Your Fellow Agent Documentation
Everything you need to set up, train, and manage your business agent. From the first website scan to site launch, Slack, and email handoff.
Try the Agent
LiveThis is the live Your Fellow Agent support agent. Ask it anything about the product or setup flow.
Overview
Your Fellow Agent helps you launch a business agent that learns from your site, answers routine questions, and brings in your team when judgment is needed.
Key capabilities
Why This Is Different
Most site chat tools either abandon the customer or force a handoff. This keeps the customer in one thread.
The problem with other chat tools
The tool doesn't know the answer, so it tells the customer to email support or call a number. Now the customer has to start over with a different channel, re-explain everything, and wait.
The tool tries to help but hits its limits. It "transfers" the customer to a human agent. The customer waits, then has to explain everything again. The agent has no context.
How Your Fellow Agent is different
When your agent needs help, it doesn't abandon the customer. It asks clarifying questions when useful, collects only the contact fields you configured, and loops in a human with the full background.
Quick Start
Build your agent, test it, and install it with one line of code.
Create the agent from your website
Enter a URL and the system starts crawling pages, extracting business info, and drafting a starter FAQ.
Review setup and training
Pick an avatar, set the agent name, choose tone, review website coverage, and add docs or manual URLs.
Set up connections
Choose contact fields, open the live dashboard, and add email or Slack alerts when your team needs to jump in.
Install once
Copy the script, paste one line of code before </body>, and manage launcher changes from Your Fellow Agent after that.
Start: Website Scan
Start by giving the agent your website so it can learn the basics before you customize it.
What happens during the scan
Give Your Agent a Presence
Choose the face, name, and personality customers will interact with.
Configuration options
Style the Customer Experience
Customize the conversation, launcher, and site appearance to match your brand.
Styling options
Train It on Your Business
Review website knowledge, add FAQs, upload documents, and test how the agent responds.
Knowledge sources
- Edit auto-generated FAQ responses from the website scan
- Add your own Q&A pairs manually
- Import/export Q&A as plain text (Q: and A: format)
- Supported formats: PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, CSV, XLS, XLSX
- Maximum file size: 10MB per file
- Up to 5 files per upload batch
Choose Contact Fields
Choose what the agent should collect when your team needs to follow up.
Available fields
The agent should only ask for the fields you enable. If you collect name and email but not phone, it should not keep asking for a phone number.
Connect Your Team
Decide how your team sees customer threads and how the agent should ask for help.
Trigger phrases
The agent uses judgment first. It can answer normal follow-up questions, ask for clarification, notify your team, or ask your team when the customer needs help beyond the knowledge base.
Custom triggers
Add industry-specific phrases that are strong signals for your business. These guide the agent, but the model still uses the conversation context.
Owner instructions
Customize what the agent says when looping you in and how it sets expectations.
Slack
Connect Slack when your team wants alerts and customer threads in a shared workspace.
Setup process
Connect your workspace
Click 'Add to Slack' to authorize the Your Fellow Agent app in your workspace.
Select monitoring channel
Choose where all conversation messages should be posted (optional).
Select alerts channel
Choose where urgent alerts should be posted when you're needed.
Advanced Settings
Fine-tune launcher behavior and enable power features.
Launcher placement
Additional options
Images only (PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, HEIC). Up to 3 per message, 5MB each. Drag/drop or paste supported.
Collect messages without agent replies
How Connecting Your Team Works
The complete flow from customer request to resolution.
Asking your team is a feature, not a failure
When the agent needs help, it acts like a coworker. It keeps the conversation natural, asks clarifying questions when they help, gathers the details you configured, and sends you a simple email or Slack note with the background. No separate acknowledgement email is sent by default; the customer stays in the same thread.
You reply however you want - "tuesday 4 works" becomes a polished customer response when agent replies are enabled. In escalation-only mode, the email makes it clear that you should reply to the customer directly.
How a customer thread moves forward
Asks a question, describes a problem, or requests human help
Answers when it can, asks useful follow-ups, notifies your team, or decides a team member should be involved
Gathers the configured fields, such as name, email, phone, address, or a custom field
Tells the customer it is getting the team involved and keeps the thread open
Via email, Slack, or both, with context and customer details included
You reply from email, Slack, or dashboard, or contact the customer directly
Notify vs Ask the Team
The agent does not need to treat every unusual customer message as a hard handoff. It can choose the lightest useful level of team involvement.
Routine questions stay with the agent. It answers from your website, FAQs, documents, and training without bothering your team.
