Captain

Get started with Captain AI

Captain is Chatwoot's AI. It can answer customers for you, help your agents write replies, and learn from your help docs and past conversations. What Captain can do Capability What it does Who uses it Page Assistant Replies to customers in the inboxes you connect, and hands off to your team when it cannot help Customers Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes Knowledge Learns from website pages, PDFs and FAQs you add Admins Add documents to Captain's knowledge Guardrails, guidelines and scenarios Controls what the assistant answers, how it sounds, and what it does in specific situations Admins Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios Audience and schedule Limits which customers the assistant replies to, and when Admins Control who Captain replies to and when Custom tools Lets the assistant look things up in your own systems, such as order status Admins Set up custom tools for Captain Copilot Helps agents summarize, draft replies and look things up while they work Agents Work faster with Captain Copilot Memories Saves key customer details as contact notes for next time Assistant Use Captain Memories AI help in the editor and inbox Rephrase, summarize and suggest reply in the editor, audio transcription, and Suggest with Captain for a conversation's labels and priority Agents; admins turn them on Captain conditions in automation An automation rule can ask Captain whether a conversation matches a description you write, for example "customer wants to cancel" Admins Plan & access Plan Captain Hacker (free) Not included Startups Included, with monthly AI credits Business Included, with more monthly AI credits. Adds custom tools Enterprise Included, with the most monthly AI credits - Credit amounts per plan and the top-up price are on Pricing & Plans > Captain AI credits. How credits are used is on Captain AI credits and usage. - Role: only administrators can create or change assistants, documents, FAQs and tools. Agents can view assistants, try them in the Playground, review FAQ suggestions, and use Copilot. - Self-hosted: Captain is included in the Premium and Enterprise self-hosted plans, with your own OpenAI key. See Enable Captain on self-hosted. - Free trial: Captain is not available during the free trial. How to check you have it Look for Captain in the left sidebar. If you click it and see Upgrade to use Captain AI, your account is on the Hacker plan. An administrator can upgrade from Billing. Set up & try The usual order: 1. Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes, then test it in the Playground. 2. Add documents to Captain's knowledge so it knows your product. 3. Optional: Control who Captain replies to and when,Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios, Set up custom tools for Captain. Self-hosted admins start with Enable Captain on self-hosted. Get value - Keep knowledge current: review FAQ suggestions every week. See Add FAQs and review FAQ suggestions in Captain - Watch the assistant's Overview for Knowledge coverage and how many conversations it handled. - Hand a conversation to the assistant yourself: pick it in the conversation's assignee dropdown. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes - Check credit usage in Billing. See Captain AI credits and usage. What changes in other features when Captain is on - Website live chat: the "we are away" message is not shown while the assistant is answering. - Continue conversations by email: the email prompt is not shown unless the assistant hands off. - Inbox greeting: the inbox's greeting message is not sent while the assistant is handling the conversation. If the assistant replies to everyone (audience set to Everyone), customers in its inboxes do not see the greeting. - Lesson 5 in Start here walks through Captain end to end. See Lesson 5: AI actions. Troubleshoot If Captain is not replying, giving wrong answers, or not learning, go to Troubleshoot Captain.

Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes

Discover An assistant answers customers in the inboxes you connect it to, and hands the conversation to your team when it cannot help. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise Pricing & Plans. Administrators create, edit and delete assistants. Agents can view them and use the Playground. Each inbox can have one assistant. Set up & try Before you start - At least one inbox to connect (live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, email and others). - Some knowledge to add straight after: website pages, PDFs or FAQs. Without knowledge the assistant has little to answer from. - Captain credits: every assistant reply to a customer uses credits. 1. Create the assistant 1. Go to Captain > Assistants. 2. Start the new assistant: - No assistant yet: click Create a new assistant on the empty page. - You already have an assistant: open the assistant switcher next to the assistant's name and click Create Assistant. 3. Fill in: Name, Description and Product Name are required. Description can be up to 500 characters. - Name: an internal name, for example "Support assistant". - Description: what the assistant is for. Write a purpose, not instructions. - Product Name: the product it supports. It uses this when it talks about your product. Captain only answers questions about the product you name here, so use your brand or product name, not one narrow feature. 4. Choose features (all start off): - Generate FAQs from resolved conversations: Captain suggests new FAQs from resolved conversations. See Add FAQs and review FAQ suggestions in Captain. - Capture key details as memories from customer interactions. See Use Captain Memories. - Include source citations in responses: the reply shows which document it used. 5. Click Create. - If this is your first assistant, Chatwoot opens its FAQs. - If you used the switcher, Chatwoot stays on the assistant you were viewing. Select the new assistant in the switcher before the next step. 2. Connect an inbox 1. Select the new assistant in the assistant switcher, then go to Inboxes. 2. Click Connect a new inbox, choose the inbox, and confirm. Until an inbox is connected, the assistant's Overview shows: "This assistant isn't connected to any inbox yet, so it won't respond to conversations." 3. Set what it says and when it closes Open the assistant's Settings. - Basic settings: turn on Allow access to contact information if the assistant should use the contact's details when replying. - System settings: - Handoff message: what the assistant says when it passes the conversation to your team. - When customers stop replying: choose the Action when the customer stops replying and how long to wait (5 minutes to 24 hours; the default is 60 minutes). - Let Captain review it (recommended): Captain decides whether to resolve or hand off. This is the default. - Always resolve: Captain resolves every conversation after the wait. - Wait for the customer: Captain never resolves on its own. It can still hand off if the customer asks. - Send a message when resolving (on by default) sends the Resolution Message before Captain resolves. Test it 1. Open the assistant and go to Playground. 2. Ask the questions your customers ask most. Check the answers are accurate, short and in your tone. 3. Ask something it should not know. Check it says it cannot help and offers to connect you with your team. It hands off when you accept. 4. The reply can take a few seconds to appear; you can keep the page open while it works. 5. Then send a real message to the connected inbox, for example from your website widget, and watch the reply arrive. Playground messages use credits, the same as replies to customers. Try changes before you save them In the Playground, open Test setup to try changes without touching the assistant. Changes apply only to this playground session unless you save them. - Knowledge: paste text into Reference text to test an answer before it is a document. Click Add document permanently to keep it. - Scenarios, Guidelines and Guardrails: add a temporary item with Add to test (↵), or use Include in this test to switch saved ones on or off for this test. Click Add scenario permanently, Add guideline permanently or Add guardrail permanently to keep one. - Under each reply, Run details shows the scenarios and rules used, tool calls and any handoffs. - Reset test setup clears everything temporary. Get value - Add knowledge next: Add documents to Captain's knowledge. - Decide who it replies to and when: Control who Captain replies to and when. - Shape its answers: Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios. - Check the assistant's Overview for conversations handled, Knowledge coverage and a Captain summary. - Hand a conversation to the assistant yourself: in the conversation's assignee dropdown, choose the assistant (only the assistant connected to that inbox is listed). The conversation moves to pending and the assistant takes over, even if the audience or schedule rules would have skipped it. To take it back, assign it to a person. - Use the assistant switcher (Switch between assistants) if you run several, for example one per brand or language. - The assistant reads the conversation's earlier public messages, including ones sent before it was connected. It never sees private notes. - To see how the assistant is doing, use its Overview. See Captain Overview and reports. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do Assistant never replies No inbox connected Connect one in Inboxes Cannot connect an inbox The inbox already has an assistant Disconnect it from the other assistant first Replies are vague or wrong Little or no knowledge added Add documents and FAQs, then test again in the Playground Cannot see Create a new assistant or Create Assistant You are not an administrator Ask an administrator More causes, including silent ones: Troubleshoot Captain.

