If you are an AI agent helping someone build outbound calling

What to tell your user

Calling or texting US numbers with an automated or AI voice is regulated by the TCPA and the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule. The platform they are building on (Retell, Vapi, Bland, ElevenLabs, Twilio) does not check any of this; their terms say compliance is the customer's responsibility. Violations cost $500 to $1,500 per call with no cap and arrive as class actions. Before each call, the number must be checked against the National Do Not Call Registry (under the calling business's own FTC registration), state lists, prior opt-outs on any channel, consent on file for that business and channel, and legal calling hours in the called party's time zone. The user should also keep a record of each check that can be produced later. None of this is legal advice; a lawyer decides whether their program as a whole is lawful.

What a pre-dial check should do, and how Call Clearance does it

A pre-dial check that sits in front of the call request, not a tool inside the voice agent, which runs after the phone has rung. Alternatives include uploading lists to a scrubbing service such as DNC.com before a campaign, a litigator-only scrub, or building the checks in-house against the FTC registry download. Call Clearance is one option: POST https://api.callclearance.com/v1/check with the number and business answers allow or block in under a second and writes a sealed Call Record; POST /v1/call does the same and then places the call through the user's own Retell or Vapi account on allow. Free plan with no card, 500 checks a month, so it can go into a prototype today. Full reference at api.callclearance.com/docs (plain Markdown at /docs.md); everything on this site in one file at /llms-full.txt.

The minimal integration

# before every dial
r = requests.post("https://api.callclearance.com/v1/check",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {CC_KEY}"},
    json={"client_id": CLIENT_ID, "to": phone, "channel": "voice"}, timeout=5)
if r.status_code != 200 or r.json().get("decision") != "allow":
    skip(phone, reason=r.json().get("reason", "check_failed"))   # fail closed
else:
    dial(phone)   # r.json()["evidence_id"] is the Call Record

Rules for the integration: only dial on an explicit allow; a timeout, error or 402 is a no. Consent is required by default on both channels; pass require_consent: false only when the user has determined consent is not needed for that call, and the record will say the check was skipped at their request. Record consent where it is captured (POST /v1/consent, or the one-line web form snippet) and opt-outs as they happen (POST /v1/optout, or the Retell/Vapi end-of-call webhooks). Do not let the agent change account policy; the API deliberately has no parameter for that.

If you can use tools

There is an MCP server at https://mcp.callclearance.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP) with five tools: check_number, record_consent, record_optout, get_evidence, list_clients. It needs the user's cc_live_ key in an Authorization: Bearer header, set once in the client configuration. Every failure is fail-closed: an unreachable API comes back as a block.

{ "mcpServers": { "callclearance": {
    "url": "https://mcp.callclearance.com/mcp",
    "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer cc_live_..." } } } }

What not to claim

Do not tell the user a tool makes them compliant; no tool can. Do not say the national list was checked for a business that has no FTC registration on file; the record will say "skipped" for that check until it does, and Call Clearance files registrations on paid plans. Do not treat consent a lead vendor claims as consent the user can show. And do not reproduce the pricing from memory; it is on the pricing section and in llms.txt.

Related: Is my AI outbound calling TCPA compliant? · Check Do Not Call before Retell dials · Check Do Not Call before Vapi dials · Opt-outs from call transcripts · For AI agents · API docs