# Teach the AI how to handle situations

Rules for specific cases, such as wholesale enquiries, angry customers or after-hours chats, that say what the AI says and what happens next.

Your knowledge says what is true. Situations say how to behave in a particular case: when a customer asks for wholesale prices, bring in a salesperson; when a customer is angry, apologize and hand off; outside office hours, keep answering and take a phone number. You can have up to 10 situations.

## Add a situation

1. Go to **Customer Support → AI assistant → Situations**.
2. Click **Add situation**, or click one of the templates next to it: **Khách hỏi giá sỉ**, **Khách bực bội**, **Ngoài giờ làm việc**, **Hỗ trợ kỹ thuật**, **Hỏi tỉnh/thành để báo phí ship**.
3. Give it a name and fill in the fields below.
4. Click **Save**.

![Two situations: a wholesale enquiry that brings in an agent, and an angry customer that is handed off](https://hatang.dev/help/img/en/ai/situations.webp)

## The fields

| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Starts when** | **The visitor talks about a topic (the AI recognises it)**: describe the case in **Describe the situation** and the AI decides when a message fits. **The message contains keywords**: a list of words, accents ignored. **Every message**: applies to every message that meets the conditions below, good for rules by time or channel. |
| **Office hours** | Any time, only within, or only outside your office hours. |
| **Channels (none = all)** and **Websites (none = all)** | Limit the rule to some channels or websites. |
| **Instructions for the AI** | How to reply in this case, up to 1,000 characters. An example of a good reply and one to avoid helps. |
| **Extra context** | Facts the AI needs only here, such as a wholesale price list, up to 2,000 characters. |
| **Then** | What happens after the reply (see below). |
| **Apply at most once per conversation** | On by default, so the rule does not fire on every message. |

## What happens next

| **Then** | Effect |
|---|---|
| **Just reply as instructed** | The AI follows your instructions and keeps answering. |
| **Bring in an agent to follow along (the AI keeps replying)** | The agents you pick in **Who to bring in** are added to the conversation and notified; the AI keeps helping the customer. |
| **Hand off to an agent** | The conversation goes to your team: right after the AI's reply for a topic rule, or at once with your hand-off phrase for a keyword or every-message rule. Pick someone in **Hand off to (none = routing rules)** or leave it empty to use your distribution rules. |
| **Stop the AI in this conversation** | The AI stops answering in this conversation, as if an agent clicked **Stop AI**. |
| **Mark as spam and stop the AI** | The conversation is moved to spam and the AI stops. |

## How situations are applied

- **Keyword** and **every message** rules are checked before the AI writes anything. If such a rule hands off, stops the AI or marks spam, that happens immediately and the AI does not answer.
- **Topic** rules are listed to the AI with your description. When the customer's message clearly fits one, the AI replies following that rule's instructions, then its **Then** action runs.
- Instructions in a situation take priority over the general instructions on the **Assistant** tab, but never over your knowledge: a situation cannot make the AI state a price that is not in your knowledge or in its extra context.
- When several rules apply, the one higher in the list wins. Use the arrows to reorder them.

> [!TIP]
> Keep the list short. Too many rules make the AI rigid and harder to predict. Put general manners in the instructions on the **Assistant** tab, facts in the knowledge, and use situations for real exceptions.

## Check a situation

On the **Knowledge** tab, use **Chat with the AI** and write a message that should trigger the rule. Each answer shows **Situation:** with the rule it applied. You can also pretend to be outside office hours or on another channel with the two selectors at the top of the panel.