Journey Guard rules

Journey Guard is the gate every outbound action passes through before it reaches a customer. It applies four kinds of rule in order (frequency caps, quiet hours, channel limits, conflict resolution), can decide that nothing should be sent (NO_ACTION), and writes the reason for every send, hold and drop to the customer’s timeline. Flows, module messages and engine actions all go through it; there is no way for a message to skip it.

The definition

Every outbound action passes through Journey Guard, which enforces frequency caps, quiet hours and channel limits, and resolves conflicts between modules. 'Do nothing' is a valid outcome.

Example A win-back offer and a referral nudge both qualify on Tuesday. One is sent, the other is scheduled, and the timeline says why. See it on How it works

Rules, in the order they run

1. Frequency caps

Caps limit how many actions a customer can receive in a window. They are set per store and can be overridden per flow (tighter only, never looser).

Cap	Default	Applies to
Promotional sends per customer	1 per 7 days	Offers, bonuses, referral nudges, win-backs
Transactional sends per customer	No cap	Order, shipping, restock you asked for, points statements
Review requests per customer	1 per 30 days, and once per order	Review module
Restock alerts per variant per customer	1 per restock event	Back in Stock
Total sends per customer per day	2	Everything except transactional

When a cap blocks an action, the action is held and rescheduled for the first window where it fits, unless it has expired by then (opportunities carry an expiry), in which case it is dropped.

2. Quiet hours

No promotional send goes out between the quiet hours you set (default 21:00–08:00 in the store’s time zone, or the customer’s time zone when Ayra knows it from their last order address). Transactional messages ignore quiet hours. An action that lands in quiet hours is held until they end.

3. Channel limits

Each channel has its own cap and consent requirement. SMS and WhatsApp need explicit consent and are capped at 1 promotional send per 14 days by default; push follows the Shop app’s own limits; email follows the store cap. A customer’s preferred channel (the one they last engaged with) is used when the action allows more than one. If the preferred channel is capped or has no consent, Journey Guard falls back to the next allowed channel rather than waiting, unless the flow says “this channel only”.

4. Conflict resolution

When more than one module or flow wants to reach the same customer in the same window, Journey Guard picks one. The rules:

1. Higher opportunity priority wins (P0 to P4). A VIP restock alert (P1) beats a referral nudge (P3).
2. Ties go to the action with the earlier expiry.
3. Incentive Guard applies: an action that would stack a discount on an incentive the customer already holds is dropped, not held.
4. Trust Recovery applies: review requests and promotions are held while the customer has an open support issue, and released three days after it is resolved.
5. The losing action is held and rescheduled after the cap window, or dropped if it expires first.

NO_ACTION

NO_ACTION is a valid outcome of a decision, not an error. The engine records it when every eligible action was blocked by a rule, when the best action’s expected value is below the threshold you set, or when the customer is in a state where nothing should happen (open issue, recent refund, unsubscribed). Each NO_ACTION carries the rule that produced it, so “why didn’t Ayra send anything” has a one-line answer on the timeline.

Reading the reason on the timeline

Every action line in a customer’s timeline has a status and a reason. The reason is a short code followed by the rule’s values at the time of the decision.

Status	Reason format	Example
Sent	rule: <name>	rule: earn reminder, points expiring in 14 days
Sent	opportunity: <type> P<n>	opportunity: VIP_RESTOCK P1, via whatsapp (preferred)
Held	cap: <cap> (<used>/<limit> in <window>)	cap: promotional (1/1 in 7d), rescheduled 2026-10-21
Held	quiet hours: <from>–<to> <tz>	quiet hours: 21:00–08:00 Asia/Karachi, rescheduled 08:00
Held	conflict: lost to <action> (P<n>)	conflict: lost to VIP_RESTOCK (P1), rescheduled 2026-10-21
Held	trust recovery: ticket #<id> open	trust recovery: ticket #4412 open, release +3d after close
Dropped	expired: <opportunity> after <n>h	expired: WIN_BACK after 72h, never fit a window
Dropped	incentive guard: <existing incentive>	incentive guard: 15% welcome code active until 2026-10-20
No action	NO_ACTION: <rule>	NO_ACTION: below value threshold (score 0.12 < 0.25)

Filter the timeline by status to review every hold and drop for a customer, and use the Journey Guard report in Analytics to see the same counts across all customers.

Changing the rules

Caps, quiet hours and channel limits are in Ayra → Journey Guard. Changes apply to decisions made after you save; held actions are re-evaluated at their next scheduled time under the new rules. A flow can set tighter caps for its own sends but cannot loosen the store caps. Priorities for opportunity types are in Opportunities → Types.

Related

• Concepts: the rest of the vocabulary.
• Email, SMS, WhatsApp, push: consent and sender setup per channel.
• How it works: the same definition, with a worked week.