Add documents to Captain's knowledge

Discover Documents teach your assistant about your product. Add website pages or PDF files, and Captain reads them, answers from them, and creates FAQs from them. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise Pricing & Plans. Administrators add, refresh and delete documents. Every paid plan includes up to 2,000 documents. The limit is shared by all assistants in the account, and each PDF or crawled web page counts as one document. Set up & try Before you start - An assistant. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes. - Website pages must be public. Captain cannot read pages behind a login. - PDFs must be 10MB or smaller and contain real text (scanned images may not be readable). - If your website blocks crawlers in robots.txt, allow Chatwoot first (below). Add a website or PDF 1. Go to Captain > Documents. 2. Click Create a new document. 3. Choose the Document Type: - URL: enter the page address. Captain reads that page and the pages linked under the same path. For example, https://example.com/help covers every page that starts with that address. - PDF File: click Choose PDF file and pick the file. 4. Optional: add a Document Name (Optional). 5. Choose the assistant and click Create. Captain reads and indexes the content. Pages it finds while crawling are added as separate documents. Allow Chatwoot to crawl your site Chatwoot uses Firecrawl to read websites, and it follows your robots.txt. If some pages are blocked, add this to https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt: User-agent: FirecrawlAgent Allow: / Check the file is live at that address, then add or refresh the document. If your robots.txt blocks the crawler when you add a website, no pages are added and no error is shown. The assistant then gives incomplete or generic answers. Test it 1. Open the document's menu and choose View details. 2. Check Crawled content (or PDF details) shows your text, and Related FAQs lists sensible questions. 3. Ask a question from that page in the assistant's Playground. Get value - Keep documents current: use Refresh now on one document, or select several and click Refresh. The list shows when each was last updated. - Website documents also refresh automatically: monthly on Startups (on the 1st), weekly on Business (on Sundays) and daily on Enterprise. Processing can take longer, so a page may not refresh at that exact time. Uploaded PDFs are not refreshed automatically. - One website crawl adds up to 500 pages, and never more than your remaining document allowance. - Prefer focused sources, such as your help center, over a whole marketing site. - Used in conversations shows which conversations used a document. - Deleting a document removes everything Captain learned from it. - Help Center articles are not read automatically. To use them, add your Help Center's address as a URL document. Each language version of an article is a separate page, so each counts as a document. - FAQs created from a document go live straight away. They are listed under FAQs and need no approval. - FAQs that Captain generates are always in your account's language. The assistant still replies in the customer's language. - Captain does not remove personal or confidential details from what you add. Only add content you are happy for the assistant to quote to customers. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do Status shows Failed to sync with Access denied The page needs a login, or your site blocked the request (error 401 or 403). Make the page public, or allow the request on your site. Added a website but no pages appear, or answers are generic Your robots.txt may block the crawler. Allow it as shown in Allow Chatwoot to crawl your site , then add the document again. Page not found URL is wrong or the page moved Fix the URL and add it again Page took too long to respond Your site was slow Use Retry refresh later Page returned empty content Content loads only with scripts, or the page is empty Use a page with plain text, or upload a PDF update stalled A refresh did not finish Use Retry refresh PDF details says readable content could not be extracted Scanned or image-only PDF Upload a text PDF Banner: Document limit reached The account has 2,000 documents across all its assistants Delete documents you no longer need, or see Pricing & Plans More causes: Troubleshoot Captain.

