Glossary
A quick reference for terms you’ll see throughout ChatbotIQ. If you’re new to AI chatbots, start here.
Allowed domains A list of website domains where your widget is permitted to load. If you leave this empty, any website can embed your bot. Setting allowed domains prevents unauthorized use on other sites.
Bot An AI-powered chatbot you create in ChatbotIQ. Each bot has its own AI model, personality, knowledge sources, and widget settings. You can have multiple bots, each serving a different purpose.
Confidence score A number (0—100%) that indicates how relevant the retrieved content is to a user’s question. High confidence means the bot found strong matches in your knowledge base. Low confidence means the answer might be less reliable.
Content selector A setting that tells the crawler to extract content only from a specific section of the page. Useful when Reader Mode alone doesn’t filter out enough noise. Your developer can help you find the right value for your site.
Credits The currency used for chat messages in ChatbotIQ. Each message your bot answers costs a certain number of credits based on the AI model used and the length of the response. Your plan includes a monthly credit allowance, and you can purchase top-ups if needed. See Plans, Credits & Pricing.
Crawling The process of visiting web pages and downloading their content. ChatbotIQ’s crawler reads your website, extracts the text, and prepares it for indexing. See How Web Crawling Works.
Discovery The first step of adding a website source. ChatbotIQ finds all the pages on your site — either by reading your sitemap (Standard mode) or by following links (Advanced mode).
Embedding (AI concept) A way of converting text into a format that AI can search by meaning, like a fingerprint of the text’s content. This allows ChatbotIQ to find relevant answers even when the exact words don’t match the question. This is different from “embedding the widget” on your website.
Embedding the widget Adding the ChatbotIQ chat widget to your website by pasting a code snippet into your HTML. See Embed the Widget.
Human handoff A feature that lets your bot transfer a conversation to a live support agent when it can’t answer a question or when the user requests it. See Enable Human Handoff.
Indexing The process of converting crawled content into embeddings and storing them in a searchable database. Once indexing is complete, your bot can use that content to answer questions.
Knowledge base The collection of all your sources — websites, PDFs, Q&A pairs, and other content — that your bots draw from to answer questions. Managed on the Knowledge Base page in the dashboard.
Knowledge gap A topic where users asked questions but your knowledge base didn’t have good answers. ChatbotIQ detects these automatically and groups them into clusters so you know what content to add next. See What Are Knowledge Gaps?
MCP (Model Context Protocol) An open protocol that lets AI tools (like coding assistants) connect to external data sources. ChatbotIQ can act as an MCP server, allowing tools like Claude Desktop or Cursor to search your knowledge base directly. See Connect via MCP.
PII redaction Automatic detection and masking of personally identifiable information (like email addresses, phone numbers, or credit card numbers) in chat messages. Helps protect user privacy. See Enable PII Redaction.
Playground The full-screen environment where you design your widget, test conversations with your bot, view debug information, and get the embed code. See Use the Bot Playground.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) The technology that powers ChatbotIQ. Instead of relying solely on the AI model’s training data, RAG first retrieves relevant content from your knowledge base, then uses it to generate accurate, grounded answers. This is what prevents hallucination and ensures source citations. See How RAG Works.
RAG score threshold A setting on your bot that controls how confident the bot needs to be before using a piece of content in its answer. A higher threshold means the bot only uses content it’s very sure about (fewer but more accurate results). A lower threshold means the bot considers more content (broader coverage but potentially less precise). The slider defaults to a position labeled 0.25, but leaving it there lets ChatbotIQ apply its tuned default of about 0.30 — and the actual value varies by content type (lower for e-commerce, higher for legal). This works well for most use cases.
Reader Mode A crawling setting that strips away navigation bars, sidebars, footers, and other page elements — similar to your browser’s built-in Reader View. Extracts only the main article content. Especially useful for CMS platforms and wikis.
Relevance ranking An automatic system that re-checks search results and puts the most relevant ones first before generating an answer. This happens behind the scenes to improve answer quality.
Source A content source in your knowledge base. Can be a website URL, an uploaded PDF, manually entered Q&A pairs, a spreadsheet, or an OpenAPI specification. Each source is crawled, indexed, and made available to your bots. See Source Types.
Streaming The way ChatbotIQ delivers responses — text appears word by word as the AI generates it, rather than waiting for the complete answer. This makes conversations feel natural and responsive.
Workspace Your organization’s account in ChatbotIQ. A workspace contains all your bots, sources, team members, billing, and settings. Think of it as your company’s ChatbotIQ home base.