chatbots

For CTOs and tech leads, the best framework for building AI agents might not be a SaaS product—it might be a state machine your team builds in-house.

Understand the crucial differences between client-side and server-side tool integration for Large Language Models. This guide explains how to leverage these patterns effectively, often achieving results superior to complex agentic frameworks.

Proactive chatbots set the stage for success. They reveal their capabilities upfront, guiding users towards successful outcomes, and are essential for effective chatbot design.

Cut through the LLM hype! Learn the 4 practical ways to use AI in chatbots: extraction, classification, transformation, and generation. Understand their strengths and risks for building better conversational apps.

Function calls are the unsung hero of LLM UI manipulations. While OpenAI has made great strides leveraging function calls to manipulate the UI in their demos, the rest of industry is yet to take its first meaningful steps. But what do those steps look like?

Facing the tough ‘build vs buy’ choice for your chatbot platform? This post breaks down when custom development is a strategic advantage versus when buying a solution saves time and resources.

From full creative freedom to strict fact matching, organizations can design chatbots that meet their specific risk tolerance and communication needs. The key is choosing an approach that serves the user while protecting the brand.

Ensuring proper communication is critical — don’t let a chatbot fail to chat! Bots must strike a balance between confirming user information and proceeding with a reasonable assumption of correctness. Explicit and implicit confirmations are the primary tools to achieve this balance.

Like any software project, building a chatbot requires careful planning. While all software projects fall along the Waterfall-Agile spectrum. I believe chatbot projects should lean closer to the Agile end, emphasizing rapid prototyping and iteration over extensive upfront planning. This post draws on my experience with numerous chatbot projects and outlines what successful teams have done at the start.

Most chatbots stick to one modality—either text or voice. But as someone who uses subtitles for everything, I wonder why voice bots don’t also include text for accessibility. Is it a limitation in the voice tech stack? Does text clutter the UI? To find out, I decided to build my own streaming-first chatbot interface with both text and voice.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Chatbots are no different, and the first interaction with users sets the tone for the entire user experience. When crafting this initial message, I recommend to keep the 3 C’s in mind.

Think chatbots replace all web UIs? Not so fast. Explore the strengths of buttons, forms & tables in e-commerce (Apple, Taylor Stitch examples) vs chatbots and see where each truly fits.

Worried about AI lies? Build trust in your AI! This post explores how to measure truthfulness using ‘Correctness’ vs. ‘Faithfulness’ metrics, turning abstract trust into concrete data.