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AI Chat Bots

Better Messages allows you to create AI-powered chat bots using multiple AI providers: OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), and Google Gemini.

How it works#

AI bots appear as regular users in the messaging interface. When a user sends a message to a bot, the message is processed through the selected AI provider and a response is generated. Each bot can be configured with its own provider, model, system instructions, and specific capabilities. In group conversations, bots respond when mentioned with @botname.

Key capabilities#

  • Multiple AI providers — choose between OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), and Google Gemini per bot
  • Create multiple AI bots with different personalities and purposes
  • Custom system prompts to define bot behavior and knowledge
  • Welcome message — auto-sent by the bot when a user starts a new 1:1 conversation, with a live preview of the first-message experience
  • Dynamic placeholders and conditionals in system prompts and welcome messages — reference the user, site, current date/time, and bot identity
  • Per-bot settings — each bot can have its own provider, model selection, and API key override
  • Web search — bots can search the web for current information
  • File search — bots can search through uploaded knowledge base files (OpenAI)
  • Image generation — bots can generate images (OpenAI, Gemini)
  • Real-time response streaming in conversations
  • Group conversation support — add bots to group conversations, bots respond when mentioned with @botname
  • Conversation summarization — AI-generated summaries of conversation history, configurable per thread
  • Scheduled digests — AI-generated conversation digests on a schedule (hourly, twice daily, daily), configurable per thread
  • Token usage tracking — per-bot token usage tracking with cost estimation
  • Points charging — charge users MyCred or GamiPress points for AI responses
  • Online presence — bots appear as online users (WebSocket version)
  • Typing indicators — bots show a typing indicator while generating responses (WebSocket version)
  • E2E encryption exclusion — bots are automatically excluded from end-to-end encrypted conversations
  • Dedicated admin page for bot management

How to enable#

Step 1: Configure your AI provider API keys at WP Admin → Better Messages → Settings → Integrations.

You only need to configure the providers you plan to use.

Step 2: Create and configure bots at WP Admin → Better Messages → AI Bots.

  • Click Add New to create a bot
  • Set the bot's display name and avatar
  • Select the AI provider and model
  • Write a system prompt defining the bot's personality and instructions
  • Enable desired capabilities (web search, file search, image generation — availability depends on provider)
  • Optionally override the global API key with a per-bot key
  • Configure points charging, summarization, and digest settings as needed
  • Publish the bot
info

Write detailed system prompts for your bots. The more specific the instructions, the better the bot will perform for your specific use case.

Welcome message#

Each bot can have a Welcome message — the first thing the bot says when a user starts a new 1:1 conversation with it.

Bot welcome message shown virtually on the New Conversation screen

The welcome message appears in two places:

  1. Virtually on the New Conversation screen the moment the user picks the bot as the recipient — before the thread even exists, so visitors can see how the bot greets them before typing anything.
  2. Persisted as the first real message of the thread once the user sends their first message, so it shows in the conversation history on reload.

Delivery is silent: the welcome message does not increment the unread badge and does not send push notifications.

The welcome message is sent only for 1:1 conversations. Adding the bot to an existing group chat or a chat room does not trigger it.

By default the welcome message is also passed to the AI provider as part of the conversation history, so the bot stays aware of what it said. You can turn this off per-bot with the Include Welcome in Context toggle to save input tokens.

Formatting#

The welcome message supports both Markdown and raw HTML — use whichever is more convenient:

Hi **{first_name}**! Check out our [knowledge base](https://example.com/docs)
or jump to <a href="/support" target="_blank">support</a>.

Unlike AI-generated replies (which are HTML-entity-encoded before rendering so that any < in model output shows as literal text), the welcome message template is authored by an admin and is therefore rendered as-is through the same Markdown + HTML pipeline used by other bot messages. This means you can embed links, bold text, line breaks, and simple tags like <code>, <b>, <em>, and <a href> directly.

Placeholders#

Bot Behavior panel with Instruction, Welcome Message and placeholder chips

Both the Instruction (system prompt) and the Welcome message support curly-brace placeholders that are expanded at runtime. Unknown tokens are left unchanged.

User: {name}, {display_name}, {first_name}, {last_name}, {email}, {user_id}, {user_role}

Site: {site_name}, {site_url}, {site_description}

Date & time (uses WordPress site timezone): {current_date}, {current_time}, {current_datetime}, {current_year}, {day_of_week}, {time_of_day} (morning / afternoon / evening / night)

Bot: {bot_name}, {bot_id}

The admin UI shows every available token as a clickable chip. Clicking a chip inserts the token into whichever field (Instruction or Welcome message) you last focused, so you don't have to type them manually.

Conditionals#

You can also wrap content in conditional blocks that only render when the condition matches. Content inside non-matching blocks is stripped.

  • {if_guest}...{/if_guest} — shown only to guest visitors
  • {if_user}...{/if_user} — shown only to logged-in WordPress users
  • {if_role:<slug>}...{/if_role:<slug>} — shown only when the user has the given WP role (e.g. administrator, editor, subscriber). Opening and closing tags must reference the same role.
  • {if_morning} / {if_afternoon} / {if_evening} / {if_night} — shown only during that time-of-day band

Conditionals can be combined with plain placeholders. Example welcome message:

{if_user}Welcome back, {first_name}!{/if_user}{if_guest}Hi! Create an account for a smoother experience.{/if_guest} It's {time_of_day} at {site_name} — how can I help?

Preview button#

Every textarea that supports placeholders has a Preview button next to it. Clicking it resolves the template against your current admin account and shows the rendered result, so you can verify tokens and conditionals produce the output you expect before saving.