Add FAQs and review FAQ suggestions in Captain

Discover FAQs are question and answer pairs your assistant uses to reply. You can write them yourself, and Captain suggests new ones from your documents and from questions customers keep asking. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise Pricing & Plans. Administrators write and edit FAQs. Anyone can review FAQ suggestions; agents see only suggestions from conversations they can access. Set up & try Before you start - An assistant with some documents. See Add documents to Captain's knowledge. - For suggestions from conversations, turn on Generate FAQs from resolved conversations in the assistant. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes Write an FAQ 1. Go to Captain > FAQs. 2. Click Create new FAQ. 3. Enter the question and the answer, choose the assistant, and click Create. Review FAQ suggestions Captain groups recurring customer questions into suggestions and ranks them by customer demand. Suggestions are written in your account's language. Suggestions only come from resolved conversations where an agent replied. Conversations Captain handles on its own do not create suggestions. 1. Go to Captain > FAQs and click Review suggestions (or open FAQ suggestions). 2. Open a suggestion. Source conversations shows the conversations behind it. 3. Edit the question or answer if needed and click Save changes. 4. Click Approve to add it to Captain's knowledge, or Dismiss to drop it. FAQs Captain generates from a document are listed under that document's Related FAQs. FAQs created from your documents go live straight away and need no approval. Test it Ask the approved question in the assistant's Playground and check it uses your answer. Get value - Review suggestions weekly. They come from real customer questions, so they fill the gaps that matter most. - Keep answers short and specific. One question per FAQ. - The assistant's Overview shows Knowledge coverage: approved FAQs against suggestions waiting for review. A banner appears when suggestions are ready. - Search with Search FAQs..., and select several to delete at once. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do No suggestions ever appear Generate FAQs from resolved conversations is off, or few conversations have been resolved yet. Or no agent replied in the resolved conversations. Suggestions need at least one agent reply. Turn it on in the assistant and give it time Assistant still gives the old answer The FAQ is a suggestion, not approved Approve it Cannot create or edit an FAQ You are not an administrator Ask an administrator, or approve suggestions instead An agent sees fewer suggestions than an admin Agents see only suggestions from conversations they can access Expected No accessible source conversations were found. The conversations are in inboxes you cannot see, or were deleted Ask an administrator with access to review it More causes: Troubleshoot Captain.

Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios

Discover Three sets of rules shape your assistant: Guardrails decide which questions it answers, Response Guidelines decide how its replies sound, and Scenarios tell it what to do in specific situations. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise Pricing & Plans. Administrators edit them. They are part of every Captain account, on every paid plan. Rule set Use it for Example Guardrails Keeping the assistant on topic and away from off-limits questions "Do not give legal or medical advice." Response Guidelines Tone, length and structure of replies "Keep replies under three sentences. Be friendly, not formal." Scenarios Step-by-step handling of a situation, optionally using a custom tool "When a customer asks for a refund, ask for the order number, check it with the order lookup tool, then hand off." Set up & try Before you start - An assistant. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes. - For scenarios that call your systems, a custom tool. See Set up custom tools for Captain. Add guardrails and response guidelines 1. Go to Captain, open the assistant, and go to Settings. 2. Open Guardrails or Response guidelines. 3. Click Add a guardrail or Add a response guideline, type the rule as one short sentence, and click Create. 4. To add rules from the examples, type in the box under the examples and click Add and save (↵), or press Enter. 5. To change a rule, click its pencil icon, edit the text, and press Enter. Add a scenario 1. Go to Captain, open the assistant, and go to Scenarios. 2. Click Add a scenario and fill in: - Title: a short name, for example "Refund request". - Description: when this scenario applies. - How to handle: what the assistant should do, in plain steps. To use a tool in a step, type @ and pick it from the list, for example Handoff to Human or one of your custom tools. If the scenario should end with your team, add the handoff as the last step. 3. Click Create. 4. To change a scenario, open it, edit the fields, and click Update changes. Test it In the Playground, ask one question each rule should catch (for example an off-topic question, and a refund request). Check the reply follows the rule. Get value - Start small: three to five guardrails and guidelines. Add more when you see a real problem in conversations. - Write rules as instructions to a new team member, not keywords. - Guardrails are instructions to the AI, not a filter. They make off-topic answers much less likely but cannot rule them out, so keep the Handoff message clear. - If a tool used in a scenario is disabled, that scenario may stop working. Chatwoot warns you before you disable it. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do Assistant ignores a rule The rule is vague or conflicts with another Rewrite it as one clear sentence; remove conflicts Scenario never runs The situation description does not match how customers ask Describe the situation in customers' own words Scenario stops halfway Its custom tool is disabled or failing Check the tool in Tools No Scenarios item for the assistant Account is on Hacker (free), or, on self-hosted, Captain is not turned on for the account Upgrade, or ask your Super Admin to turn on Captain More causes: Troubleshoot Captain.

