When you first create an agent, you'll see a range of settings. This guide cuts through the noise and tells you exactly what to set as a beginner — and what to leave alone until you have more experience.
The settings that matter most
Response creativity (temperature)
This controls how "creative" or "literal" the AI is. A higher setting means more varied, fluent answers. A lower setting means tighter, more predictable answers.
- Recommended setting: 0.4 — balanced. Accurate without being robotic.
- Avoid going above 0.7 — responses become unpredictable and can drift from your knowledge base.
- Avoid below 0.2 — responses become stiff and repetitive.
Max response length
Controls how long the agent's replies can be. Short is almost always better in chat — people don't read walls of text.
- Recommended: 250–350 tokens (roughly 2–4 sentences per answer)
- For technical or detailed product businesses, 400–500 is acceptable
- Never exceed 600 unless your use case specifically requires long-form answers
Fallback message
This is what the agent says when it can't find an answer in the knowledge base. Every agent needs a good fallback. A bad fallback destroys trust — a good one keeps the conversation going.
- ✅ "I don't have that info right now, but you can reach us at hello@example.com or book a call here: [link]"
- ❌ "I don't know." — gives no path forward
- ❌ "Error: no relevant context found." — never let technical language leak into the chat
Lead capture — turn on immediately
This feature prompts the agent to ask for the visitor's name and email at a natural point in the conversation — usually after answering their main question.
Turn this on. It's the single highest-value setting for most businesses. Even if a visitor doesn't book a call, a captured email means you can follow up later.
Set the prompt to something natural: "Would you like me to send you more details? Just drop your email and I'll have someone follow up."
Booking CTA button — turn on immediately
This adds a "Book a Call" button inside the chat widget, usually after the agent answers a question. Link it to your Google Calendar booking URL (Calendly, Cal.com, or Google Booking).
This is how your agent converts conversations into revenue. Without it, visitors who are interested have to go searching for your contact page — and many won't bother.
Settings to leave alone for now
- Custom system prompt — leave at the default preset until you understand how prompts work (see How to write a good AI prompt)
- Streaming responses — leave on by default; it makes the agent feel faster
- Citation mode — off for most customer-facing agents; on if you want the agent to reference source pages
- Human handoff triggers — useful later, but configure this once you've seen real conversation data