Click "Create New Avatar" from your dashboard. This is your bot — Weavin calls them Avatars because they're more than a simple bot. They have a persistent identity, memory, and a consistent personality across every platform they're connected to.

This is the most important step and the one most people rush. What you write here determines how your bot will behave in every single conversation it has.

Fill in:

1. Name — Give your bot a real name, not "Bot" or "Assistant." If your community is called Apex Trading, your bot might be "Apex" or "Max" or whatever fits the culture.
2. Role and personality — Write two to three sentences describing who this bot is. Not what it does — who it is.

Good example:

"You are Milo, the community host for the Apex Trading group. You know markets well and explain things simply without talking down to people. You're direct, slightly informal, and genuinely helpful — you don't give non-answers."

Bad example:

"You are a helpful assistant for our community. You answer questions helpfully and professionally."

The first one will produce a bot with a consistent, recognizable voice. The second will produce a bot that sounds like every other AI on the internet.

1. What it knows — Add context about your community, common questions, and any specific information the bot should have. Think of this as a briefing document:
   • What is the community about?
   • What questions do members ask most often?
   • Are there specific terms, rules, or resources the bot should know about?
   • What's the community culture like?
   The more specific you are, the better the bot performs from day one.

Weavin supports Claude, GPT, Gemini, and several others. For most community bots, Claude Sonnet or GPT-4o are strong defaults — capable enough to handle complex questions, fast enough that responses don't feel delayed.

If you already have an API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google, you can bring it directly (BYOK — Bring Your Own Key). This means model costs come from your own quota rather than Weavin's platform credits.

If you don't have one, Weavin's built-in model access works fine to start.

Make your bot genuinely useful by grounding it in your community's actual content — FAQs, rules, guides, and more.

1. Navigate to Knowledge Base → Add Sources inside your bot's settings
2. Upload documents (PDF, DOCX, TXT) such as your community rules, onboarding guides, or product FAQs
3. Optionally paste URLs and Weavin will scrape and index the page content automatically
4. Wait for the Indexed status badge to appear — this confirms the bot can now cite and reference your material accurately

Finally, connect the bot to your community platform. Each connection takes under two minutes once you have the token.

For Telegram:

1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather
2. Send /newbot, follow the prompts to name your bot
3. Copy the token BotFather gives you
4. Back in Weavin, select Telegram, paste the token, click Connect

For Discord:

1. Go to discord.com/developers and create a new application
2. Under the Bot tab, create a bot and copy the token
3. In Weavin, select Discord, paste the token, click Connect

For Slack:

1. Go to api.slack.com and create a new app
2. Grant the required permissions (Weavin will tell you exactly which ones)
3. Copy the bot token and paste it into Weavin

If you're connecting multiple platforms, do them one at a time — each one is a separate token from its respective platform.

This is where the 24/7 part is explicitly managed. In your Avatar settings:

1. Response mode — Set to "Always on." This means the bot responds to every message it receives, at any hour, with no manual intervention.
2. Group behavior — Decide whether the bot responds to every message in the group, only messages that mention it directly, or only questions (messages ending in "?"). For busy groups, "mention only" or "questions only" is usually better — it prevents the bot from dominating every conversation.
3. Handoff rules — Set conditions for when the bot should escalate to a human. Example: "If a user expresses frustration more than twice, add a note that a team member will follow up." This keeps the bot from getting into loops with people who need a human.

This is the feature most community managers underuse. Your bot can send automatic messages on a schedule:

• Daily morning digest ("Here's what's happening in the community today")
• Weekly summary of top discussions
• Timed announcements for events or launches
• Periodic reminders of community rules or resources for new members

Set these up in the Avatar's scheduling panel. You write the message once, set the time and frequency, and it runs indefinitely until you change it.

Before you add the bot to your real community, test it in a private group or DM:

• Ask the three most common questions your community has — does it answer them correctly and in the right voice?
• Ask something it shouldn't know — does it handle uncertainty gracefully?
• Ask something off-topic or slightly hostile — does it stay in character?
• Send a casual greeting — does it respond warmly without being weird about it?

If anything feels off, go back to the identity and personality settings and tighten the language. Most issues trace back to a vague or contradictory system prompt, not the AI model itself.

Add your bot to your community group and let it run. For the first 48 hours, read through its responses to see how it's performing. You're looking for:

• Responses that are off-brand or use the wrong tone
• Questions it couldn't answer that it should be able to
• Anything it said that was factually wrong or misleading

Use what you find to update the personality description and knowledge base. After two or three rounds of this, most bots reach a stable, reliable state that needs minimal maintenance.