Control who Captain replies to and when

Discover You can choose which customers the assistant replies to (Audience) and when (Schedule). Conversations the assistant does not pick up stay Open for your team. Audience and Schedule belong to the assistant, so they apply to every inbox it is connected to. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise : Pricing & Plans. Administrators change these settings. Set up & try Before you start - An assistant connected to an inbox. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes. - For a schedule, business hours turned on for that inbox, in the inbox's own settings. See Business Hours and Auto-Responder. - For audience rules on your own data, the contact custom attributes you want to use. See Understanding Contacts. Choose the audience 1. Go to Captain > Assistants, open the assistant, and go to Settings > Audience. 2. Choose: - Everyone: the assistant replies in every conversation in its inboxes. This is the default. - Specific audience: the assistant replies only to customers who match your conditions. 3. For a specific audience, add conditions. Each has an attribute, an operator and a value. - Contact attributes: Name, Email, Phone, Identifier, Country, City, Company, Created at, Last activity, Blocked, Labels. - Conversation attributes: Logged-in user, Browser language. Browser language comes from the website widget only, so it does not work for WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS or other channels. Labels means contact labels, not conversation labels. Logged-in user means the visitor was verified with identity validation (HMAC) in your website widget. - Your contact custom attributes. - The operators you can pick depend on the attribute. For example, Name offers only equal and not equal, Email also offers contains (use it to target a domain such as @acme.com), and dates offer greater than, less than and days before. 4. Choose whether customers must match all conditions or any of them. You can group conditions, for example "Plan is Pro AND (Country is US OR Country is Canada)". You can nest groups one level deep: a group can contain sub-groups, but a sub-group cannot contain another group. 5. Save. Choose the schedule 1. In the same Settings, open Schedule. 2. Choose Anytime (default), During business hours, or Outside business hours. 3. Save. Both rules must pass: the assistant replies only when the customer is in the audience and it is inside the schedule. Test it 1. Start a new conversation as a customer who matches, inside the schedule. The assistant replies. 2. Start one as a customer who does not match. It goes to your team with no assistant reply. Get value - Common setups: assistant only outside business hours; assistant only for logged-in website users; assistant for everyone except customers with a "VIP" label. - The rules are checked when a conversation starts or a resolved one reopens, not on every message. Once the assistant is in a conversation it stays until the conversation is resolved or handed off. Changes apply to new and reopened conversations only. - Text matching ignores case. Phone numbers match with or without the leading +. A checkbox attribute that was never set counts as unchecked. - The schedule follows the inbox's business hours and their time zone. If the time zone is wrong, the assistant can be off for most of your customers' day, with no warning. - These rules decide when the assistant joins on its own. An agent can still hand any conversation to the assistant from the assignee dropdown, and that ignores audience and schedule. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do Assistant replies to someone you excluded The contact's details changed after the conversation started Expected. The rule applies from the next new or reopened conversation. Open the contact and check its attributes in the sidebar. Captain checks the values the contact had when the conversation started. Assistant is in a conversation it should have skipped An agent assigned the conversation to the assistant Expected. Manual assignment ignores audience and schedule Schedule has no effect Business hours are off for that inbox. Inboxes without business hours count as always covered Turn on business hours in the inbox settings Your attribute is not in the list It is a conversation custom attribute. Only contact custom attributes work Use a contact attribute instead. Create it in Settings › Custom attributes and choose Contact . Cannot save the audience A condition has no value (highlighted in red), or Specific audience has no conditions Complete or remove the condition. Is present and Is not present (date attributes only) need no value. Assistant is silent for everyone Audience or schedule excludes them Check both settings, then Troubleshoot Captain

Set up custom tools for Captain

Discover Custom tools let the assistant call your own systems during a conversation, for example to check an order, a warranty or a booking, instead of handing off. Plan & access: Business or Enterprise (Pricing & Plans). On Startups, Tools usually shows Upgrade to use tools with Captain. Each assistant has its own list of tools. Administrators create tools, and only administrators can see the saved credentials. Self-hosted: the Super Admin turns on Custom Tools for the account. Set up & try Before you start - An HTTPS endpoint on a public hostname. Chatwoot blocks plain HTTP, IP addresses, localhost, private networks and .local addresses. - The endpoint must accept the connection within 2 seconds and answer within 20 seconds, with a response of 1 MB or less. - Its credentials, if it needs any. Create a tool 1. Go to Captain > Tools and click Create a new tool. First use the assistant switcher at the top to choose the assistant the tool is for. The form opens in a side panel. 2. Fill in: - Tool Name: short, for example "Order Lookup" (55 characters or fewer). - Description: when the assistant should use it, written like a briefing for a new agent. This decides whether the assistant picks the tool. - Method: GET to read data; POST, PUT or PATCH to send or change data; DELETE to remove something. - Endpoint URL: use {{ parameter_name }} for values the assistant fills in, for example https://api.example.com/orders/``{{ order_id }}. - Authentication Type: None, Bearer Token, Basic Auth, or API Key (with Header Name and Header Value). Use this for credentials. - Headers: click Add Header for fixed headers your API needs on every call, such as an API version or tenant ID (up to 16). Values are sent exactly as typed. Chatwoot sets Authorization, Host, Content-Length, Content-Type and any header starting with X-Chatwoot itself, so you cannot add those. - Parameters: click Add Parameter for each value the assistant should get from the customer. Give a name, type, description, and mark Required if needed. - Request Body Template (Optional): for POST, PUT or PATCH. This and the response template are under Templates. The request template is a JSON body. It supports Liquid, for example {{ order_id }} for a parameter. - Response Template (Optional): pick out the fields the assistant needs, for example Order {{ response.order_id }} status: {{ response.status }}. Read the API reply through response, for example {{ response.status }}. Leave the template blank to send Captain the raw JSON. 3. Click Test connection, then Create. Test connection works only for endpoints without templates or a request body. For others, test in the Playground. A green result means your endpoint returned a 2xx status: it is reachable and accepted the credentials. Test it Ask a question in the Playground that needs the tool, for example "Where is order 1234?". Check the reply uses real data. Get value - Custom tools work best for lookups with clear inputs, such as an order status, a booking or a record by ID. - Each assistant can have up to 50 tools. Keep the list short anyway: with many tools the assistant is more likely to pick the wrong one. - Adding, editing, turning off or deleting a tool changes it only for the assistant you are viewing. Tools that existed before tools became per-assistant were copied to every assistant, so check each one. - Running several assistants? Give each only the tools it needs. - Turn a tool off with its toggle instead of deleting it. If a scenario uses it, Chatwoot warns you first. See Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios. - Chatwoot sends headers with each call so your system knows the account, conversation, contact email and phone, assistant, and whether the contact is verified. For private data, check the X-Chatwoot-Contact-Inbox-Verified header before answering. Without identity validation, a visitor can type any email into the widget. Tools that return only public data do not need this check. See How to enable identity validation in Chatwoot?. - If your API returns text written by customers, return only the structured fields you need. Captain reads the reply as-is, so free text can contain instructions it might follow. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do Connection failed Endpoint unreachable, not HTTPS, or wrong credentials Check the URL and credentials; make sure it is public HTTPS Connection failed with 401 The credentials are wrong Check Authentication Type and the credentials Connection failed with 403 Your API rejected the request Test requests carry no contact headers, so an endpoint that needs them fails the test. Test in the Playground instead Connection failed with 404 Wrong URL path Check the URL path Connection failed with a timeout Your API took longer than 20 seconds to reply, or 2 seconds to connect Speed up the endpoint URL rejected IP address, localhost or private address Use a public hostname A header is rejected It is a header Chatwoot sets itself, a duplicate, or its value has placeholders Remove it, or move credentials to Authentication Type A tool is missing on another assistant Tools belong to one assistant Switch to that assistant and create the tool there Cannot add another tool The assistant already has 50 tools Delete tools it does not use Assistant never uses the tool Description is vague Rewrite the Description to say exactly when to use it Assistant uses the wrong tool Too many tools or overlapping descriptions Remove or disable tools; make descriptions distinct Slow or no answer, then hand-off Endpoint took over 20 seconds or returned over 1 MB Speed up the endpoint; trim the response with a Response Template More causes: Troubleshoot Captain.

