Documentation
Everything you need to set up, train, and manage your ChatForge chatbot.
Getting Started
Create Your Account
Sign up for a free account at app.chatforge.chat. No credit card required. You get 1 bot, 50 conversations/month, and 100 lifetime messages to try everything out.
Create Your First Bot
From the Dashboard, click "Create Bot" and choose from 14 industry-specific templates (e-commerce, real estate, healthcare, legal, and more) or start from scratch. Each template comes pre-loaded with Q&A pairs, response rules, and capture forms tailored to your industry.
Upload Documents
Go to the Documents page and upload PDFs, DOCX files, or add web URLs. ChatForge automatically extracts text, splits it into searchable chunks (~800 tokens each with overlap), generates vector embeddings, and indexes everything for instant retrieval. Track each document's status: uploading, pending, processing, or ready.
Fill In Your Business Profile
Go to the Profile page and enter your business name, hours, address, phone, email, website, refund policy, and shipping info. These values automatically replace {{placeholders}} like {{business_hours}} and {{phone}} throughout all bot responses, Q&A answers, and the widget.
Customize Your Bot
On the Customize page, set your bot's persona, tone, colors, theme (light/dark), avatar, bubble icon, welcome message, response language, system prompt, and up to 5 suggested questions. Use the Live Preview panel to see changes in real time.
Embed on Your Website
Copy the one-line script tag from the Embed Code page and paste it before the closing </body> tag on your website. Framework-specific guides are provided for React/Next.js, Vue/Nuxt, Angular, Svelte/SvelteKit, Astro, WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, and Squarespace.
Training Your Bot
How RAG Works
When a visitor asks a question, ChatForge embeds the question into a vector, searches your document chunks for the most relevant content (top 5 matches above a 0.3 similarity threshold), then sends the question + retrieved context to an AI model that generates a grounded, accurate answer with source attribution.
Q&A Pairs
Define exact question-answer pairs on the Training page for precise control over specific questions. Each pair includes a question, answer, and optional keywords. When a visitor's question matches with >95% similarity (or matches a keyword), the exact answer is returned. Matches between 80-95% similarity are injected as additional context. Q&A pairs always take priority over document-based answers.
Response Rules
Add rules that control your bot's behavior. Four types: Tone (how the bot communicates), Constraint (boundaries like "never make up prices"), Escalation (what to do when the visitor is frustrated), and Fallback (what to say when the bot can't answer). Rules are injected into the system prompt and can be toggled on or off individually.
Business Profile & Placeholders
Standard fields (business name, hours, address, phone, email, website, refund policy, shipping info) plus custom fields for industry-specific data like service areas, room types, or coverage types. All fields support {{placeholder}} syntax that auto-resolves in Q&A answers, response rules, system prompts, welcome messages, and suggested questions.
Priority System
ChatForge uses a clear priority hierarchy: Q&A exact matches (>95% similarity or keyword match) take top priority, then response rules shape the tone and behavior, then document-based RAG answers fill in the rest. This gives you precise control over critical answers while letting the AI handle everything else.
Widget Configuration
Embedding the Widget
Add one script tag to your site with your bot ID. The widget (~11KB gzipped) loads in a Shadow DOM so it won't conflict with your existing styles. Responses stream token-by-token for a natural conversation feel.
Colors & Theme
Set a primary color and text color to match your brand. Toggle between light and dark themes. The primary color is applied to buttons, headers, and accents. The text color applies to text on colored backgrounds.
Bot Avatar & Bubble Icon
Upload a custom bot avatar (max 2MB) that appears in the widget header and next to assistant messages. Upload a custom bubble icon (max 1MB) that replaces the default chat button icon on the floating widget.
Header Subtitle
Add a subtitle that appears below the bot's persona name in the widget header. On Free plans, this is automatically set to "Powered by ChatForge."
Multi-Language Support
Choose from 20 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Thai, and Swedish. Set to "Auto-detect" to respond in the visitor's browser language, or lock to a specific language. The AI translates all content naturally, including Q&A answers and document-sourced responses.
Suggested Questions
Add up to 5 suggested questions that appear as clickable chips when the chat opens. After every bot response, the AI also generates 2-3 dynamic follow-up questions in the conversation's language to keep visitors engaged.
Widget Position
Choose bottom-right or bottom-left placement on the Settings page. The widget is fully responsive and adapts to any screen size on mobile and desktop.
Live Preview
The Customize page includes a side-by-side Live Preview panel that updates in real time as you change colors, theme, avatar, persona, and other settings.
Industry Templates
14 Templates Available
Generic Business, E-Commerce, Real Estate, Restaurant, SaaS, Healthcare, Fitness, Legal, Education, Home Services, Automotive, Hotel, Insurance, and Financial Services. Each includes 5-10 Q&A pairs, response rules, a configured persona, and industry-specific capture forms.
Pre-Built Q&A Pairs
Template Q&A pairs use {{placeholder}} syntax so they work with any business. Fill in your Business Profile once and every answer is instantly personalized with your hours, location, policies, and contact info.
