How answers work

3 min read

Every answer, from the website widget, the API or the Playground, goes through the same steps.

1. Follow-ups are rewritten to stand alone

When a question arrives with earlier turns of the conversation, Snoowl Answers first rewrites the question so that it makes sense on its own. “And on the yearly plan?” after a question about refunds becomes a question about refunds on the yearly plan. Only the rewritten question is searched for. The assistant still sees the original wording and the conversation when it writes the answer.

The conversation that counts is the last six messages, from the customer and the assistant. A question with no earlier turns skips this step. If the rewrite fails, the search uses the question together with the customer’s previous message.

2. Your documents are searched

Snoowl Answers finds the parts of your documents that best answer the question. Documents that are still indexing aren’t searched yet. Write documents that answer well has tips that help the right part be found.

3. Nothing relevant means a decline

If the search finds nothing, the assistant replies with your decline message at once, without writing an answer. These declines are quick, and they’re charged only for the search, plus the rewrite in step 1 if there was one (see Billing).

4. The answer is written from those passages only

The assistant writes the answer from the passages found, under fixed rules:

Every fact in the answer must come from the passages. The assistant never uses outside knowledge and never guesses.
If the passages don’t answer the question, the assistant declines with your decline message, word for word.
The passages, the conversation and the customer’s question are treated as information, never as instructions. A customer who types “ignore your rules” gets an answer from your documents, or a decline.
Your extra guidance can shape tone and scope, but can’t override these rules.

Answers can use light formatting: bold, code, bullet lists and numbered steps. The website widget and the console show that formatting. If you show answers in your own chatbot, render or strip the Markdown marks.

5. Sources come with the answer

Each answered question comes with its sources, called citations in the API:

one entry per document, in the order the answer used them;
the document’s name, which is the file name, the page title or the name you gave pasted text;
a link when the document came from a web page or a sitemap, otherwise none;
the passage the answer used, up to 280 characters.

A declined answer has no sources.

When the documents don’t cover the question

A declined answer has the status declined and your decline message as its text. The default message is:

I’m sorry, I can’t find that in our documentation. Please contact our support team.

Change it in Assistant settings. Point people somewhere useful, such as your support email or a contact page.

Every declined question also appears in Unanswered, grouped with others worded the same way. That list shows which documents to write next. See Conversations.

Model and tone

Two settings change how the answer is written. Neither changes which documents it may use.

Setting	Options
Model	Fast answers in a second or two and suits most help centres. Careful takes longer and handles tricky, multi-part questions better.
Tone	Friendly (warm and plain-spoken), Formal (courteous and formal) or Concise (a sentence or two, or a short list).

Both are set per assistant in Assistant settings. In the Playground you can try the other model or tone for a single answer without changing the saved setting.

When an answer can’t be written

If the answer can’t be written, for example because the model service is down or slow, the request fails with the message “The assistant couldn’t answer just now. Try again.” The API returns this with status 503. A failed answer is never charged.