SilentChat

Configure knowledge source for widget

Last updated: September 9, 2026

If you operate multiple websites with different topics via the same SilentChat tenant (e.g., two brands, B2B + B2C, Germany + Austria), you rarely want all widgets to access the same knowledge pool. The bot on your B2C site shouldn't know about your B2B prices.

For this, there is Widget KB Scope — per widget, you define which categories of the knowledge base its AI is allowed to see.

The three modes

1. All Categories (Default)

The bot can use all published articles and active snippets of the tenant. Suitable for:

  • Single website, one widget, simple support
  • Small knowledge bases (under ~50 articles)
  • When separation is not yet necessary

2. Selected Categories

Whitelist: only articles and snippets from the selected categories. Ideal for:

  • Multi-Brand — each widget only sees content of its brand
  • B2B / B2C — prices, products, tone of voice clearly separated
  • Countries/Regions — Widget A sees DE articles, Widget B Austrian
  • Internal vs. Public — internal knowledge articles do not end up in public chat

Shared categories (e.g., "Legal", "Company") are simply selected in multiple widgets.

3. Disabled

The AI completely ignores the knowledge base. It responds without RAG context — exclusively from the system prompt, instructions, and conversation history. Suitable for:

  • Pure live chat widget without AI support
  • Special widgets where the AI should only respond to a fixed coded prompt
  • Saves embedding tokens (no retrieval queries)

Configuration

  1. Dashboard → Widgets → [Your Widget] → Knowledge
  2. Select mode (All / Selected / Disabled)
  3. For "Selected Categories": click on categories (checkbox style)
  4. Live counter at the top shows "X articles, Y snippets available for this widget"
  5. Save knowledge source

Changes take effect immediately — no reindexing required. The filter is applied during retrieval.

The Knowledge tab is a separate tab in the widget configuration — previously, the knowledge source was under "Availability", but it was moved out so that KB Scope, Availability (Agent Routing), and Privacy (Presence Tracking) can be stored separately.

Snippets now need a category

Snippets (the Q&A entries for quick AI responses) are now assigned to a category so that they follow the same scope as articles.

  • When creating a snippet: category as a required field
  • If no category exists yet: first create one in the Categories tab
  • Existing snippets were automatically assigned to a default category "General"
  • Snippet list has a category column and a filter

Best Practices

Start with a clear category structure. For example:

  • product-monaco — articles about product/site A
  • product-handwerk — articles for product/site B
  • legal — GDPR, terms and conditions, revocation (shared by all widgets)
  • company — imprint, contact, team (shared)

Each widget then subscribes to the appropriate ones: e.g., Widget Monaco → product-monaco + legal + company.

Avoid category duplicates. Use one category "Legal" and select it in all widgets instead of copying the content into multiple categories.

Check the live counter. If you activate "Selected Categories" and the counter shows "0 articles, 0 snippets", the bot can no longer use anything from the KB — the AI then only responds from the system prompt.

Delete category

  • Category still has snippets → Deletion is blocked
  • You are asked in the dashboard whether the snippets should be automatically moved to the default category "General" (force-delete)
  • All widgets that reference the deleted category are automatically cleaned up — the ID is removed from kb_category_ids
  • Empty selected widget scopes are downgraded to "All Categories" so that the bot does not remain silent

How does the scope affect things?

The scope filters the retrieval request — the vector search that finds articles and snippets for a specific visitor question. Technically:

  • Scope = all: SQL without additional category clause
  • Scope = selected: additional WHERE category_id IN (...) in the retrieval query
  • Scope = none: no embedding call, no retrieval query — saves tokens

The system prompt, custom instructions, and greeting message are not affected — they are applied independently of the scope.

Admin view

Super admins see the stored scope per widget in the widget config and can test how the bot responds via chat test (Admin → AI → Test).

Configure knowledge source for widget — Help Center | SilentChat