Work faster with Captain Copilot

Discover Copilot is an AI helper for agents, inside each conversation. Ask it to summarize, draft a reply, review tone, translate, or look something up. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise Pricing & Plans. Any agent can use it, in any inbox. There is nothing to turn on per inbox. Each Copilot request uses Captain credits. Set up & try Before you start - At least one Captain assistant. Copilot uses an assistant's knowledge when it looks things up. Copilot also searches your help center articles if you have permission to manage the knowledge base. The assistant does not need to be connected to an inbox. For AI that helps agents but never replies to customers, create an assistant and do not connect it to any inbox. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes. Use Copilot 1. Open a conversation. 2. On the right, open the Copilot tab. 3. Pick a starter from Try these prompts (Summarize this conversation, Suggest an answer, Rate this conversation), or type your own request. Outside a conversation, Copilot offers High priority conversations and List contacts instead. 4. If you have several assistants, use Select Assistant to choose whose knowledge to use. 5. When Copilot drafts a reply you like, click Use this to put it in the reply box. Edit, then send. 6. Click Reset to start over. Test it Open a real conversation, choose Suggest an answer, and check the draft uses your product knowledge. Get value - Be specific: "Write a polite reply explaining the delay and offering delivery on Friday" works better than "reply". - Always read a draft before sending. Copilot suggests; the agent decides. - Use Show steps to see how Copilot reached an answer. - Suggest an answer in Copilot uses the selected assistant's full setup: its description, response guidelines, guardrails and FAQs. Suggest a reply in the reply editor uses only FAQs (from the inbox's connected assistant, or all approved FAQs in the account), not guidelines or tone. - Editor actions such as rephrase and summarize are separate AI features. - To get suggested labels or a priority for a conversation, use Suggest with Captain in the conversation sidebar. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do No Copilot tab Account is on Hacker (free), or Captain is not enabled See Get started with Captain AI "You are out of Copilot credits. You can buy more credits from the billing section." No credits left Buy credits in Billing , or wait for renewal "There was an error generating the response. Please try again." Temporary error Try again Answers ignore your docs Wrong assistant selected, or it has no documents Use Select Assistant ; add documents More causes: Troubleshoot Captain.

Use Captain Memories

Discover With memories on, the assistant saves key details from a conversation as notes on the contact, so your team, and Copilot, have context next time. The assistant does not read these notes when it replies to customers. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise (Pricing & Plans). An administrator turns it on per assistant. Set up & try Before you start - An assistant. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes. Turn on memories 1. Go to Captain > Assistants, open the assistant, and go to Settings. 2. Turn on Capture key details as memories from customer interactions. 3. Save. What gets saved Details that help next time, such as: - Preferences, and the products or plan the customer uses. - Recurring questions or issues. - Special needs, such as an integration they rely on. - Context such as team size. Test it Have a conversation where you mention a preference, for example "We use the Pro plan and prefer email", and resolve it. Then open the contact and check Notes. Get value - Memories appear in the contact's Notes with "Bot" as the author and the time they were saved. Agents see them in the conversation sidebar. - Memories are saved when a conversation in a connected inbox is resolved, whether the assistant or an agent handled it, as long as the account has credits. - Agents can delete a memory but cannot edit it. - Tell customers what you store, in line with your privacy policy. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do No notes appear The toggle is off, the conversation is not resolved yet, or nothing worth saving came up Check the setting; resolve the conversation Memories stopped Credits ran out See Captain AI credits and usage Notes appear for some contacts only Only resolved conversations in inboxes connected to the assistant create memories Expected More causes: Troubleshoot Captain.

