Your AI Knowledge Base is the foundation for everything your AI assistant says and does. It gives you full control over the content your AI can access, allowing you to provide fast, accurate, and brand-aligned customer service across chat, voice, email, and agent assist.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to build a high-performing knowledge base from the ground up, keep it up to date, and unlock more advanced tools as you grow. Whether you’re starting with a few pages or setting up something more complex, this guide will walk you through it step by step.
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💡 Your AI Knowledge Base can be edited, grown and enhanced at any time so don’t worry too much about getting it perfect and complete on your first try. Often, through testing and previewing you will identify any gaps or improvement opportunities!
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This section will cover how to build an AI Knowledge Base for your chatbot.
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Head to ‘AI Knowledge Bases’ in the left-hand menu, then click on the blue 'Create AI Knowledge Base' button.
🌟 All new accounts will have an AI Knowledge Base pre-built in their account. Check to see if yours exists already and you can edit and enhance it
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a. Name your Knowledge Base
Add a clear and descriptive label so you can easily identify this KB later.
b. Scan your website or sitemap for URLs (optional)
To quickly add multiple URLs, use either the “Scan website for URLs” or “Scan your sitemap.xml for URLs” buttons. This will automatically search for publicly accessible pages. Follow the on-screen instructions in the modal to complete the process.
c. Manually add or manage URLs
You can manually enter individual URLs in the input box. If you’ve already bulk-added URLs, they’ll appear in this list. Use the trash icon to remove any that aren’t relevant.
d. Add another URL
Click “Add a URL” to insert a new input field for additional manual entries.
e. Set a refresh schedule
Use the dropdown to choose how often Talkative should re-scan your URLs to keep your Knowledge Base up to date. We recommend selecting weekly.
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You can upload files to enrich your Knowledge Base. This is useful for providing internal documentation, detailed processes, or context that may not exist on your public website.
a. Upload your files
Click the upload area or drag and drop your file into the box. Supported formats include PDF, JSON, TXT, and CSV. Files are limited to 20MB per file.
b. Manage uploaded files
Once uploaded, your files will appear in a list. You can remove any file that’s no longer relevant by clicking the trash icon next to it.
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Talkative extracts text content from uploaded files. If your document contains key information embedded in images (like scanned PDFs or infographics), make sure that content is also available as selectable text, or update the document accordingly.
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Use this section to manually add any standalone text you want the AI to have access to. It’s perfect for: temporary or seasonal updates, notes you haven’t yet formatted into a document, quick additions that need to be searchable by the AI right away.
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a. Write your prompt instructions
Add clear, specific behaviours you want your AI to follow.
b. Click Save
Don’t forget to click Save to create the Knowledge Base.
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Need help crafting the perfect prompt? Check out our AI Knowledge Base: Custom Prompts guide for best practices, real examples, and tips to shape your AI’s tone and behaviour.
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Once your AI Knowledge Base finishes processing, you’ll receive an email notification letting you know whether it was successful or if there were any errors. If errors do occur, you’ll also be able to view them directly in the URL section of your Knowledge Base. Just click ‘Show Errors’ next to any failed URL to get more information about what went wrong.
Here are some common errors and what they mean:
