Build a playbook

A playbook turns your written instructions into named stages the chatbot moves through, one at a time. It stops the chatbot re-asking questions it already has answers to, and it lets you see where a conversation actually is.

The page itself puts it best: A playbook is a set of named stages the agent moves through. Drafting one takes a minute or two of waiting and about half an hour of reading it back.

Steps

Open the Playbook tab

In the sidebar, under Messaging, click AI Chatbot, then the Playbook tab. With nothing built yet you land on No playbook yet.

Two ways in: let the AI draft from your brief, or build the first stage yourself

• Draft from my instructions reads your brief and proposes a whole flow. This is the one to use.
• Start blank creates an empty playbook named after your chatbot and says Empty playbook created — add your first stage.

If you have not written any instructions yet, only Start blank is offered.

Confirm the draft

Draft from my instructions asks first, under the heading Draft a playbook?:

The AI reads your agent’s brief and rewrites the whole flow from it. This takes a minute or two — you can leave this page while it runs.

Under What it reads are six pills naming exactly what it uses: Instructions, Goal of the conversation, Role, Tone, Language and Out-of-scope behaviour. Nothing else on the chatbot feeds the draft.

Press Draft it. Nothing is saved yet — you get to see the stages first.

Wait, or go and do something else

A band appears across the top of the tab naming the phase it has reached — Reading your instructions…, then Drafting stages…, then Finishing up… — and it says the important part out loud:

this takes a minute or two. You can leave this page; it keeps running, and you’ll get the new stages to review when it’s done.

That is literally true. Close the tab, shut the laptop, come back tomorrow: the draft is waiting. If it has not finished within ten minutes it gives up and tells you to check back shortly.

Read the draft before you accept it

The preview is titled Draft playbook and lists every proposed stage in order, with its name, its objective, what it must do, and its guards.

Read Not mapped into any stage first — it is the part of your brief the playbook will not be running

Two blocks under the stages are worth more than the stages themselves:

• What changed in translation — where the drafter interpreted you rather than copied you.
• Not mapped into any stage — the part of your instructions that did not make it into the flow. If something you care about is listed here, discard the draft, make that instruction clearer, and draft again.

Use this playbook accepts it and lands you back on this tab. When you are re-drafting over a playbook you already have, that button reads Replace playbook instead, in red. Discard draft throws the draft away and leaves your instructions untouched.

Add or fix the stages yourself

Accepting a draft is the start, not the end. Switch to Build and work down the ladder on the left, opening each stage and reading it as a customer would experience it.

Always on sits above the ladder; the numbers are the order the chatbot walks them in

Add stage beside the mode strip adds a new one. On a phone it moves into the kebab menu.

The three modes

A segmented control at the top of the tab switches between three ways of looking at the same playbook. Build is where you land, and Raion Hub remembers which one you last used on this device.

The three share one selection, so clicking a stage anywhere — on the map, in a check, under a test reply — switches to Build with that stage open. Test only appears once there is a real chatbot on a connected number to talk to; see Test the chatbot.

Map shows how many stages and how many always-on rules you have, a line for how much traffic the playbook has carried, and then the flow itself: a spine with one collapsible row per branch, or a single lane where the conversation never forks.

Build is two columns — the ladder on the left, an editor on the right. Below a tablet width you see one at a time, with an All of the playbook link back to the ladder. Past six stages a search box appears at the top of the rail.

Each row in the ladder shows its number, its name, its objective, and a pill where one applies: Internal for a stage that sends the customer nothing, and Ends for a stage that finishes the conversation. Its kebab menu holds Edit stage, Move up, Move down, Move to top, Move to bottom and Delete stage.

Reordering happens instantly on screen and is sent to the server behind you, so ten quick moves feel like ten quick moves. If the server refuses, you will see Couldn’t reorder the stages. and the old order come back.

Inside a stage

Opening a stage gives you six sections, one at a time.

