Can Emazing replace a $1,500–1,900/mo helpdesk + AI stack with a self-hosted system run by Claude? Yes. Here is the whole conversation in one page.
Your Gorgias account has run since 2019. Last 30 days:
~9,450 tickets total. Config surface: 144 macros, 70 rules, 95 views, 623 tags, 5 Shopify stores, 3 chat widgets, 8 email addresses, ~8 human agents, 12 bot users (Yuma). A meaningful slice of email is spam we will kill at the Google layer before it ever becomes a ticket; measuring the exact share is a Phase 0 task.
| Component | Grade | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Core ticketing, macros, rules, views, CSAT | 2 / 10 | Plain CRUD. Days of agent work. |
| Phone (CloudTalk webhook) | 2 / 10 | CloudTalk stays; we just receive its call-ended webhook. |
| Live chat + Shopify sidebar | 3 / 10 | Supabase Realtime (we already run Supabase) + a small widget per brand. |
| Migration + reporting | 3 / 10 | Fully scriptable; we already reverse-engineered Gorgias's reporting API. |
| Email pipeline (86% of volume) | 5 / 10 | Threading, dedupe, attachments, deliverability. Must be bulletproof; gets a 14-day shadow soak. |
| Social bridge | 6 / 10 | Not the code, the Meta app review. Only ~2% of volume and mostly handled outside Gorgias today; last and optional. |
| Operating it 24/7 | 7 / 10 | The real cost. Watchdogs, runbooks, and a rollback path are designed in from day one. |
| New stack line item | $ / month |
|---|---|
| Supabase Pro (database, auth, realtime) | 25 |
| App hosting (Fly.io / Railway) | 20–40 |
| Email infra (Gmail API $0 on existing Workspace, or Postmark) | 0–60 |
| Claude subscriptions for replies ($200 + $100 Max, Router-managed) | 300 |
| Claude API overflow lane (Router "account D", used only at caps) | 20–100 |
| Meta / TikTok APIs · CloudTalk unchanged | 0 |
| Total | ~385–525 |
Deterministic before AI, always. Spam dies at the Google layer for zero tokens. Order-status and tracking questions (the biggest CS category) are answered by scripts hitting Shopify and Loop, zero tokens. Only tickets needing judgment reach Claude: Haiku for simple ones, Sonnet for hard ones, routed through your existing Router across the two Max plans, overflowing to an API key during spikes so customers never wait on a cap reset. Every automated topic starts in draft-only mode and earns auto-send with a 95% approval rate. If automation CSAT dips below 90%, it tiers itself back down.
| # | Decision · recommendation |
|---|---|
| D1 | Name it. Working name "EG Helpdesk". |
| D2 | Dedicated $200 + $100 Claude plans for CS (recommended) vs sharing the existing fleet accounts. API key backs both as overflow. |
| D3 | Yuma connector vs parallel-run until Pam proves out. Recommended: parallel-run; the connector is throwaway work if Pam succeeds. |
| D4 | Email infra: Gmail API on existing Workspace (recommended, $0, the Google-level spam control you asked for) vs Postmark. |
| D5 | Pilot mailbox. Recommended: LuxRave (lowest volume, seasonal, smallest blast radius). |
| D6 | Social: build the Meta/TikTok bridge in Phase 6, or keep social manual forever. |
| D7 | Cutover gates: 99.9% 14-day parity, zero-loss 2-week pilot, 30-day CSAT ≥90%. Confirm or adjust. |
| D8 | On-call: who gets paged besides your Slack DM, and acceptable time-to-restore. |
You answer D1–D8 on the Basecamp card. Phase 0 starts immediately after (Meta verification and the Yuma call are pure calendar time, so the sooner they start, the sooner everything else can land). You and Fable stay orchestrator and planner; Opus, Codex, or any capable builder executes each phase from the PRD, and no phase advances without its acceptance evidence on the card.