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Test your AI agent before customers see it

A short checklist for trying your agent in the dashboard before you install it anywhere.

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Customers judge your agent on its first few answers. A short round of testing catches the obvious gaps before anyone else sees them. Test in two places: a test chat in the dashboard for knowledge and instructions, and the deployment's Preview for the full visitor experience.

Start a test conversation#

  1. Open AI Agents.
  2. On your agent's row, open Chat and choose New conversation. Or select Try it in chat at the top of the agent's edit page.
  3. Find earlier test conversations under Chat → Conversations.

The agent must be Enabled to chat. These conversations stay inside your workspace. They don't appear in Inbox, which lists visitor conversations from your deployments.

What a test chat uses#

A test chat in the dashboard runs the agent exactly as you set it up: its Instructions, Library, Portals, model, tools, skills, Creativity and Longest reply. It has no Chat settings of its own. To see the agent in the widget, with the deployment's own settings, use the deployment's Preview.

What to test#

  1. Your most common questions. Use the words customers use, typos included.
  2. Edge cases. A refund outside the policy window, an order that hasn't arrived, a product you don't sell.
  3. Questions it shouldn't answer. It should say it doesn't know rather than guess. If it guesses, add a rule to the agent's Instructions.
  4. Requests that need a person. Check that it offers a person instead of making promises.
  5. Tools. Ask for something that needs each tool you rely on, and check its approval requests. To see them the way visitors do, use the deployment's Preview (below).

Fix what you find#

What you seeWhat to change
A wrong or vague answerAdd a Q&A or Text Snippet to Library with the exact answer
An answer from the wrong documentNarrow the agent's Library (under Knowledge) to the right items
The wrong tone or formatAdjust the agent's Instructions
A procedure it gets wrong every timeWrite a Skill with the steps

After you select Save changes, the agent uses your changes from its next reply, so you can keep testing in the same conversation.

Try the full chat experience before you install it#

Website widget and hosted page deployments have their own page at your-link.help.chat. Select Open on the deployment's row in Deployments, or Preview (Open page for a hosted page) at the top of the deployment. There the agent runs with its own model, tools and skills, the way visitors get it. It's an easy way to test on your phone or share with a colleague before the widget goes on your website.

Leave Live on while you test with Preview. Nothing appears on your website until you paste the install snippet. Turn Live off under Availability to stop a deployment answering without deleting anything.

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