Shadow mode is a way of running an AI helpdesk on your real customer conversations in which it drafts replies and makes decisions but sends nothing to customers.
The point is to judge the AI on your own traffic before trusting it. Demos use easy questions. Your inbox has the odd refund request, the customer who wrote three paragraphs, and the order that shipped to the wrong address.
Hobson can run in shadow mode alongside Gorgias, connected with an API key. Your team keeps answering in Gorgias as normal. Hobson drafts on the same live conversations, and the Compare view shows its draft next to the reply your team actually sent.
When the drafts in a category are consistently right, you can move that category to Hobson and, later, to auto-send. See shadow mode and switching from Gorgias.