Most teams trying to build their own AI receptionist think the hard part is the AI. It's not. The AI is the easy part now. The hard part is everything around the AI. The part that doesn't show up in demos or tutorials. The part that takes six to eight months to figure out and breaks every time it goes near production. I've watched a few teams try to build this themselves. They all hit the same wall. 1000ms — Total latency budget per response 6-8 mo — Orchestration buildout before production 8 layers — Hidden under the 30-second demo What they think they're building You watch a Vapi or Retell demo. Agent answers a call, takes a booking, sends a confirmation. Looks simple. So they think the build is: Pick an LLM Write some prompts Pick a voice Connect a phone number Ship it A weekend project. What they're actually building Here's what's underneath that 30-second demo. Telephony layer. SIP trunking. Carrier integration. STIR/SHAKEN attestation so calls don't get marked as spam. Inbound number provisioning.…