Captain AI credits and usage

Discover Captain uses AI credits. Every paid plan includes free credits each month, and you can buy more. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise. How many credits each plan includes, and the top-up price, are on Pricing & Plans > Captain AI credits. Administrators see usage and buy credits in Billing. Set up & try What uses credits Each of these uses one credit: - An assistant reply to a customer. - A message in the assistant's Playground. - A Copilot request. - An editor action, such as rephrase, summarize or suggest reply. - An audio transcription. Adding documents, approving FAQs, label and priority suggestions from Suggest with Captain, and Captain conditions in automation rules do not use credits. See your usage 1. Go to Settings > Billing. 2. The Captain section shows Credits and Documents used. Click Refresh to update. Buy more credits 1. In Billing > Captain, click Buy more credits. 2. Choose a pack and click Purchase Credits, then confirm. Your saved card is charged straight away. Bought credits: - Are added straight away and used after your monthly plan credits. - Expire after 6 months. - Need an active subscription to be used. - Are non-refundable. Test it After buying, check the new balance in Billing > Captain. Get value - Monthly credits reset at your plan's renewal date. Buying credits or changing plan does not reset usage. - Unused monthly credits do not carry over. If you use more than your monthly credits, the extra comes out of credits you bought. - When you change plan, your balance goes up or down by the difference between the two plans' monthly credits. Your usage stays the same. - Changing your number of seats does not reset usage. - To make credits last: connect the assistant only to inboxes where it helps, use the audience and schedule rules (Control who Captain replies to and when), and turn off AI features you do not use, such as transcription. - A banner warns you when you have used over 80% of your credits. There is no email alert, and credits do not top up automatically. - Usage is one total for the account. It is not split by agent, assistant or feature. To see how each assistant performs, use its Overview (Captain Overview and reports). Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do New conversations go straight to the team with no assistant reply Credits ran out Buy credits or wait for renewal Assistant says "Transferring to another agent for further assistance." mid-conversation Credits ran out during the conversation Buy credits or wait for renewal Copilot says you are out of Copilot credits Credits ran out Buy credits or wait for renewal Usage did not go to 0 after buying Expected. Usage resets only at renewal; the purchase adds to the balance None Credits are used faster than expected The assistant is on busy inboxes, or AI features are used heavily Narrow the audience or schedule; turn off features you do not need Cannot buy credits You are not an administrator, or no active subscription Ask an administrator; check the subscription More causes: Troubleshoot Captain.

Enable Captain on self-hosted

Discover You can run Captain on your own Chatwoot installation with your own OpenAI key. Plan & access: included in the Premium and Enterprise self-hosted plans. See Enterprise Edition. You need access to the Super Admin console. The Community Edition does not include Captain. Premium and Enterprise get the same Captain features and settings. Set up & try Before you start - An OpenAI API key. - Optional: an OpenAI-compatible endpoint if you host your own model. - Optional: a Firecrawl API key for better website crawling. Without it, Chatwoot uses a simpler built-in crawler. 1. Configure Captain for the installation 1. Open the Super Admin console and go to Settings. 2. On the Captain card, click the settings (gear) icon. 3. Fill in: - OpenAI API Key. - OpenAI Model sets the model for Copilot and editor features. Leave it blank to use gpt-4.1-mini. The assistant uses gpt-5.2 by default. To change it, go to Super Admin › Accounts, edit the account and open the Captain models tab. If you use a custom endpoint, make sure it serves the models you pick here. - OpenAI API Endpoint (optional), for a compatible self-hosted model. - Embedding Model (optional). - FireCrawl API Key (optional). 4. Click Submit. 2. Turn Captain on for an account Accounts created while your installation is on Premium or Enterprise have Captain turned on already. For accounts created before that: 1. In the Super Admin console, go to Accounts. 2. Open the account and click Edit. 3. In the premium features, turn on Captain. Guardrails, response guidelines and scenarios come with it. For custom tools, also turn on Custom Tools (Set up custom tools for Captain). 4. Save. Test it Log in to that account. Captain appears in the sidebar. Create an assistant and send a message in the Playground. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes. Get value - OpenAI bills you for usage on your own key. Chatwoot does not count Captain credits on self-hosted installations. - Upgrading from an older version where assistants used the Instructions field? Instructions are no longer used. Move them into guardrails and response guidelines before you upgrade (Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios). - Everything else works as on Cloud. Continue with Add documents to Captain's knowledge. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do No Captain in the sidebar Not turned on for the account, or not on a Premium or Enterprise licence Check both steps; check your licence No Tools Custom Tools is off for the account Turn them on in Super Admin > Accounts Assistant does not reply Invalid or inactive OpenAI key, or an unsupported model name Check the key. Check your endpoint serves the assistant's model ( gpt-5.2 by default, or the one set in the account's Captain models tab). Website documents miss pages No Firecrawl key, so the simple crawler is used Add a FireCrawl API Key Website documents fail to sync Invalid Firecrawl API key Check the Firecrawl API key is valid. If a key is set, Chatwoot always uses Firecrawl, so an invalid key makes website documents fail. Remove the key to use the built-in crawler. Still failing An error on the server Check the web and worker logs