Industry Capture Forms
Templates include pre-configured capture forms with trigger patterns. Home Services includes a Service Request form that triggers on "repair" or "maintenance." Healthcare includes Patient Registration. Real Estate includes Property Inquiries. Each form is multi-step with the right field types for the industry.
Industry-Specific Custom Fields
Each template adds relevant custom fields to the Business Profile: service areas and license info for Home Services, room types and check-in times for Hotels, coverage types and claims process for Insurance, and more.
Customize Everything
Templates are a starting point. Add, edit, or remove Q&A pairs, rules, and forms. Change the persona, tone, and system prompt. Adjust trigger patterns on capture forms. Everything is fully editable.
Capture Forms
How They Work
Each capture form has regex trigger patterns. When a visitor's message matches a pattern (e.g., "I need a repair" triggers the service request form), a multi-step form appears inline in the chat widget. Each form type only triggers once per conversation to avoid annoying visitors.
15 Form Types
Service requests, patient registrations, property inquiries, reservation requests, case inquiries, vehicle service requests, vehicle interest, order issues, room inquiries, quote requests, demo requests, bug reports, consultation requests, trial requests, and enrollment interests.
Form Builder
Build and customize forms from the Forms page. Each form supports up to 8 steps with up to 10 fields per step. Field types include text, email, phone, textarea, select dropdowns, radio buttons, checkbox groups, date pickers, and number inputs. Set fields as required or optional.
Trigger Patterns
Each form has one or more regex patterns that trigger it. For example, a service request form might trigger on "repair|maintenance|fix|broken|not working." Patterns are configurable per form. The system returns the first matching form and tracks which forms have already been shown in the conversation.
Form Entries Dashboard
All submissions appear in the Form Entries page organized by form type. Each entry includes the full form data, submission date, and a status field (new, contacted, or resolved). Search across entries, filter by status, and export to CSV.
Email Notifications
When a visitor submits a capture form, you receive a styled HTML email with all form data displayed in a table. Includes a direct link to the form entries dashboard.
Limits
Each bot supports up to 10 capture form definitions. Each form can have up to 8 steps and up to 10 fields per step.
Lead Capture
Automatic Trigger
ChatForge detects two types of signals: buying intent (visitor mentions pricing, demos, getting started, quotes, or purchasing) and low confidence (the bot's best document match is below 60% similarity). When either is detected, an inline lead form appears in the chat.
Collected Fields
The lead form collects name (required), email (required), and phone (optional). The original question and full conversation context are saved automatically.
One Per Conversation
The lead form only appears once per conversation. Once a lead is captured (or the visitor dismisses the form), it won't trigger again in the same session.
Custom Lead Form Heading
Set a custom heading for the lead form on the Customize page (e.g., "Want us to follow up? Leave your info:"). Supports {{placeholder}} syntax.
Lead Dashboard
View all captured leads with name, email, phone, original question, and timestamp. Track lead status. Click "View chat" to see the full conversation that generated the lead.
Email Notifications
You receive an email notification whenever a new lead is captured, with the lead details and a link to the conversation.
CSV Export
Export all leads to a CSV file from the Leads dashboard.
Appointment Scheduling
Setup
Enable scheduling from the Scheduling page. Set your timezone (any IANA timezone), slot duration (15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes), and optional custom sender email for notifications.
Weekly Availability
Configure availability for each day of the week. Each day can be toggled on or off and supports multiple time ranges (e.g., 9:00-12:00 and 13:00-17:00 for a lunch break).
How Visitors Book
When a visitor mentions booking, scheduling, appointments, meetings, or availability, the widget presents a multi-step form: a date picker showing the next 14 days, available time slots for the selected date (with already-booked slots removed), and a contact form for name, email, phone, and an optional note.
Double-Booking Prevention
The system uses an atomic transaction to check slot availability and create the booking simultaneously. If someone else books the same slot in the meantime, the visitor gets a friendly conflict message.
Email Confirmations
Both you and the visitor receive a styled confirmation email with an attached iCal (.ics) calendar invite. The invite includes the date, time, visitor name, and any notes.
Managing Appointments
View all appointments in the Appointments dashboard with visitor name, email, date, time, and status (confirmed or canceled). Search, filter, cancel appointments, and export to CSV.
Conversations
Conversation Inbox
Browse all chat sessions for each bot. Each row shows the visitor ID, first message, message count, token usage, status, and last active date.
Search & Filters
Search by visitor ID or message content. Filter by status: All, Active, Capped, Lead Captured, Appointment Booked, or Archived. Use date range pickers to narrow results to a specific time period.
Tagging
Add up to 5 tags per conversation (max 30 characters each) for custom organization. Tags are color-coded automatically. Filter conversations by tag using the autocomplete tag filter.
Bulk Actions
Select multiple conversations with checkboxes and perform bulk archive or unarchive operations.
Conversation Detail
Click any conversation to view the full transcript with message bubbles, timestamps, token counts, and source citations. See conversation stats (total messages, tokens used, duration, status). Manage tags and archive status from the detail view.
