How the AI agent works

When a visitor sends a message, Svellyo searches your workspace's knowledge base for the most relevant passages, combines them with your persona instructions and the conversation so far, and asks the model for a reply. Every answer comes with a confidence score and the sources it used.

The agent hands the chat to your team when any of these happen:

• Its confidence is below your threshold (default 0.45).

• The visitor uses an escalation phrase such as "talk to a human" or "real person".

• The visitor taps Talk to a person in the widget.

• You have set a maximum number of AI turns and it is reached.

• The model decides the question needs a human, for example a refund request or an account problem.

When the AI hands off, the conversation moves to Needs human in your inbox, the visitor sees your expected reply time, and you are notified by email and, if connected, Slack or Discord. If nobody is online, the widget collects an email so you can reply later.

Everything the agent says is visible in the inbox. You can take over any chat with Take over, and hand it back with Hand back to AI.

1. Add knowledge

Open Knowledge base in the sidebar. There are three ways to teach the agent, and you can mix them.

Articles

Write articles in the built-in editor with headings, lists, images, code and links. Each article has a visibility setting:

• Public + AI – shown on your help center and used by the AI.

• AI only – used by the AI but hidden from the help center. Good for internal policies, pricing exceptions or troubleshooting steps you do not want to publish.

Group articles into collections so the help center has a sensible structure. Only published articles are used; drafts are ignored.

Website crawl

Under Sources, add a URL such as your docs site or marketing pages. Svellyo crawls same-site pages, extracts the readable text and indexes it. Set a refresh schedule (daily, weekly, monthly or manual) so the agent stays current when your docs change.

Page limits per source: 25 on Free, 200 on Pro, 1,000 on Scale.

Files

Upload PDF, Markdown or plain-text files. Product manuals, onboarding guides and policy documents work well. Free workspaces can add 3 files, Pro 25.

What makes a good knowledge base

• Write the way you would answer a customer, not the way you would write a spec.

• One topic per article with a clear title. The search works on meaning, so titles like "How do refunds work on yearly plans?" retrieve better than "Billing".

• Keep pricing, limits and policies in AI-only articles so the agent has exact numbers.

• Delete or unpublish stale content. Old answers are worse than no answer, because the agent will state them confidently.

2. Set the persona

Under Settings → AI:

• Enabled – turn the agent on or off for this workspace. When it is off, all chats go straight to your team.

• Agent name and avatar – what visitors see in the widget header.

• Instructions – who the agent is and how it should behave. A good starting point:

  You are the support assistant for Acme Analytics. Be concise and friendly. Only answer from the knowledge base. If you are not sure, say so and offer to bring in a teammate. Never promise refunds or discounts. If someone asks about enterprise pricing, collect their email and hand off.

• Model – the models available to your plan. The default is fast and inexpensive and is right for most teams.

• Reply language – automatic (reply in the visitor's language) or fixed.

• Escalation phrases, confidence threshold and max AI turns – how eagerly the agent hands off. Lower the threshold if it hands off too often; raise it if it guesses too much.

• Auto-escalate when offline – skip the AI outside business hours and go straight to the message form.

Use the Test chat on the same page to try questions before visitors do. It uses the exact same pipeline and shows the sources for each answer.

3. Business hours and away messages

Under Settings → Hours, set the schedule your team is available. The widget shows "Online" during those hours and your away message outside them. Combined with auto-escalate when offline, you decide whether the AI covers nights and weekends.

4. Publish your help center

The Help center tab in the knowledge base turns your public articles into a searchable site.

• Address – every workspace gets help.svellyo.com/your-workspace. On Pro and Scale you can use your own domain such as help.acme.com: add the domain, create the CNAME record shown, and click Verify.

• Branding – title, logo and accent colour. Upload the logo directly; no hosting needed.

• Footer links – link back to your site, status page or contact form.

The help center includes your chat widget, so visitors who cannot find an answer can start a conversation from the article they are reading. Each article has a "Was this helpful?" prompt, and results feed the Top questions and Unanswered questions panels in Analytics so you know what to write next.

Articles marked AI only never appear on the help center, even if someone guesses the URL.

5. Announcements

Announcements in the sidebar lets you post product updates that appear in the widget's What's new tab. Pin important ones. Visitors see a badge when there is something they have not read yet.

6. Measure and improve

Analytics shows chats per day, how many the AI resolved versus your team, first response and resolution times, satisfaction ratings, and the questions the agent could not answer well. A weekly job clusters recent conversations into topics so you can spot gaps in your knowledge base.

A simple weekly routine:

1. Open Unanswered questions and write or fix an article for each one.

2. Read a few escalated chats. If the agent should have answered, add the missing content. If it should have handed off sooner, add an escalation phrase or lower the threshold.

3. Check the satisfaction ratings on AI-resolved chats.

How chats are counted

Plans are priced by active chats per month, not by seats or sites. A conversation counts once per calendar month if a visitor sent at least one message in that month. Usage is added up across every workspace you own, so three products sharing one Pro plan share 200 chats.

PlanChats per monthSeats per workspacePriceFree502$0Pro2005$29/month or $290/yearScale1,000Unlimited$79/month or $790/year

You get an email at 80% and 100% of your limit. Over the limit, the AI pauses and the widget shows a "leave a message" form, but your team can still reply to every conversation. Nothing is ever deleted because of usage.