Create your first chatbot

What it is

A chatbot is the unit you train, style, and publish. Creating one runs a five-step wizard: Template → Basics & Style → Messages → AI Config → Customer Data, with a live preview of your widget beside every step. Nothing in the wizard is permanent — every single field can be changed afterwards from the chatbot's Settings tab — so treat it as a fast starting point rather than a decision you have to get right.

Creating a chatbot costs no message credits. Credits are only spent when the chatbot actually answers something, including when you test it yourself.

When you would use it

You have an account and you want something real to ask a question of. Also use this when you are adding a second chatbot for a different audience — a support chatbot and a pre-sales chatbot should almost always be two chatbots, because they need different knowledge and different instructions.

Where to find it

Open Dashboard → Chatbots → Create.

Before you start

You will move faster if you already have:

• A name your team will recognise. "Support — EN" beats "Test 1". The name also becomes the address of your public page, so it is worth two seconds of thought (see below).
• One document worth uploading. A refund policy, an FAQ page, a product sheet. A chatbot with no knowledge can be created but it cannot answer anything useful.
• A decision on language. Pick the language your visitors will write in, not the language you speak internally.

Steps

1. Go to Dashboard → Chatbots and select Create.
2. Template. Pick a starter that matches your work, or search the list. A template pre-fills messages, styling, and sensible defaults for that use case. It does not lock anything — you can change every value later, and changing a template afterwards never deletes knowledge you have uploaded.
3. Basics & Style. Enter the Chatbot Name (required, up to 255 characters) and an optional Description (up to 500 characters). Choose the Main Language. Pick an avatar, header theme, and colour — or accept the template's.
4. Messages. Write the welcome message visitors see first and the fallback message they get when the chatbot cannot answer. Both accept up to 2000 characters. Keep the fallback honest: do not promise a callback if nobody is on call.
5. AI Config. Choose Response Length (Short or Long) and whether to show reference links under answers. There is no model picker here: every new chatbot starts on the Agentency AI model (1X). On a paid plan you can change it later from the AI model card on the Playground tab — see Chatbot AI settings.
6. Customer Data. Optionally ask visitors for contact details before the first reply. Leave this off for now if you are unsure; it is easy to switch on later from Settings → Customer data. See Lead capture fields. This is the last step: check the live preview beside the form, then select Create Chatbot.
7. You land on the new chatbot's Playground tab. Open Knowledge next and add at least one source — Upload files or Add text knowledge.

What you will see

After you create it, the chatbot opens with seven tabs: Playground, Conversations, Analytics, Knowledge, Actions, Integrations, Settings. A Test Chatbot button sits in the header on every tab.

The status starts as draft — nobody outside your dashboard can reach it yet. That is intentional, not a bug. The Playground tab shows a note explaining it, and Analytics will also say Not trained until your first knowledge source finishes processing.

The name becomes your public address

This trips people up later, so it is worth knowing on day one. The chatbot's name is turned into the handle in its public URL, /agent/{handle}. If you name it "Support Bot", the public page becomes something like /agent/support-bot.

Renaming the chatbot regenerates that handle. Any link you already shared with the old handle stops working. So:

• Pick a name you can live with before you print it on anything.
• If you must rename later, recopy the link afterwards and update wherever you published it. See Rename or edit a chatbot and Hosted page handle.

Names must be unique within your account when you create a chatbot — a duplicate is rejected with a "name already exists" error on the create form.

What to do in the first ten minutes after creating it

1. Add one source of knowledge and wait for it to finish training. Nothing else matters until this is done.
2. Ask it a real question with the Test Chatbot button in the chatbot header — Try Test Chatbot.
3. Read the answer critically. If it is vague, your source is probably vague too.
4. Only then think about activation and channels. Go-live checklist walks the rest.

Limits and plan notes

Your plan caps how many chatbots you can have: Free 1, Starter 2, Standard 5, Pro 10, Agency 30. Paid plans can also buy extra chatbot slots as an add-on — see Extra chatbots and knowledge.

Knowledge is capped per chatbot, not per account: 400 KB on Free, rising to 10 MB on Starter, 20 MB on Standard, 40 MB on Pro, and 60 MB on Agency. Chatbot and knowledge limits has the detail.

Custom instructions are also plan-tiered (1 on Free, up to 20 on Agency), and Call actions are unavailable on Free.

Common problems

Create is disabled, or I get an upgrade prompt.

You are at your plan's chatbot limit. Either delete a chatbot you no longer need (Delete a chatbot) or raise the cap from Settings → Billing (Upgrade or downgrade).

"A chatbot with this name already exists."

Names must be unique inside your account. Add a qualifier — "Support — EN", "Support — Wholesale".

I picked the wrong template.

Templates only seed the first setup. Change knowledge, messages, appearance, and instructions freely afterwards. You can even switch template from Settings → General without losing anything you have uploaded.

No templates are listed at all.

That means the deployment has no active templates configured. You can still create a chatbot — skip the template step and fill in the basics yourself.

I created it and the public link 404s.

Expected. A new chatbot is a draft. See Activate or pause a chatbot.