Every inbound thread gets a deadline. Missed deadlines get escalated.

Deadlines are set by intent, not by you

The routing engine classifies every inbound message and assigns an SLA window automatically. An "interested" prospect gets 5 minutes. A support request gets 30. Billing and legal get an hour. Security flags get 15 minutes.

Intents that auto-archive (not_now, objection, out_of_office) have no SLA deadline — there's nothing to respond to. Low-confidence classifications (below 0.6) automatically escalate to require approval with tighter SLA windows. Flagged messages (conflicting intents, adversarial signals) get 15-minute deadlines regardless of intent.

What happens when a deadline passes

A background worker scans for breached threads every two minutes. When it finds one (open or waiting, deadline passed, not already flagged), three things happen in a single transaction: the thread's status moves to escalated, a thread.sla_breached event publishes to the stream, and the breach timestamp is recorded.

Breach detection processes up to 500 threads per run. It never blocks message processing. If your agent is subscribed to the event stream, it knows about the breach within seconds and can take action (reassign, auto-reply, notify a human). Escalated threads also surface in the portal's override queue for operators to pick up manually.

React to breaches in real-time

Subscribe to thread.sla_breached on the event stream. The payload includes the thread, contact, original deadline, and when the breach was detected.

$ curl -N -H "Authorization: Bearer mm_live_..." \
    "https://api.molted.email/v1/agent/events/stream?eventTypes=thread.sla_breached"

event: thread.sla_breached
data: {
  "threadId": "d290f1ee-6c54-4b01-90e6-d701748f0851",
  "contactEmail": "alice@bigcorp.com",
  "subject": "Re: Contract renewal",
  "slaDeadline": "2026-03-22T10:30:00Z",
  "breachedAt": "2026-03-22T10:32:14Z"
}

Breach alerts

The alerts system tracks SLA breaches over a rolling 24-hour window. Zero breaches is OK. One or more triggers a warning. Five or more is critical. Your agent can poll this or an operator can check the dashboard.

$ molted overrides alerts

{
  "sla_breaches_24h": {
    "level": "warning",
    "count": 3,
    "description": "Threads that breached their SLA deadline in the last 24h"
  }
}