How to set up the AI sales agent

The agent answers the DMs your automations don't catch, from knowledge you gave it, in a voice you chose, inside limits you set. It ships off: nothing is sent on your behalf until you flip the switch at the end of this guide.

Before you start

• Only an owner or admin can change what the agent says or knows. Other roles see the settings and are refused on Save.
• Instagram does not have to be connected to do steps 1–4. The Playground works with no channel at all.

1 — Teach it about your business

Go to Agent → Knowledge and add at least one source: paste your FAQs and policies, crawl your website, sync your Shopify catalog, or load the sample. Imported passages need a quick review before the agent answers from them. The whole tab is covered in Add knowledge and sync your catalog.

2 — Give it your voice and goals

1. Go to Agent → Overview. The card at the top — Let's get your AI working — ticks itself off as you complete the three things it needs, and reads Your AI is ready when they are done.
2. Under Goals, toggle what the agent should be doing in your DMs. The defaults:

1. Under Instructions, write what you'd tell a sharp new hire — for example Recover carts, answer sizing from the catalog, and hand refunds over $50 to me. This is your brand voice and your standing orders in one; it is fed into every reply.
2. Choose a Reply length: Short (one short sentence), Medium (1–3, the default) or Long (up to 5).
3. Optionally set Response pacing — None, ~2s, ~5s or ~10s. A short pause plus a typing indicator stops replies landing machine-instant.
4. Optionally write the Lead-capture confirmation — the message sent after a captured email lands. Blank uses the built-in default.
5. Click Save changes.

The setup step counts as done once you've written a voice or changed any goal from its default.

3 — Set your guardrails

1. Go to Agent → Trust & Guardrails.
2. Toggle Cap the discount the agent can offer on and enter a percentage.
3. Under Forbidden claims, type a phrase such as clinically proven and press Enter or click Add. Any reply containing one of these is blocked, case-insensitively. Up to 30 phrases.
4. Leave Refund requests on: a clear refund or chargeback request pauses the agent for that conversation and flags it in the Inbox before any reply is sent.
5. Turn Hand off when stuck on. When the agent can't answer confidently it stands down and drops a note in your Inbox so you can step in.
6. On a paid plan, decide whether to Let the agent send product cards on its own. It saves on flip.
7. Click Save guardrails. The confirmation reads "Saved — enforced on every agent reply now", and that is literally true.

A reply that breaks a hard rule is never sent. The conversation is paused and flagged in the Inbox with a note saying why. Full detail: agent-guardrails.md.

4 — Test it before a customer does

1. Go to Agent → AI Playground.
2. Click a starter question, or type your own in Ask the agent anything… and click Ask.
3. Read the answer and the label under it: grounded · <sources> means it came from your knowledge; not sourced from your knowledge means read it carefully; ungrounded — no knowledge yet means there is nothing to answer from.
4. If an answer could not be grounded, use the inline Add text / Add link shortcut and Save & re-answer to close the gap on the spot.

Nothing here is sent: no DM leaves HyperDM, nothing lands in your Inbox, no contact is created. The model call is real, so it counts toward your AI spend.

5 — Turn on AI replies

1. Go back to Agent → Overview.
2. Find Reply to DMs automatically at the top and flip the toggle on. It saves immediately; there is no Save button for this one.

What the switch does and does not do:

• On — DMs your automations don't catch are answered by the agent, using your knowledge and instructions.
• Off — those DMs land in your Inbox for you to answer. Your keyword automations, flows and comment replies still run; only the open-ended fallback is off.

You can say not yet on the setup page and still count the step as done. A merchant running comment-to-DM and keyword automations gets real value with this switch off.

What to do next

• Give it one nudge per conversation toward a link, a lead or a follow: Set up conversation goals.
• Let it reply to positive comments under your posts: Set up AI comment replies.

Common problems

It said it doesn't know. There is nothing in your knowledge that answers the question. Analytics → Knowledge gaps lists the questions it could not answer; paste the answers into Agent → Knowledge.

It went quiet on a conversation. A guardrail fired or it handed off. Open the conversation in the Inbox: the note says why, and the thread is yours until you resume it.

Save is refused. You are not an owner or admin of this workspace.

Full reference: agent.md.