For high-value, sensitive, or unusual conversations, the agent can keep helping while your team gets a heads-up in the dashboard, email, or Slack.
When the agent should not guess, it asks useful follow-ups, collects the configured contact fields, and creates a thread for your team to answer.
Signals That Your Team May Be Needed
The agent can loop you in when:
When customers use specific words like "human", "manager", "refund", or any custom triggers you've configured. These guide the agent rather than replacing its judgment.
The agent recognizes when customers are getting frustrated or repeating themselves.
Questions outside the agent's knowledge base loop you in rather than guessing.
Customers can always ask to speak with a human directly.
The Team Flow
When the agent loops you in, it follows a natural process:
The agent identifies what the customer is trying to do and whether it can help directly.
For service requests, troubleshooting, quotes, or appointments, it may ask one or two practical follow-ups before collecting contact info.
Asks for the fields you enabled, and does not keep asking for fields you turned off.
Sends a plain coworker-style email or Slack note with what the customer needs, what has already been said, and how to answer.
Team Channels
Dashboard
- Real-time customer thread inbox
- View every message and current status
- Reply from the portal when agent replies are enabled
- Useful for teams handling many conversations at once
- Plain-language note from Your Agent [name]
- Explains what the customer needs and includes the relevant context
- Customer contact summary
- One-click dashboard link (magic link auth)
- Reply directly when you want the agent to relay your answer
Slack
- Posts to your configured coordination channel
- Includes customer info and request summary
- Reply in Slack to respond to customer
- Optional: All messages in monitoring channel
- Thread-based conversation management
Responding to Customers
Three ways to respond
If agent replies are enabled, reply to the alert with what you want to say. The agent turns it into a clear customer response and sends it back in the same conversation.
Reply in the conversation thread. The agent can relay your answer to the customer when agent replies are enabled.
Click the magic link in your email to go directly to the conversation in your portal inbox.
Dashboard: Customer Threads
Your command center for seeing and managing customer conversations.
Inbox features
- View all conversations with status badges (Active, Needs help, Resolved, Needs response)
- Filter by agent or status
- Search by customer name or content
- Sort by last activity
- Messages left when the agent was in trial/offline mode
- Sender info (name, email) if provided
- Mark as read functionality
Stats dashboard
Customer Thread Detail
What you see in each thread
- Full message thread between the customer, agent, and owner
- Customer contact information
- Timestamps for all messages
- Team involvement status and category
- Reply interface to respond directly
Agents
Manage multiple agents
- Grid view of all your agents with avatars
- Per-agent stats (conversation count, last active)
- Quick actions: Configure, View Inbox
- Create new agent button
Widgets
Widget types
Answer questions directly from your knowledge base. Great for help centers.
Collect contact info conversationally. Perfect for landing pages.
Help customers book appointments and collect preferences.
Custom agent interactions with your own instructions.
Team Management
Team roles
| Permission | Member | Admin | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| View conversations | |||
| Respond to customers | |||
| Train agent | |||
| Configure agents | |||
| Invite team members | |||
| Promote/demote or remove members |
Team management actions
- Invite new members by email with role assignment (Owner/Admin)
- View pending invitations with expiration dates
- Resend or cancel invitations that haven't been accepted (Owner/Admin)
- Owners can promote/demote members between roles
- Owners can remove team members
Settings
Settings
View your account details
Configure how you receive alerts
Automatic weekly summary of activity and trends
Owner Replies
Reply from Slack or email without opening the dashboard.
Owner replies via Slack
When connected to Slack, you can take over any conversation directly:
- Reply in the conversation thread to send a message to the customer
- Mention the bot to trigger specific actions
- View full conversation context in the monitoring channel
@Julie [message]Send a response (timer resets to 10 minutes)@Julie doneEnd remote control and return to the agent@Julie extend 15Extend the timer (minutes)@Julie statusView remaining time and controller
Remote control via email
Every alert email includes a special reply-to address:
If agent replies are enabled, reply to the email and your message is routed to the right conversation, polished, and delivered to the customer.
Training Mode
Correct agent responses in real time to improve future answers.
How to use training mode
Generate a training PIN
Go to your agent's configuration page and generate a time-limited PIN.
Enter training mode
In the chat widget, type 'enter training mode' and provide the PIN when prompted.
Correct responses
If the agent gives a wrong answer, simply respond with the correct one. Say something like 'No, the correct answer is...' or 'Actually, it should be...'. The agent will save your correction automatically.
Reset and test
Click 'Reset Chat' in the training panel to start fresh, then ask the same question to verify your correction was learned. Repeat this process to dial in your agent's responses.
