Playground

The Playground is a live chat with your bot that no customer sees. It's where you validate answers, tune instructions, and catch problems before deploying.

What the Playground is for#

Open a bot and go to its Playground tab. You get a real conversation powered by the bot's current model, instructions, knowledge and tools. Reads can use live tool data, but external write actions run in safe simulation mode.

  • Confirm the bot answers from the right articles.
  • Check tone, language and formatting.
  • Verify handoff rules trigger when they should.
  • See whether attached tools fire on the right questions.

Writes are simulated

Playground tests for tools that would write to Notion, Google Sheets, MCP, REST or another external system return a dry-run result. Test real writes through a connected customer channel.

The test-and-tune loop#

  1. Ask a real question

    Use the actual phrasing your customers use — including the awkward, short or misspelled versions.
  2. Read the answer critically

    Is it correct, on-brand and grounded in your knowledge? Did it hand off when it should?
  3. Adjust

    Fix the source: add or edit a knowledge article, refine the instructions, or tweak a handoff rule.
  4. Re-test

    Ask again. Repeat until the common questions are reliably handled.

Before you deploy#

Build a quick test set

Keep a short list of your top 10–20 real questions and run them through the Playground after any change to instructions, knowledge or model. It's the fastest way to catch regressions before they reach customers on a channel.