The chatbot Playground tab

What it is

Playground is the chatbot's home page — the first tab you land on when you open a chatbot. It shows the chatbot exactly as a visitor sees it — your avatar, colours, header style, welcome message, font, and launcher bubble, drawn from the settings you have saved — and, unlike a screenshot, it is live: type a message in the preview and the real, trained chatbot answers, right there.

It answers one question at a glance: "if I put this on my website right now, what would people get — and what would it say?"

Playground does three more things:

1. Shows every presentation. Three layout tabs above the preview switch between Widget (the floating bubble and panel on your site), Drawer (a full-height panel sliding in from the side), and Full page (the hosted page you share as a link or embed in an iframe). Your conversation, your half-typed message, and even an answer that is still streaming all survive the switch.
2. Tells you whether visitors can reach it, with a prominent note at the top if the chatbot is still a draft or has been deactivated.
3. Gets you to the settings that shape it in one click — a Quick actions card sits beside the preview.

It is a look-and-try page, not a place you configure anything. Actual settings live on the Settings tab; knowledge lives on Knowledge; metrics live on the Analytics tab.

When you would use it

• Every time you open a chatbot, as the first glance.
• After changing the avatar, colours, or welcome message, to confirm what visitors now see.
• After training new knowledge or editing instructions, to ask the chatbot a few real questions in the exact surface your visitors use.
• When a public link is not working and you need to know whether the chatbot is even active.

Where to find it

Open Dashboard → Chatbots → your chatbot → Playground.

Steps

1. Go to Dashboard → Chatbots and open a chatbot. You land on Playground — the first of seven tabs.
2. Look for an activation note first. If the chatbot is draft or inactive, a note at the top says so and explains exactly which surfaces are dead: the public link, the website widget, the iframe, and connected messaging channels. If you have permission to edit chatbots, you can activate directly from that note.
3. Pick a layout. The preview opens in the presentation you chose for the website widget (Integrations → Web widget). Switch between Widget, Drawer, and Full page with the tabs above the canvas; the choice here is a preview only and never changes your embed settings.
4. Talk to it. The message box is real. Send a question and the chatbot answers with your saved knowledge, instructions, and actions — the same engine as the Test Chatbot drawer you can open from the header on every other tab, so what you see is what a visitor gets. The menu in the preview's header starts a New chat or switches between the testing and production environment.
5. Go full screen with the maximize control at the end of the layout row when you want more room — for example to see a long answer or a Full-page conversation the way a visitor on a laptop sees it. Exit full screen, Escape, or your browser's Back button returns the conversation to the tab, intact.
6. Jump from Quick actions. Appearance and Messages open the matching Settings sections, Assign a job opens the Actions tab (Call Actions), and Add to your website opens Integrations → Web widget with the embed snippet.

What the preview reflects — and what it does not

The preview reads the saved chatbot, so it always matches what visitors get today. Unsaved edits on the Settings tab do not appear here until you save them; the Settings tab has its own live preview for that.

It mirrors the widget's chrome — header, welcome bubble, message box, launcher, suggested-message chips, reply options, and Call Action buttons — at the real widget size: the Widget layout never stretches the panel beyond the 400 × 640 window a visitor sees, however large your screen is.

If you hid the launcher bubble in your embed settings, the Widget layout shows the panel already open, because on your site the page opens it for the visitor.

Messages you send here are real turns: they are stored like any other conversation and spend message credits like any other answer — exactly as Test Chatbot does. See Try Test Chatbot.

What you will see

Seven tabs sit under the chatbot's name: Playground, Conversations, Analytics, Knowledge, Actions, Channels, Settings. A Test Chatbot button sits in the header on every tab except the Playground (the same chatbot in a side drawer you can keep open while you edit; on the Playground the page itself is the chat), and a menu next to the tabs holds activate, deactivate, and delete.

Playground itself is the layout tabs and the live preview on a grid canvas, with the Quick actions card beside it on wide screens and below it on a phone. A draft chatbot shows the activation note above both.

Limits and plan notes

Viewing the Playground needs nothing more than permission to view chatbots — Viewers see the same page without the buttons they cannot use. Activating from the note requires permission to edit chatbots.

Opening the Playground does not spend message credits. Credits are spent when the chatbot answers — in the Playground, in Test Chatbot, and on every public surface alike. See Message credits.

A chatbot with no trained knowledge yet tells you so in its reply instead of answering; add a source on Knowledge first — see Knowledge overview.

Common problems

The preview does not show my new colours or welcome message.

You have not saved them yet. Save on the Settings tab and the Playground updates.

I switched layouts and lost my place.

You did not — the conversation, your draft, and any answer in progress carry over between Widget, Drawer, Full page, and full screen. If the chat is empty, you started a New chat from the preview's header menu.

I do not see an Activate button on the note.

Either the chatbot is already active, or your role cannot edit chatbots. Viewers see the explanation without the control. Ask an owner or admin — see Roles and permissions.

Where did the numbers go?

To the Analytics tab, two tabs along. KPIs, charts, Needs attention, Engagement, and the Health & configuration card all live there now — see The chatbot Analytics tab.

Is the Playground the page visitors see?

No. It shows you what visitors see, and answers the way they are answered, but it is dashboard-only. Visitors get the hosted page at /agent/{handle} or the widget on your site. See Hosted page vs. widget.