# Start from our defaults. Override only what you need.

Channel availability, sender rules, and regulations differ by country, and getting them right is years of work. Bird ships that as a per-country base configuration: which channels land where, which senders are allowed, and sane code defaults. Your settings layer on top. You change one thing for one country; everything you don't touch falls through to the layer below. That's per-country routing as a first-class API resource, the control most verification APIs don't give you.

## You inherit Bird's defaults, then build on them.

Every verification on the Bird Verify API resolves its settings through a cascade. At the bottom is a per-country base Bird maintains from years of running email and SMS — so before you configure anything, a verification already routes sensibly in every country. Your configuration and per-country overrides layer on top, and a per-request option can tune a single call. You're never starting from a blank slate, and you only own the decisions you actually want to make.

## The value cascade.

The highest tier that sets a value wins; anything you leave unset falls through to the tier below.

## Override a country, inherit the rest.

Set your plan once, then touch only the countries that need something different. Here Brazil leads with WhatsApp, then SMS; every other country keeps falling through to your defaults and Bird's base.

## What a verification resolves to.

A Brazilian number under this configuration resolves through the cascade. The BR override orders WhatsApp then SMS, both are available, and the verification reports the ordered plan it will use, with its typed vrf_ id.

## Two ceilings sit above the cascade.

The cascade decides defaults. Two gates decide what's allowed — they cap the resolved plan rather than supplying values that fall through:

Per-country availability. You can only enable channels Bird actually offers in a country. Enabling one we don't support there is a no-op, not a silent failure — availability is an intersection, never an override.

Global kill-switch. When a provider has an incident, Bird can pull a channel everywhere at once. Your configuration isn't touched; the resolved plan simply falls back to the next channel, then restores when the switch clears.

## Routing you set, not a ticket you file.

Resolved per verification, returned on the response.

## The per-country control no other verification API gives you.

Orchestration is one capability of Bird Verify: the channels, the code, and the limits ship with it, on the same two endpoints.