Bot Starter Templates

A starter template seeds your bot's instructions with six sections that almost every assistant needs — identity, escalation rules, common scenarios, edge cases, voice rules, and a FAQ. The structure is the same for every starter; the wording changes to match the kind of business.

Each starter contains around nine <!-- TODO: ... --> markers — short prompts that ask you to fill in business specifics (your name, hours, address, key policies). The bot works the moment you save, but it works better the moment you replace those markers with real answers.

The starter picker appears in two places:

• Empty state — when a new AI assistant doesn't have any instructions yet, the Instructions tab shows a dashed card "Start from a template" with one button per available starter. The recommended choice for your tenant is highlighted.
• Manually anytime — you can clear instructions and re-pick a starter if your business has pivoted. (You won't lose history — every save is versioned.)

Which starters appear depends on your tenant's product tier:

Pick the one whose "Best for" line matches your business.

When a starter loads, it seeds the prompt with a handful of markers like:

<!-- TODO: your business name -->
<!-- TODO: opening hours (e.g. "Mon–Fri 9 to 18") -->
<!-- TODO: address + how to find the entrance -->

The text after TODO: is the question. The setup wizard turns each marker into a form field; on save, your answers replace the markers across the welcome line and the full prompt at once.

Each starter ships with around five short markers covering:

• Your business / company name (appears 2–3× across welcome + content)
• The kind of business (e.g. "dental clinic" or "car rental")
• FAQ rows: who you are, hours, address, how to book, after-hours emergency policy

Scenarios and edge cases don't ship as markers any more. The starter still has ## Common scenarios and ## Edge cases & guardrails sections — they're where your bot's prompt grows over time — but the setup wizard skips them. They're hard to predict cold; the bot's weekly improvement loop fills them in once it's seen a few real calls.

Picking a starter opens a two-step wizard:

1. Step 1 — describe your business in one paragraph. One textarea, plain language. The wizard sends it to the AI, which extracts answers for every marker it can confidently fill (business name, hours, escalation phone, etc.) and pre-fills the fields for you. If you'd rather fill the fields by hand, click "Skip — I'll fill the fields myself".
2. Step 2 — review. The per-marker fields appear, already populated where the AI was confident. Edit anything that looks off, fill the blanks for whatever the paragraph didn't cover, save.

Once saved, both Welcome content (what the bot says when it first picks up) and Instructions content (the full system prompt with all six sections) appear in the Instructions tab as editable cards. Click any section to edit its body inline.

The Improvements tab on each bot watches real call transcripts and proposes wording changes weekly. Once you're live, lean on it instead of trying to predict every scenario up front — that's exactly what it's built for.

If you picked the wrong starter — for example, you started with Generic Support and realised STR fits better — you can clear and re-pick:

1. Open the Instructions tab on the assistant.
2. Delete the sections you want to replace (the trash icon next to each section title).
3. With all sections empty, the starter picker reappears — choose the new template.

Every save is versioned, so even if you change your mind again, you can recover the previous version from the version history.