Work down the six in order the first time; Basics and Enter & leave carry most of the behaviour

Key is the short slug that transitions and logs refer to. Every stage needs one — save without it and you get A stage needs a key — it is what transitions and logs reference. Changing a key on an existing stage re-points every transition and guard that named it, so do it deliberately.

Both checkboxes under Enter & leave explain themselves in the label. Internal stage — no message to the contact lets a stage do its work without the customer seeing anything. Ends the flow here — the conversation stops at this stage goes on the last stage of each path: the conversation stops there either way, and the tick is how the map and the checks know the path was meant to end.

What a guard can do

Each guard is an If, a Then, an optional Then go to, and a Say. The three Then choices are not interchangeable:

Reply and carry on does not move the conversation. Moving is the separate Then go to control, and it works with any of the three.

Deleting a stage removes every transition into and out of it, and warns you that Conversations already in this stage fall back to the first stage on their next message.

Always-on rules

The row labelled Always on at the top of the ladder — or Always-on rules in the kebab menu — opens the playbook-level record, subtitled Applied on every reply, at every stage. It has six sections:

Use this playbook switched off keeps every stage but hands the conversation back to the instructions on the Brief tab.

Each rule under Rules has a condition, the reply to send, and two checkboxes: Stop here — later rules and the stage are skipped, and Send this wording exactly — the agent won’t rephrase it. Use the second for anything legal or priced.

Keep Business facts to the handful of things people ask constantly — opening hours, the address, the deposit. Leftover notes is a to-do list, not a setting: the chatbot falls back to it only when nothing else answers, so move each note into a stage and clear it.

The bands above the playbook

Up to four bands can sit between the mode strip and the playbook itself.

Drafting is the progress band described above.

Switched off says This playbook is switched off. Every stage is kept, but the agent is running on the instructions from the Brief tab. Its Switch it on button confirms with Playbook is running this conversation again.

Out of sync says Your instructions have changed since this playbook was drafted. The playbook is still what runs — re-draft to fold the changes in. You can Re-draft, or press Keep as is to stop being reminded.

Checks is the validation band, and it only exists in Map and Build — it is deliberately not shown in Test, where the transcript needs the height. The number on the Playbook tab itself is the signal that follows you there.

The word is to check, not warnings — every one of these lets the conversation carry on

The band’s summary counts errors and things to check, and collapsed it also shows the first finding. It opens itself only when something is an actual error. Each finding can carry:

• Open followed by the stage’s name, which selects that stage in Build
• a one-press fix, such as Create or Use followed by a field name
• nothing at all, where the remedy is a judgement call. That is intended

Once there are two or more distinct fixes, a Fix button with a count appears above them.

Undoing things

Earlier versions

Earlier versions in the kebab menu lists the copies kept automatically whenever a playbook is replaced — each labelled Replaced by a re-draft or Replaced by a restore.

Restoring asks first, and the wording is the reassurance: the version you pick becomes the playbook that runs your conversations, replacing the one you have now — which is kept here in turn, so this is reversible. Your written instructions are not touched.

Remove playbook

Remove playbook deletes every stage and transition and hands the conversation back to your instructions on the Brief tab, which were never changed.

Re-drafting over work you have done by hand

Re-draft from instructions rebuilds the whole flow from your brief. If you have hand-edited the playbook since it was drafted, the preview warns you, and it is worth reading twice:

You have edited this playbook since it was drafted. Those edits are not in your instructions, so this draft does not contain them — anything you corrected on a stage will go back to what the instructions say.

A copy of the current playbook is kept under Earlier versions either way, so you can put it back. The safer order is: fold your corrections into Instructions first, then re-draft.

If something goes wrong

Next

• Test the chatbot before customers doChat with your chatbot yourself, in a private room that no customer ever sees.→
• Write the chatbot's briefThe Brief tab is where you tell the chatbot who it is and exactly how to run→
• Add your documents and answersThe Knowledge tab is where the chatbot gets its facts.→