited to a single call and done.

"Get me quotes from these three movers. Same load, same date. Tell me who is cheapest and who can actually do Saturday."

NOVA runs each call as a tracked job, works them through, and brings back the comparison. Ring-around tasks that would eat your whole afternoon collapse into one sentence and a few minutes of waiting.

Where this fits

Phone is one channel.

NOVA also lives in Slack, Telegram, and WhatsApp, so you can fire off a "call the dentist" from your couch and read the outcome on your phone. That cross-channel setup is in Connect NOVA to Slack, Telegram, and WhatsApp.

And calling is one of many things NOVA does without you babysitting it. If you want the wider tour, 12 Cool Things You Can Do With NOVA is a good next stop.

For now: set up Twilio once, paste three keys, and start handing off the calls you have been dreading.

Hell yeah. Let it dial.