# Your First 30 Minutes A focused, six-step path from a fresh account to your first real AI-handled conversation. No rabbit holes, no advanced settings — just the shortest line between "I just signed up" and "the bot just replied to a real person on my behalf." Each step has a time estimate and a link to the deeper page if you want more detail later. Plan for about 30 minutes total. If you hit a wall on any step, skip ahead — you can come back to it. ::: walkthrough first-30-minutes ::: *** ## What you'll have at the end - One channel connected (WhatsApp, SMS, Instagram, or Messenger) - One AI bot configured with your business basics - One AI Agent live on that channel - One test conversation where the bot replied to you in real time That's the whole loop. Once that loop works once, everything else in this platform is a refinement on top of it. > **New here?** This walkthrough uses **AI Agents**, the bot you build once and reuse. A **Broadcast** is the separate thing you create when you want to message a list. [Campaigns Have Moved to Broadcasts & Agents](../moving-from-campaigns.md) explains how the two fit together. *** ## Step 1 — Connect a channel (≈ 5 min) The bot can't reply to anyone until it has a way to receive messages. Pick **one** channel for now — you can add more later. - **Fastest start: [WhatsApp Web](../messaging-channels/whatsapp-web.md).** Scan a QR code with your phone and you're connected in under two minutes. Best for testing, personal numbers, and small-volume outreach. - **For scale: [WhatsApp Business API](../messaging-channels/whatsapp-business.md).** Higher official limits and lower ban risk. Takes longer to set up — Meta verification involved — but it's the right channel if you're planning real volume. - **Other options:** [SMS](../messaging-channels/sms.md), [Instagram DMs](../messaging-channels/instagram-dms.md), [Facebook Messenger](../messaging-channels/facebook-messenger.md), or the [Chat Widget](chat-widget.md) for your website. You can connect a channel from **Settings → Channels → Channels**, where every channel gets its own card with a **Connect** button — click **Settings** near the bottom of the left sidebar to get there. ::: master-only
Settings → Channels → Channels, listing Instagram & Messenger, WhatsApp Business API, WhatsApp Web, and Telegram with their connection status

Settings → Channels → Channels — pick one channel and click its Connect button.

::: > **Heads up — WhatsApp Web only:** If you're connecting a brand-new SIM that has never received a WhatsApp message, **text it from your personal phone 3–5 times and wait a few hours before connecting it.** Otherwise Meta (the company behind WhatsApp) will ban it within minutes of your first outbound message. The full reasoning lives in the [Scaling WhatsApp Outreach Safely](../messaging-channels/scaling-whatsapp-outreach.md) guide — read that page before you connect anything serious. *** ## Step 2 — Tell the bot what to say (≈ 10 min) The bot needs a **playbook**: who you are, what you sell, and how you want it to talk. Think of it like onboarding a new sales rep on their first day — except this rep reads it once and remembers everything forever. You configure the bot **inside an AI Agent**, so this happens together with Step 3 below: open **AI Agents** in the left sidebar (under **AI Studio**), create or open an Agent, then use its **AI Instructions** step — the first one in the editor. It's a structured editor, not one big text box: four collapsible sections, each with a handful of focused fields (click **Edit as text** if you'd rather write it as one plain-text block). Fill in: 1. **Persona & Goal.** The bot's name/role and personality (business basics, tone of voice — casual, professional, playful, direct), and the goal of the conversation. Book a call? Qualify a lead? Answer questions? Drive to a payment link? Be specific — "help the visitor" is too vague. 2. **Business Context.** Facts about your company the AI can lean on — your offering, who it's for. 3. **Conversation Behavior.** How the AI should steer and guard the chat, including hard limits: don't quote prices, don't make promises about delivery dates, don't argue, etc. 4. **Escalation & Wrap-up.** When to hand off to a human and when to stop. Keep it focused — one page of clear instructions beats five pages of waffle. The [AI Bot Setup](../ai-automation/ai-bot-setup.md) page has the full breakdown of every available setting, but you can ignore the advanced toggles for now. ::: master-only
The AI Instructions step in the agent editor, showing Primary language at the top and the collapsible Persona & Goal, Business Context, Conversation Behavior, and Escalation & Wrap-up sections with an Edit as text button

AI Instructions — the playbook, broken into structured sections: who you are, what you sell, your tone, your goal, and your hard limits.

::: Scroll down within the same step and you'll also find reply timing, response limits, AI response speed, and the AI quality model tier — they all live on this one step. ::: master-only
The AI Instructions step scrolled down, showing reply-timing fields, response limits, AI response speed options, and the AI quality model-tier picker

Further down the same step — reply timing, response limits, AI response speed, and AI quality (model tier) all live here too.

::: > **Recommended starter settings:** Response delay 5–30 seconds (makes replies feel human, not instant-bot), for AI Quality pick **Max** if it's offered on your account, or **Mini** if you're watching credits, and if you only see **Pro** and **Economy** choose **Pro**; max messages per conversation 20 (the bot pauses and alerts you in the app for handoff if a chat runs long — turn on email alerts in Settings → Notifications if you want an email too). > **Reusable by design:** because the playbook lives on the [AI Agent](../ai-agents/ai-agents.md), you can point a [Broadcast](../broadcasts/broadcasts.md) — or a second channel — at the same Agent later without rewriting any of it. *** ## Step 3 — Create your first AI Agent (≈ 5 min) An AI Agent tells the platform "when a message comes in on this channel, use this bot to reply." Without an Agent answering the channel, nothing happens — the bot is just sitting there with no instructions to fire. 1. Open **AI Agents** in the left sidebar, under **AI Studio** (if you've folded that group away, click **AI Studio** to open it). 2. Click **New agent** in the top right. 3. The quickest route is **Build from your website**: type your website address, click **Build agent**, and wait the minute or two it takes to read your pages and write the agent for you — you land in its editor with the instructions already filled in. Prefer to write everything yourself? Pick **Start blank**, give the agent a name and language, and click **Create agent**. 4. Finish by telling the platform this agent should answer the channel you connected in Step 1 — open the agent's **Entry Points** step and add a rule for that channel, or pick the agent for that channel in the **Who answers new conversations** panel on the AI Agents page. See [Entry Points](../ai-agents/entry-points.md). ::: master-only
The New agent dialog with starting-point cards — Build from your website selected — a Website address field with a Find pages button, a Documents row, and Name and Language fields below

What "New agent" opens — give it your website address and it writes the agent for you, or pick Start blank to write it yourself. It still replies in whatever language the contact writes.

::: The agent editor's steps run down the left: **AI Instructions**, **Active Hours**, **Media**, **FAQs & Knowledge**, **AI Abilities**, **Tags**, **Follow-ups**, **Entry Points**, and **Try Out**. Fill in AI Instructions, then skip straight to Try Out — you can safely leave every other step for later. Full guide: [AI Agents](../ai-agents/ai-agents.md). *** ## Step 4 — (Optional) Add a couple of FAQs (≈ 5 min) If there are 3–5 questions every lead asks ("What does it cost?", "Do you ship internationally?", "How long does setup take?"), add them now: open the Agent you created in Step 3 and go to its **FAQs & Knowledge** step. The bot will pull from these whenever a question matches. ::: master-only
The FAQs & Knowledge step in the agent editor, showing Agent FAQs, Knowledge sources, and the AI web search toggle

FAQs & Knowledge — a few structured Q&As tighten up the bot's most common answers.

::: You can skip this step and the bot will still work — it just falls back on the playbook for everything. But FAQs make the answers tighter and more consistent on the questions you actually get asked every day. Full guide: [Managing FAQs](../ai-automation/faq-management.md). *** ## Step 5 — Test it in Try Out (≈ 3 min) Before letting a real lead anywhere near it, **talk to your bot yourself**. Open the Agent you created in Step 3 and click its **Try Out** step, the last one. Type the kind of message a real prospect would send — vague, half-typed, with a typo. See how the bot responds. Then try the awkward cases: - A question your playbook doesn't cover - A blunt "How much?" with no context - A rude or off-topic message - A request to talk to a human Try Out puts your AI instructions in a pane right beside the test chat, so you can edit the playbook (Step 2) or add an FAQ (Step 4) and immediately re-send the same message to see if the reply improved — no separate save step, no leaving the page. If a reply is genuinely bad, click the thumbs-down under it to open **Optimize with AI**, which rewrites the instruction that caused it for you to review and publish. Both work on every agent, with nothing to link or set up first. ::: master-only
The Try Out step in the agent editor, showing AI instructions on the left and a test conversation panel on the right

Try Out — talk to your bot's configuration and edit the playbook right beside the test chat.

::: Full guide: [Chat Playground](../chats/playground.md). *** ## Step 6 — Send yourself a real message (≈ 2 min) Try Out is great but it's not the real channel. Time to round-trip a message through actual infrastructure. 1. From your personal phone, message the number/account you connected in Step 1. 2. Wait. (Remember Step 2's response delay — the bot may pause 5–30 seconds on purpose.) 3. Read the reply. Reply back. Keep the conversation going for a few turns. If the bot replies the way you'd want it to reply to a real prospect, **you're done.** You have a working AI conversation loop. If something feels off, open **Chats** in the left sidebar — the conversation shows you exactly what the bot is doing, lets you take over manually, and lets you stop a reply mid-typing if needed. See [Chat Interface](../chats/chat-interface.md). ::: master-only
An open conversation in the v2 Chats page, showing the message thread and composer with AI paused

An open conversation in Chats — the status bar makes it obvious when the AI is paused and a human needs to reply.

::: *** ## What now? You have the loop running. The rest of the platform is sharpening it: - **More leads:** Set up [Follow-Ups](../ai-automation/follow-ups.md) so the bot keeps nudging contacts who go silent. Set up [Funnels](../integrations/funnels.md) for multi-step automated flows. - **More channels:** Add a second channel from **Settings → Channels → Channels**. The same agent can answer on multiple channels at once. - **More volume:** Read [Scaling WhatsApp Outreach Safely](../messaging-channels/scaling-whatsapp-outreach.md) before you push past a few hundred messages a day — it's the most expensive page on this docs site to skip. - **More tools:** Hook the bot up to your CRM (the software you use to track customers and deals) with [Webhooks](../integrations/webhooks.md), give it the ability to look things up in real time with [Custom Functions](../ai-automation/custom-functions.md), or let it book real appointments with the [Booking System](../appointments/booking-system.md). - **More people:** Invite teammates in [Team Management](../settings/team-management.md) so they can step in on chats the bot escalates. - **Reaching out first:** once your first bot is proven, read [Campaigns Have Moved to Broadcasts & Agents](../moving-from-campaigns.md) — it's how you pair this agent with a [Broadcast](../broadcasts/broadcasts.md) to message a whole list. ::: master-only
The v2 Dashboard, showing the KPI row, Performance Over Time chart, Credit Usage panel, Conversion Funnel, and Inbox summary

Your Dashboard once the loop is live — this is where you'll watch it perform.

::: Welcome aboard.