Troubleshoot Captain

Discover Use this page when Captain is silent, gives wrong answers, or is not learning. Most problems come from a setting, not a fault. Plan & access: Captain needs Startups, Business or Enterprise Pricing & Plans . Most fixes need an administrator. Set up & try: the quick check When the assistant is silent, check these in order: 1. Plan: is Captain in the sidebar? If you see Upgrade to use Captain AI, the account is on Hacker (free). Captain is not available during the free trial. 2. Credits: Settings > Billing > Captain. With no credits left, Captain does not run. 3. Inbox: is the inbox listed in the assistant's Inboxes? 4. Audience: is it set to Specific audience, and does the customer match? 5. Schedule: is it During business hours or Outside business hours, and does the time match? 6. Timing: rules are checked when a conversation starts or reopens. An ongoing conversation keeps its first decision. 7. Status: Captain replies only while a conversation is Pending. If it is Open, Captain stays silent. That happens when an agent replied, the assistant handed off, or an automation rule assigned the conversation to someone. Captain does not come back to an open conversation unless it is assigned to the assistant again. Test it Start a brand new conversation, as a customer who matches the audience, inside the schedule, in a connected inbox. Get value: silent versus failed - Silent: no reply at all usually means one of the checks above stopped Captain before it started. - Silent at certain times of day: the schedule follows the inbox's business hours and their time zone. Check the time zone in the inbox settings. - Handed off: when Captain cannot answer, it sends your Handoff message and passes the conversation to your team. - Out of credits: a new conversation goes straight to your team with no reply. In a conversation Captain is already handling, it sends "Transferring to another agent for further assistance." and passes it on. Troubleshoot Replies Symptom Likely cause What to do Assistant never replies One of the quick checks Work through the quick check above Replies to people you excluded Their details changed after the conversation started Expected; applies from the next conversation. See Control who Captain replies to and when Replies outside the schedule Business hours are off for the inbox Turn on business hours in the inbox settings Wrong or made-up answers Missing or outdated knowledge Add or refresh documents; approve FAQ suggestions. Use Report Captain message on the reply to tell Chatwoot what went wrong Assistant is in a conversation the audience or schedule should have skipped An agent assigned it to the assistant from the assignee dropdown Expected. Assign it to a person to take it back Answers off-topic questions No guardrails Add guardrails. See Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios Hands off too often Knowledge gaps, or a failing custom tool Review FAQ suggestions; check Tools Conversations resolve too early Always resolve is set with a short wait Choose Let Captain review it (recommended) or a longer wait Knowledge Symptom Likely cause What to do Document shows Failed to sync The page needs a login, or your site blocked the request (error 401 or 403). The page may also be missing or slow. See Add documents to Captain's knowledge Added a website but no pages appear, or answers are generic Your robots.txt may block the crawler. Allow the crawler in your robots.txt, then add the document again. See Add documents to Captain's knowledge No FAQ suggestions Generate FAQs from resolved conversations is off. Or no agent replied in the resolved conversations. Suggestions need at least one agent reply. Turn it on. See Add FAQs and review FAQ suggestions in Captain Document limit reached The account has 2,000 documents across all its assistants Delete unused documents; see Pricing & Plans Tools, Copilot and credits Symptom Likely cause What to do Custom tool never used Vague description, or too many tools See Set up custom tools for Captain Copilot error message Temporary error, or out of credits Retry; check credits Credits used fast Busy inboxes, or AI features used heavily See Captain AI credits and usage When to contact support Contact support if the quick check passes and Captain is still silent in a new conversation. Send: - Your account ID (Settings > Account settings). - The assistant's name and the inbox. - A link to one affected conversation, and the time it happened. - Whether the assistant replied in the Playground.

Captain Overview and reports

Back to Get started with Captain AI. Discover Each assistant has an Overview that shows how it is doing: how many conversations it handled, how many it resolved on its own, why it handed off, and how customers rated it. Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise Pricing & Plans. Anyone who can open Captain sees the Overview. Only administrators can click a number to see the conversations behind it. Set up & try Before you start - An assistant connected to an inbox that has handled some conversations. See Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes. Until an inbox is connected, the Overview shows "This assistant isn't connected to any inbox yet, so it won't respond to conversations." Open the Overview 1. Go to Captain and choose the assistant in the assistant switcher. 2. Open Overview. 3. Choose the period at the top: a number of days, This week, Last week, This month or Last month. The default is This month. What each number means Number What it means Conversations handled Conversations where Captain replied to the customer or handed the conversation to your team Auto-resolution rate The share of handled conversations Captain resolved without help from your team. Higher is better Handoff rate The share of handled conversations Captain passed to your team Reopen rate The share of Captain-resolved conversations that customers came back to later. Lower is better Captain resolutions remained closed The share of Captain-resolved conversations still closed seven days later. Only resolutions at least seven days old are counted Median resolution time The typical time from when a conversation reached Captain until it was resolved Messages per conversation The average number of replies Captain sent in each conversation it handled Saved in agent effort and time An estimate, based on two minutes saved for each public Captain reply The other cards - Captain summary: a short written summary of how the assistant is doing. It appears once there is enough activity. - The flow chart: how handled conversations split into Resolved by Captain, Handed off and Closed with team, and how many Captain resolutions were Reopened in 7d or Stayed closed. - Handoff reasons: why Captain passed conversations to your team: Customer requested, Missing knowledge, Unsupported request, Policy restriction, Tool failure, Pending customer clarification, Usage limit or Unclassified. - Resolution trend: conversations handled and resolved by Captain over the period, compared with the previous period on matching weekdays. - Captain CSAT: the average customer rating for Captain-resolved conversations and Captain-assisted conversations, compared with conversations your team handled alone. - Knowledge coverage: approved FAQs against Suggested FAQs waiting for review. Click Review FAQs to go to the queue. - Usage: Credits and Documents used for the account. Click Refresh usage to update, or Buy more credits. See the conversations behind a number Administrators can click a number, or a handoff reason, to see the conversations behind it. Click Load more for more. The list counts "episodes". A conversation can appear more than once if Captain handled it at separate times, for example after it was reopened. Test it Choose This month, click Handoff rate, and open a few conversations. Check that the handoff reasons match what happened. Get value Use the handoff reasons to decide what to fix first: If this is high Try this Missing knowledge Add documents and approve FAQ suggestions. See Add documents to Captain's knowledge and Add FAQs and review FAQ suggestions in Captain Tool failure Check your tools. See Set up custom tools for Captain Policy restriction or Unsupported request Check your guardrails and scenarios are not too strict. See Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios Usage limit The account ran out of credits. See Captain AI credits and usage Customer requested Often expected. If it is very high, check the assistant's answers in the Playground - If Reopen rate goes up, answers may look right but not solve the problem. Read some reopened conversations. - Saved in agent effort and time is an estimate, not a measurement. - For reports across all bots in the account. Troubleshoot Symptom Likely cause What to do "No data available for this period." No inbox connected, or Captain handled no conversations in that period Connect an inbox, or choose another period A period shows "Not enough reporting history yet" The assistant has no data that far back Choose a shorter period Captain resolutions remained closed has no value No resolution in the period is seven days old yet Expected. Check again later Clicking a number does nothing You are not an administrator Ask an administrator A conversation appears twice in a list Captain handled it in two separate episodes Expected Usage numbers look old The card has not refreshed Click Refresh usage More causes: Troubleshoot Captain.

