Chat Triggers
A chat trigger is a form trigger in Chat mode. Same builder, same auth, same hosted page chrome — but the runtime body is a chat instead of a form. Switching modes is one toggle.
Switching to Chat Mode
Section titled “Switching to Chat Mode”-
Open the builder for any form trigger.
-
Click the gear icon to open Form Settings.
-
The first option is Mode. Switch it to Chat.
The header gets a Chat badge. The right side of the builder swaps from a form preview to a chat preview. A few options shift around:
| Section | Standard | Chat |
|---|---|---|
| General → Submit Button Text | Visible | Hidden (chat composer replaces it) |
| General → Chat Behavior | Hidden | New section: history depth, event retention, idle timeout |
| Sections tab | Visible | Hidden (multi-step forms don’t translate to chat) |
| Workflows → Chat-Ended Workflow | Hidden | New section |
| Workflows → Memory Bank | Hidden | New section |
| Branding, Access, Errors, Pre-fill | Same | Same |
Everything else (logo, page title, favicon, password protection, error pages, etc.) works identically in both modes.
Pre-chat Fields
Section titled “Pre-chat Fields”If you drop fields onto the form canvas in chat mode, they render as a pre-chat form that the user fills out before the chat opens. The values are available in your agent’s templates as {{ initial.* }}.
If you don’t drop any fields, the chat opens immediately when the user lands on the page.
Chat Behavior Settings
Section titled “Chat Behavior Settings”Under Form Settings → General, chat mode adds a Chat Behavior section:
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| History Depth | 20 | How many prior messages the agent sees on each turn. Bigger = longer memory in the same session = more tokens per turn. |
| Event Retention (days) | 14 (range 7–30) | How long the chat stream is kept around for replay. Drives how far back users can scroll their chat after coming back later. |
| Idle Timeout (minutes) | 10 (range 1 min – 24 hr) | How long before an inactive session is auto-ended. 10 min is fine for most chats; pick shorter for kiosks, longer for power users. |
| Hide chat history sidebar | Off | Removes the past-sessions sidebar so the chat reads as a single live conversation. Active sessions still resume on reload. Suits anonymous chatbot embeds (lead-gen widgets, support bots). Per-page override: ?history=false on the public chat URL. |
| Hide tool-call cards | Off | Suppresses the inline “calling tool …” cards from the transcript so a user-facing chatbot reads as plain conversation. Tool output is preserved — files, images, link cards, and any text the tool returns still render. Per-page override: ?tool_cards=false on the public chat URL. |
What Doesn’t Apply
Section titled “What Doesn’t Apply”- Submit Button Text — chat composer replaces it
- Sections — multi-step forms don’t translate
- Confirmation Workflow — preserved but doesn’t fire on chat sessions (chat is multi-turn; confirmation is a one-shot review-then-submit pattern)
Related
Section titled “Related”- Chat Agents — the agent setup, tools, approvals, memory bank
- Form Triggers — the standard-mode sibling