- Display a custom greeting
- Use AI to respond to messages
- Follow specific instructions
- Have a unique, shareable link
This guide is designed to teach a total beginner how to deploy their first bot. If you have more questions and want to get creative with bot-building, check out the Guides section for detailed how-to guides.For detailed explanations of any of the concepts introduced on this page, check out our Dashboard and Studio guides.
Step 1: Build your bot
Create a new bot
- Login to Botpress.
- Select + New bot and choose a name for the bot (or randomly generate one).
- Select Open in Studio.
- Start building!
Configure your bot’s behaviour
Let’s add some custom behaviour to your bot. In Botpress, you configure your bot’s behaviour using Workflows. A Workflow is a drag-and-drop canvas that represents the steps your bot follows during a conversation with a user. Each step in a Workflow is represented by a Node. Let’s open the Main Workflow and take a look at its Nodes:- In Studio, select Workflow from the left navigation bar.
- Select your Main Workflow. It should look something like this:

- A
Start Node
- An
Autonomous Node
- An
End Node

Drag NodesYou can drag a Node to move it anywhere in your Workflow. Just select and hold the Node, then drag and release wherever you want to move it.Moving a Node doesn’t affect your bot’s behavior—it just helps keep your Workflow organized.
Display a custom greeting
Let’s create a new Node to add a custom greeting to your bot. First, we need to create a newStandard Node
:
- Select and hold the right edge of the Start Node.
- Drag outwards to create a new transition.
- Release anywhere on the canvas. You’ll see a list of Node types to choose from—select Standard Node.

Card
to the new Node:
- In the new Node, select Add Card. This opens the Cards menu.
- Select the Text Card.
- In the Message to send field, enter a custom greeting. For this guide, we’ll enter “Hello! I’m Teddy, the helpful bot!”:

- Select and hold the right edge of the new Node.
- Drag outwards to create a new transition.
- Release on the left edge of the Autonomous Node.

Add custom instructions
Now that your bot has a greeting, let’s add some custom instructions for when it’s interacting with a user. From the Autonomous Node, open the Instructions section. By default, this field contains a detailed list of natural language instructions for your bot. You can modify these, or start from scratch with your own instructions. For now, let’s just tell your bot its name and give it a simple task. Erase everything in the Instructions section, and enter “Ask the user if they have any questions about dogs, then assist them”.
Step 2: Test your bot
Congratulations! You now have a bot with a custom greeting and instructions. Next, let’s test it out to make sure it’s working properly.Chat with your bot
You can chat with a preview of your bot using the Emulator on the right side of the Studio. To start a conversation, just select Test your bot, or type a message into the text field:

Step 3: Deploy your bot
Now that you’ve confirmed your bot is working properly, it’s time to deploy it!Preview and share your bot
The easiest way to deploy your bot is with aWebchat
preview. This generates a unique, shareable link for your bot, so your team can start testing it immediately.
To deploy with Webchat preview:
- Select Publish in the upper-right corner. This updates the deployed bot to reflect our recent changes.
- Select Share, then Preview Bot (or copy the Shareable link).

Congratulations!You just built, tested and deployed your first bot with Botpress!