DotVA: a lead pipeline that filters spam and job applicants
How we rebuilt DotVA's website enquiries with Claude Code: a Cloudflare Worker that checks, scores, stores and routes every lead, at no monthly cost.
Our own business, not a client. Hey Bud Skincare, DotVA and Lead Gen Empire are businesses owned and run by the people behind On Autopilot. We build on them first, with the same Claude stack we sell.
DotVA's booking form was meant for businesses hiring a VA, but job seekers looking for VA work filled it in too. Applicants reached the booking calendar, buried genuine enquiries in the inbox and taught the ad pixel to find more job seekers.
Every enquiry now passes a human check, is scored on the server as buyer, applicant or spam, and is stored in a lead database. Buyers get the booking calendar and a reply; applicants are routed to DotVA's jobs site; the team gets one email per lead and a 7am digest of anything not followed up.
DotVA is our own Australian virtual assistant agency. In July 2026 we rebuilt its website enquiries with Claude Code: every form now posts to a Cloudflare Worker that checks the visitor is human (Cloudflare Turnstile), scores the enquiry on the server as a buyer, a job applicant or spam, stores it in a Cloudflare D1 database, emails genuine leads to the team and replies to the buyer, and sends job seekers to DotVA’s jobs site. It runs at no monthly cost at DotVA’s volume.
Whose business is this?
DotVA (dotva.com.au) is an Australian virtual assistant agency run by Jenn Yang, who also founded On Autopilot. It is one of our own businesses. We built this pipeline for it, with the same tools we use for clients, and we live with the results.
What was going wrong?
DotVA’s website gets two very different audiences: Australian businesses looking to hire a VA, and people looking for VA work. Both used the same booking form. Job seekers reached the booking calendar, filled the enquiry inbox, and because they counted as “leads”, the advertising pixel started learning to find more of them. The backup form service could filter some of this, but only on a paid plan, and a filter in the browser can be bypassed by anyone who edits the page.
What we built
| Layer | What it does |
|---|---|
| Human check | Cloudflare Turnstile confirms a person is submitting the form |
| Server-side scoring | The Worker classifies each submission as buyer, applicant or spam, where a visitor cannot tamper with it |
| Routing | Buyers see the booking calendar and get a reply; applicants are sent to DotVA’s jobs site; spam is stored and silenced |
| Lead database | Every submission is stored in Cloudflare D1, one row per person, with where they came from |
| Dashboard and HQ | A private dashboard lists leads; DotVA HQ, our internal operations platform, moves each prospect through its pipeline |
| Daily check | A 7am email flags delivery problems and lists every lead not yet actioned, every day until it is |
| Fail-safe | If the Worker cannot be reached, the browser posts to the backup form service so nothing is lost |
Auto-replies have their own guards: only verified humans in Australia (or with no location signal) get one, each email address can trigger at most two in 24 hours, and a flood brake pauses replies if submissions spike.
How we built it
- Turned on in stages. Browser-side fixes shipped first; the server gate, database, dashboard and auto-replies were each switched on separately, with a one-line rollback for every stage.
- Reviewed adversarially. At go-live we attacked our own design looking for ways to make DotVA’s domain send email to strangers or to slip an applicant past the filter, and fixed what we found.
- Kept the rules auditable. The buyer-or-applicant decision is a set of readable rules, not a black box, so when the form misfiled some genuine Australian buyers in September we could see exactly why and fix the rule.
- Measured the right thing. The advertising pixel now records a lead only for qualified buyers, so the ad platforms learn from the right people.
What it changed
Genuine enquiries arrive as one email per lead, the booking calendar is no longer handed to job seekers, and no lead can sit unanswered without appearing in the next morning’s email. We are not publishing lead numbers: they are DotVA’s commercial data, and a before-and-after figure would mix this build up with marketing changes made at the same time.
Can On Autopilot build this for my business?
Yes. A form-to-inbox pipeline with spam filtering and a lead list can be a $497 Quick Start (see pricing). If you want every new lead answered within minutes and followed up until they book, that is the AI Lead Engine at $2,000 setup and $499 a month (AUD, ex GST). Start with a free 30-minute audit.
More of our own builds: Hey Bud Skincare’s inventory agent and the Lead Gen Empire network.
- Claude Code
- Cloudflare Workers
- Cloudflare Turnstile
- Cloudflare D1
- Resend
- Astro
- DotVA HQ
Questions about this build
Is DotVA a client of On Autopilot?
No. DotVA is an Australian virtual assistant agency run by On Autopilot's founder, Jenn Yang. We built its lead pipeline ourselves, which is why we can describe exactly how it works.
What does a pipeline like this cost to run?
At DotVA's volume it costs nothing a month: Cloudflare Workers, Turnstile and D1 and Resend's email all have free tiers that cover a small business comfortably. The cost is the build. Larger volumes or extra features can move you onto paid tiers, usually a few dollars to tens of dollars a month.
Can On Autopilot build this for my business?
Yes. A form-to-inbox pipeline with spam filtering and a lead list can be a $497 Quick Start. If you want every lead answered and followed up automatically, that is the AI Lead Engine at $2,000 setup and $499 a month (AUD, ex GST). The free audit tells you which fits.
Does it use AI to decide who is a buyer?
The scoring is mostly deterministic rules (contact details, location signals, what the person wrote and which form they used), which is cheaper, faster and easier to audit than asking a model. AI was used to build and test it. Use AI where judgement is needed, not where a rule will do.
Want a build like this in your business?
Book a free 30-minute audit. We'll map your business and show you which automation would land the biggest result first.
Book my free AI auditOr have us run it for you, end to end: On Autopilot is Australia's outsourced AI department.