My Event RSVPs Are Now Fully Automated (and Guests Actually Show Up)#

Last month I hosted a company offsite for 24 people. The week before, I realized I had no idea who was actually showing up. Emails went unread. Slack messages got buried. A text blast got me three responses — two of which were "sorry, can't make it."

So I did what I always do: picked up the phone and started dialing.

Twenty phone calls later, I had scribbled notes on sticky notes, a half-finished spreadsheet, and a growing headache. I forgot to ask Sarah about her dietary restriction until my coworker mentioned it at the event. Mike brought a plus-one I didn't have a seat for.

There has to be a better way.

Why phone calls still win#

Here's the thing — phone calls work. They get dramatically higher response rates than text or email. People pick up, they answer directly, and you can ask follow-up questions on the spot.

The problem isn't the medium. It's the manual labor of making 20+ calls, playing phone tag, and keeping track of what everyone said.

I fixed this by having an AI make the calls for me.

The setup: OpenClaw + SuperCall#

I use OpenClaw as my automation layer, and the SuperCall plugin handles the actual phone calls. SuperCall is a fully standalone voice agent — it calls people via Twilio, talks to them using OpenAI's GPT-4o Realtime voice model, and logs the conversation.

The key detail: SuperCall is sandboxed. The AI on the call only has access to the context you explicitly give it — a persona name, a goal, and an opening line. It can't access your files, your other tools, or your main agent.

This matters for two reasons. First, safety — nobody on the other end can prompt-inject their way into your system. Second, conversation quality — a scoped, single-purpose agent stays on topic way better than a general-purpose one.

What you get is a focused, natural-sounding call that asks about RSVP status, collects dietary needs, notes plus-ones, and hangs up. No weird tangents.

What you need before starting#

Grab these four things:

• SuperCall plugin — install via openclaw plugins install @xonder/supercall
• Twilio account with a phone number for outbound calls
• OpenAI API key — GPT-4o Realtime handles the voice
• ngrok — for webhook tunneling, free tier works fine

The SuperCall README walks through the full config. Make sure hooks are enabled in your OpenClaw config before proceeding.

Preparing the guest list#

Keep it simple. A plain text file works:

Guest List — Summer BBQ, Saturday June 14th, 4 PM, 23 Oak Street

- Sarah Johnson: +15551234567
- Mike Chen: +15559876543
- Rachel Torres: +15555551234
- David Kim: +15558887777

You can paste this directly into the chat or reference a file. No fancy formatting needed.

The prompt that runs everything#

Here's what I feed OpenClaw:

I need you to confirm attendance for my event. Here are the details:

Event: Summer BBQ
Date: Saturday, June 14th at 4 PM
Location: 23 Oak Street

Here is my guest list:
<paste your guest list here>

For each guest, use supercall to call them. Use the persona "Jamie, event coordinator
for [your name]". The goal for each call is to confirm whether they're attending,
and note any dietary restrictions, plus-ones, or other comments.

After each call, log the result. Once all calls are done, give me a full summary:
- Who confirmed
- Who declined
- Who didn't answer
- Any notes or special requests from each guest

OpenClaw calls each guest one by one. You can check in anytime by asking for a status update. When it's done, you get a clean summary — confirmed, declined, no-answer, and every note or special request organized by name.

Things I learned the hard way#

Test with 2-3 people first. I made the mistake of blasting my full 24-person list on the first run. The persona sounded slightly too formal, and I couldn't adjust mid-batch. Now I always run a small test group, tweak the tone, then let it rip on the full list.

Watch the clock. You don't want your AI calling guests at 8 AM or 9 PM. Tell OpenClaw to restrict calling hours — something like "only call between 10 AM and 7 PM in the guest's local timezone."

Read the transcripts. SuperCall logs everything to ~/clawd/supercall-logs. After my first batch, I skimmed through a few and noticed the agent wasn't asking about plus-ones consistently. A small prompt tweak fixed it for the next run.

No-answers need a plan. Not everyone picks up. Decide upfront: do you want OpenClaw to retry once, or flag them for a manual follow-up text? I go with flag-and-text — it feels less aggressive.

Calls cost money. Twilio charges per minute. For 24 guests with ~2-minute calls, I spent about $1.80 total. Not nothing — set spending limits in your Twilio console if you're running large lists.

Why this beats the alternatives#

Email RSVPs: 30-40% open rate, maybe half of those respond. You're chasing people for days.

Text blasts: Better open rates, but people treat them as one-way announcements. Response rates are still low.

Manual phone calls: Highest response rate, but you lose an entire afternoon and probably miss half the details.

SuperCall gives you the response rate of a phone call without the time cost. And because the agent asks the same questions every time, you don't forget to collect dietary restrictions or plus-one info.

The result#

My offsite went from 24 maybes to a confirmed list of 19 attendees, 3 declines, and 2 no-answers (who I texted separately). I had every dietary restriction logged, knew about two extra plus-ones in advance, and spent maybe 10 minutes setting the whole thing up.

The AI made the calls. I focused on actual event planning.

If you're running events — community meetups, company offsites, dinner parties, weddings — and you're tired of chasing RSVPs, this is the kind of automation that actually saves you real time. Not theoretical productivity gains. Actual hours back on your calendar.

Head over to papayaclaw.com to see how OpenClaw can handle this and dozens of other workflows for your team.