Updating robots.txt to Allow Chatwoot Assistant to Crawl Your Website

Chatwoot uses Firecrawl internally to fetch and index your website content. This allows the Chatwoot Assistant to answer questions using your site’s information. However, if your website’s robots.txt has Disallow rules, Firecrawl will respect them and skip crawling those pages. When that happens: - No documents from your website will be added to Chatwoot - The Assistant will not receive any additional context - Answers may become incomplete or generic To ensure the Assistant works properly, you need to allow Firecrawl to crawl your website. Step 1: Check Your robots.txt Visit: https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt Look for any Disallow: entries that might block user agents. Step 2: Add an Allow Rule for Firecrawl Ask your website admin or developer to add the following lines to the robots.txt file: User-agent: FirecrawlAgent Allow: / This tells Firecrawl that it is permitted to crawl your entire site, even if other bots are restricted. Step 3: Save and Publish After updating robots.txt, ensure the file is deployed and publicly accessible. You can verify by visiting: https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt and checking that the new rules appear.

How to auto-translate messages in a conversation?

Auto-translate lets your team support customers in any language. Customer messages appear in your language, and your replies reach the customer in theirs, automatically. This article shows you how to turn it on and how to work with translated conversations. Before you begin - Auto-translate is available on all paid plans on both self-hosted and Chatwoot Cloud. - You need to be an administrator to turn it on. - Messages are translated into the language your Chatwoot dashboard is set to. Each agent can change this under Profile Settings → Preferred Language. If an agent hasn't picked one, the account's default language is used. Step 1: Turn on Auto-translate 1. Go to Settings → Conversation Workflows. 2. In the Translation section, choose a translation service: - Captain: AI translations that sound natural and keep your tone. - Google Translate: quick, reliable translations from Google. If it shows Not connected, click Connect and follow the steps first. 3. Turn on the Auto-translate conversations toggle. Settings → Conversation Workflows → Translation That's it. Auto-translate now works in every conversation in your account. Agents don't need to set anything up. Step 2: Read customer messages in your language Open any conversation. When a customer writes in another language, their message appears already translated, with a View original link underneath that names the language they wrote in. In the example below, Sophie writes in French and the agent reads her messages in English. Sophie's French messages appear in English. The agent's English reply is sent to her in French. Step 3: Reply in your own language Type your reply in your own language and send it as usual. Chatwoot translates it into the customer's language before it reaches them. A View translated link appears under your reply. Step 4: Check the original or translated text You can always see exactly what was written or sent: - On a customer message, click View original to see their exact words. - On your reply, click View translated to see the version the customer received. - Click the link again to switch back. Sophie's original French message, and the French version of the agent's reply What you'll see on messages What you see What it means Purple shimmering text with Translating… A customer message is being translated into your language. This usually takes a second or two. Purple shimmering text with Translating to French… Your reply is being translated into the customer's language before it's delivered. View original (French) The customer's message was translated. Click to see what they wrote. View translated (French) Your reply was translated. Click to see what the customer received. Could not translate A customer message couldn't be translated and is shown as they wrote it. Could not translate, sent as typed Your reply couldn't be translated, so the customer received your original text. A new customer message is being translated into English Sophie's English message shows no translation line. The agent's latest reply is being translated to French. Frequently asked questions How does Chatwoot know which language to reply in? Chatwoot detects the language the customer is writing in and translates your replies into that language. What happens if the customer switches to my language? Their messages appear exactly as written, with nothing extra underneath. Your replies follow whatever language the customer is using in the conversation. Are private notes translated? No. Only messages the customer can see are translated. Private notes stay exactly as you wrote them. Do I still need the Translate option in the message menu? No. With Auto-translate on, messages are translated for you, so the manual Translate option is hidden for those messages. Can I switch between Captain and Google Translate? Yes. Go back to Settings → Conversation Workflows and pick the other service. New messages use the service you choose.