Feedback Badges
In the conversation detail, each bot response shows whether the visitor gave thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback, displayed as colored badges on the message.
CSV Export
Export conversation data to CSV from the conversations page.
Analytics & Insights
Account-Level Analytics
The Analytics page shows your current plan, billing period, conversation/token/message usage with color-coded progress bars (green/amber/red), a per-bot usage breakdown table, and a recent conversations list with clickable rows.
Bot Analytics Overview
The per-bot Analytics page shows stat cards for total conversations, messages, tokens, average messages per conversation, and average response time. Select a date range: preset (7 or 30 days) or custom (up to 90 days).
Conversations Over Time
A line chart showing daily conversation volume for your selected date range. Hover for exact counts per day.
Top 20 Questions
A ranked table of the most frequently asked questions with the number of times asked and the date last asked. Use this to understand what visitors care about most.
Response Quality
A breakdown of how your bot answered: Q&A exact matches (from your training pairs), RAG responses (from your documents), and fallbacks (when neither matched). Displayed as counts and percentages.
Conversation Outcomes
See how conversations ended: completed normally, lead captured, or appointment booked. Displayed as a bar chart with counts and percentages.
Busiest Hours
A 24-hour bar chart showing when visitors are most active, so you can optimize your availability and staffing.
Knowledge Gap Detection
A table of up to 15 questions where your bot couldn't find a confident answer (either a fallback response or RAG confidence below 60%). Shows the gap type, best similarity score, occurrence count, and when it was last seen.
Knowledge Gap Auto-Training
Click "Suggest Answer" on any knowledge gap. ChatForge uses AI to retrieve relevant document chunks and generate a high-quality answer with keywords. A QuickAdd modal lets you review and save the suggested Q&A pair to your training data with one click — closing the loop between analytics insights and bot improvements.
Visitor Satisfaction
Every bot response includes thumbs-up/down buttons for visitors. The analytics page shows your overall satisfaction rate (% positive), a daily satisfaction trend line chart, and a drilldown of up to 20 negative feedback instances with the exact question, bot answer, and timestamp.
Satisfaction Alerts
A scheduled job checks feedback daily at 8 AM UTC. If your thumbs-down rate is 30% or higher (with at least 5 feedback events), you receive an email alert with sample negative exchanges and a link to your analytics page.
CSV Export
Export a comprehensive analytics report including a summary, daily breakdown, feedback summary, daily feedback trend, and negative feedback details.
Bot Settings
Rename Bot
Change your bot's display name from the Settings page.
Pause / Activate
Toggle your bot between active and paused. When paused, the widget returns a 403 to visitors and stops processing messages.
Widget Position
Choose whether the widget appears in the bottom-right or bottom-left corner of your website.
Delete Bot
Permanently delete a bot and all its data. Requires typing a confirmation phrase to prevent accidental deletion.
Email Notifications
Lead Captured
Sent when a visitor submits a lead form. Includes name, email, phone, original question, and a link to the full conversation.
Appointment Booked
Sent to both you and the visitor when an appointment is booked. Includes date, time, visitor details, and an attached iCal (.ics) calendar invite.
Capture Form Submitted
Sent when a visitor completes an industry-specific capture form. Includes all form data in a table format and a link to the form entries dashboard.
Satisfaction Alerts
Daily check at 8 AM UTC. If thumbs-down feedback exceeds 30% (minimum 5 events), you receive an alert with sample negative exchanges.
Account & Billing
Plans & Pricing
Free ($0/mo, 1 bot, 50 convos, 100 lifetime messages, 100K tokens), Lite ($9/mo, 2 bots, 200 convos, 500K tokens), Standard ($24/mo, 3 bots, 500 convos, 1M tokens), Pro ($49/mo, 5 bots, 1K convos, 2M tokens), Enterprise ($99/mo, 10 bots, 2.5K convos, 3.5M tokens). All paid plans include unlimited messages.
Usage Limits
Each plan has limits on bots, monthly conversations, and monthly token budget. The free plan has a 100 lifetime message cap that doesn't reset. Paid plan conversation and token counts reset each billing cycle. View real-time usage meters on the Usage page.
Upgrades & Downgrades
Upgrade anytime — takes effect immediately with prorated billing. Downgrade anytime — takes effect at the start of your next billing period. If your usage exceeds the new plan's limits, you may need to reduce usage first.
Billing Management
Payments are processed through Stripe. Use the "Manage Billing" link on the Account page to access the Stripe Customer Portal for updating payment methods, viewing invoices, and managing your subscription.
Account Settings
Update your display name, email (requires reauthentication), and password from the Account page. View your current plan and renewal date.
Cancellation
Cancel anytime from Account settings. You keep access to paid features until the end of your current billing period. All fees are non-refundable.
Need More Help?
Can't find what you're looking for? Reach out and we'll help you get set up.
Contact SupportReady to Build Your AI Chatbot?
Join hundreds of businesses using ChatForge to automate customer support, capture leads, and deliver instant answers.