Exit training mode
Type 'exit training mode' when finished. All corrections are saved automatically.
Trial & Offline Mode
Collect leads and customer messages without agent responses during setup, downtime, or an expired unpaid trial.
Full trial, then contact-form mode if unpaid
New businesses get 14 days of full agent functionality. If the trial expires without active billing, the installed widget stays on the site but switches to contact-form mode for new visitors. That means it stops generating agent answers and owner-reply workflows, but it can still collect the customer's message and contact details so the business does not lose the lead.
- Full agent behavior during the 14-day trial
- Contact-form mode after an unpaid trial expires
- Manual pause mode when the owner wants to collect leads without agent replies
Offline message
Customize what visitors see when the agent is offline:
Keeping Knowledge Current
Ways to keep an agent aligned with a changing business site.
Current Your Fellow Agent update paths
From Configure, owners can trigger a fresh crawl when services, pricing, hours, policies, menus, or support pages change.
Add specific URLs so important pages, like pricing, FAQs, menus, service-area pages, or documentation, are included in the next crawl.
Manual Q&A and training corrections take priority over scanned website content, so owners can fix important answers immediately.
Upload PDFs, spreadsheets, docs, policy files, menus, catalogs, or support scripts when the source of truth is not on the public site.
Other automatic refresh patterns for site agents
Run daily, weekly, or monthly crawls for selected pages and update the knowledge base when page content changes.
Watch sitemap.xml and page last-modified values to discover changed or newly published pages.
Trigger refreshes from Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, or a custom CMS whenever products, pages, posts, or policies are published.
Hash page text, compare diffs, and re-embed only the changed sections instead of rebuilding everything.
Sync product catalogs, inventory, hours, locations, pricing, or booking availability from APIs instead of scraping rendered pages.
Use unanswered questions, corrections, and owner replies to suggest knowledge updates for approval.
Stage changed answers before publishing when accuracy matters, especially pricing, policies, legal, medical, or financial content.
Notify owners when high-traffic answers are stale, pages disappear, crawl fails, or important site sections have not been refreshed recently.
Billing & Plans
Launch pricing is based on customer conversation volume, not gated core features.
Launch plans
| Plan | Price | Customer conversations | Agents | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | $49/mo | 250/month | 1 | 2 |
| Business | $149/mo | 1,000/month | 1 | 5 |
| Growth | $399/mo | 3,000/month | Up to 3 | 10 |
A customer conversation is one customer thread or session, not every individual agent reply. Owner replies are not metered separately.
Included on every paid plan
Add-ons
Phone number, SMS replies, voice agent, extra agents/sites, extra conversation packs, and white-glove onboarding can be added separately.
Slack Integration
Full integration with Slack for notifications and conversation management.
Setup process
Install the app
Click 'Add to Slack' in your agent's configuration to authorize the Your Fellow Agent app.
Select channels
Choose a monitoring channel (all messages) and a coordination channel (urgent alerts).
Start receiving notifications
Alerts and conversations will appear in your selected channels.
Slack capabilities
All conversation messages posted for visibility
Urgent requests posted for immediate attention
Respond to customers directly from Slack
Trigger specific actions or take over
Email Integration
Automatic email notifications and reply handling.
Email types
Plain note from Your Agent [name] when a customer needs help. It explains the request, includes the useful context, and tells you whether to reply to the email or handle the customer directly.
Notification when someone leaves a message while the agent is offline.
Summary of activity, trends, and unanswered questions.
Replying to emails
Each alert email has a special reply-to address that routes your response to the correct conversation:
From: Your Agent Julie <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Hey,
I am talking with Sarah on your website.
She wants to reschedule her highlights appointment and asked whether Friday afternoon is available.
Tell me what you want me to say and I will relay it back to her.
Customer:
Sarah Lee
[email protected]
Reply above this line so I know what to send.Widget Embed Codes
Installation snippets for your website.
Primary agent widget
Add this before your closing </body> tag. Paste it once, then change colors, launcher style, side, tab text, and uploads from Your Fellow Agent:
<script
src="https://www.yourfellowagent.com/widget.js"
data-bot-id="YOUR_BOT_ID"
defer>
</script>data-config-source="inline".Embedded widgets
Embed a widget inline on your page (great for landing pages, contact pages, or documentation):
<div id="yfa-YOUR_WIDGET_ID"></div>
<script
src="https://yourfellowagent.com/embed.js"
data-widget-id="YOUR_WIDGET_ID"
></script><div style="max-width: 400px; margin: 0 auto;">
<div id="yfa-YOUR_WIDGET_ID"></div>
</div>Widget styling tips
The widget inherits styles from its container. Use CSS to control width, max-width, and positioning. For centered widgets, use margin: 0 auto.
