Quickstart

It’s easy to build an AI agent on Botpress, regardless of your level of development experience.

By the end of this guide, you’ll have a bot that will:

• Display a custom greeting
• Use AI to respond to messages
• Follow specific instructions
• Have a unique, shareable link

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Step 1: Build your bot

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Create a new bot

1. Login to Botpress.
2. Select + New bot and choose a name for the bot (or randomly generate one).
3. Select Open in Studio.
4. Start building!

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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:

1. In Studio, select Workflow from the left navigation bar.
2. Select your Main Workflow. It should look something like this:

The Main Workflow contains the main logic for your bot — it executes as soon as a user starts a new conversation. By default, the Main Workflow contains:

• A Start Node
• An Autonomous Node
• An End Node

Notice the path connecting the Start Node and the Autonomous Node:

This is a transition. When someone starts a conversation with your bot, it first executes the Start Node, then transitions to the Autonomous Node.

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Display a custom greeting

Let’s create a new Node to add a custom greeting to your bot.

First, we need to create a new Standard Node:

1. Select and hold the right edge of the Start Node.
2. Drag outwards to create a new transition.
3. Release anywhere on the canvas. You’ll see a list of Node types to choose from — select Standard Node.

You just created a new Node! Notice that because you dragged out from the edge of the Start Node, it automatically transitioned to the new Node:

Next, let’s add the greeting. To do this, we need to add a Card to the new Node:

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

Now your bot has a custom greeting! Before wrapping up, let’s connect the new Node to the Autonomous Node:

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

This creates a transition from the new Node to the Autonomous Node, so your bot continues the conversation after displaying the greeting:

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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”.

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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.

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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:

The bot followed your instructions! Notice that the Emulator provides an update whenever your bot transitions to a new Node, or whenever it’s waiting for user input.

Let’s ask it a question about dogs:

Great! Since the bot transitioned to the Autonomous Node, it was able to use an LLM (Large Language Model) to answer the question. You can keep chatting with the bot, and the Autonomous Node will generate AI responses based on the context of the conversation.

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Step 3: Deploy your bot

Now that you’ve confirmed your bot is working properly, it’s time to deploy it!

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Preview and share your bot

The easiest way to deploy your bot is with a Webchat preview. This generates a unique, shareable link for your bot, so your team can start testing it immediately.

To deploy with Webchat preview:

1. Select Publish in the upper-right corner. This updates the deployed bot to reflect our recent changes.
2. Select Share, then Preview Bot (or copy the Shareable link).

Your preview will open in a new tab. Try sending a message:

Webchat preview displays your bot the way it appears to an actual user, regardless of where you’ve deployed it. This makes it great for quickly evaluating your user experience.

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Next steps

Now that you know the basics of Botpress, you can start getting creative: