Live Chat6 min read

Build an AI Knowledge Base for Your Chat Agent

The AI agent that powers your chat replies is only as good as what it knows. The Knowledge Base is where you teach it - pages from your site, free-text notes, and uploaded PDFs/DOCX files. Every enabled item is fed into the AI prompt so visitors get accurate answers from your business, not generic ones.

Open the Knowledge page

From your dashboard, go to Live Chat → Knowledge. If you just signed up, you may already see a few auto-generated notes - FloatMessage scrapes your domain's front page on create and asks Claude to summarize it into 3–5 starter items.

Note: The Knowledge page is per-domain. If you have multiple domains (Enterprise plan), use the “Editing” badge to switch between them.

Decide what your AI should know

A good knowledge base is small and focused. Aim for items a visitor would realistically ask the chat about:

What you sell or do (1–2 sentences max)
Pricing and plans
Hours, contact, or support process
Refund / shipping / cancellation policies
Top FAQ — the 5 questions you answer most often

Tip: Don't paste your whole website. The AI gets confused by 5,000-word essays. Short, distinct items beat long documents almost every time.

Add a URL

Click + Add knowledge, choose the URL tab, and paste a public page (pricing, FAQ, doc).

FloatMessage scrapes the page on save, strips nav/scripts/footers, and stores ~5,000 characters of clean text. The page is re-scraped automatically every 24 hours so changes you publish to the source page flow through to the AI without you touching anything.

Need a fresh scrape right now? Use the refresh icon on the row, or re-scrape every URL at once with the Re-scrape URLs button at the top.

Write a Note

Notes are best for short, structured snippets that don't live on a single web page. Examples:

Holiday hours. “We're closed Dec 24–Jan 2. Email support@you.com for urgent issues.”
Refund policy. “Unopened items returnable within 30 days. Worn items are final sale.”
Internal escalation rules. “If a visitor mentions a billing dispute, ask them to email billing@you.com.”

Upload a file (PDF, DOCX, TXT, MD)

Got a product brochure, employee handbook, or onboarding PDF? Click + Add knowledge, choose the File tab, and pick the file (max 5 MB).

Your browser parses the file - pdfjs for PDF, mammoth for DOCX, plain read for TXT/MD - so even huge documents don't round-trip to the server twice. The extracted text is what the AI sees; the original file stays in storage in case you want to download it later.

Warning: Scanned PDFs (image-only) won't produce any text. If the uploader shows “Couldn't extract any text,” export the PDF as text/searchable PDF first.

Manage and tune

Each row has four controls:

Refresh (URLs only) — force an immediate re-scrape.
Toggle - keep the item but stop sending it to the AI. Great for A/B testing prompt quality without losing the content.
Edit - change the title, content (notes/files), or source URL.
Delete - permanently remove the item and free up a plan slot.

Send a test message in your chat widget after adding items - the AI usually picks up new context within seconds, since URL items are concatenated into the prompt on every reply.

Stay within plan limits

Each domain has a knowledge-item cap based on your plan: 10 (FREE), 30 (PRO), 100 (ENTERPRISE). The header banner shows X of Y items at all times. When you hit the cap, delete older items or upgrade.

Tip: If you find yourself near the cap, prefer one well-edited URL or file over five short notes. The AI does better with a few authoritative sources than with many overlapping ones.