Widgets are responsive by default. On mobile, they'll adapt to the available width. Consider using max-width: 100% for fluid layouts.
You can embed multiple widgets on the same page. Each needs a unique container ID matching the patternyfa-YOUR_WIDGET_ID.
Primary widget configuration
| Setting | Values | Default |
|---|---|---|
| data-bot-id | Your agent ID | (required) |
| Desktop | Bubble or side tab | Bubble |
| Mobile | Side tab or bubble | Side tab |
| Side | Left or right | Right |
| Tab text | Short label | "Ask us" |
| Side tab position | 20 to 80 percent down the page | 52% |
| Image uploads | On or off | On |
Analytics & Reports
Track performance and identify opportunities.
Dashboard metrics
Total chats this week with trend indicator
Estimated time saved by automation
Percentage handled without human help
Conversations awaiting your response
Peak days and hours for traffic
Unread messages from offline mode
Weekly digest email
Receive a weekly summary including:
- Week-over-week comparison of key metrics
- Common questions that needed human help
- Suggestions for knowledge base improvements
FAQ
Common questions about Your Fellow Agent.
What is a business agent?
A business agent is the customer-facing helper for your company. It answers what it can from your business knowledge, asks useful follow-up questions, and creates a customer thread when your team should step in.
How does the agent learn about my business?
The agent reads your website content automatically when you provide a URL. It extracts text, products, services, and FAQ candidates to build useful business knowledge. You can scan the website again, add priority URLs, upload documents, and add manual Q&A or training corrections to keep answers current.
What is the difference between an agent and a widget?
Your agent is the brain and personality. A widget is one place customers can interact with it, such as the main site chat, a focused FAQ block, a lead capture form, or a scheduler.
What is a customer thread?
A customer thread is the shared record of one customer conversation. It includes what the customer asked, what the agent said, contact details when provided, team notes, and any replies sent from the dashboard, email, or Slack.
Is this difficult to install?
No. Installation is one line of JavaScript placed before the closing </body> tag. You paste it once, then manage launcher style, side, color, and text from Your Fellow Agent.
What happens if the agent can't answer a question?
It uses judgment instead of guessing. It can ask for clarification, notify your team while it keeps helping, or ask your team directly. When it needs your team, it collects the details you configured and creates a customer thread with the context.
What is the difference between notifying the team and asking the team?
A notification is a heads-up while the agent can still keep the conversation moving. Asking the team means the agent should not guess, so it gathers useful details and waits for a team answer or direct follow-up.
Can I customize how the agent responds?
Yes. You can set tone (friendly, professional, enthusiastic, empathetic), perspective (I/we/they), custom instructions, and edit the knowledge base at any time. Changes go live instantly.
Do I need a credit card to start?
No. The 14-day free trial does not require a credit card. If the trial expires without billing, the installed widget switches to contact-form mode so visitors can still leave a message.
What happens after the trial?
Add billing to keep full agent answers, owner handoff, dashboard/email/Slack replies, and widgets active. If you do not add billing, the site code can stay installed but the widget collects leads instead of generating agent replies.
How does pricing work?
Plans are based on customer conversation volume: Solo at $49/month for 250 conversations, Business at $149/month for 1,000 conversations, and Growth at $399/month for 3,000 conversations and up to 3 agents. Core features are included on every paid plan.
How do I get notified when I need to step in?
Use the dashboard for the full thread, email for simple owner replies, and Slack as an optional team add-on. The note explains who the customer is, what they need, the relevant context, and whether you should reply through the agent or contact the customer directly.
Do I have to use Slack?
No. Slack is optional. Most small businesses can start with the dashboard and email, then add Slack later if a team wants shared alerts.
Can the agent send emails to customers?
Yes. If agent replies are enabled and the customer provides an email address, the agent can use that email to continue the conversation after you reply. It does not send a separate acknowledgement email by default.
Can I change how the launcher appears after install?
Yes. The site script fetches its settings from Your Fellow Agent. You can change the desktop launcher, mobile side tab, side, tab text, image uploads, color, and offsets from the dashboard without changing the pasted code.
Can you install it for me?
Yes. You can copy the install snippet yourself, email it to whoever manages your site, or book a short setup call for installation help.
Do you support SMS or WhatsApp?
The agent works through your website widget, email, and Slack.
Do I need a mobile app?
No app required. Everything works via email, Slack, or the web dashboard.