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A chatbot is a conversational interface powered by one of your Agents or workflows. You build the logic once, connect it to a chatbot, and your users get a familiar chat experience (complete with conversation history, follow-up questions, and file uploads) without ever seeing the Agent or workflow behind it.
If you are completely new to VectorShift, head to the Quickstart first. This chapter assumes you have already built at least one Agent or workflow.

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What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is an interface that takes in user input, runs the underlying engine — either an Agent or a workflow — and gives back a response, while maintaining a persistent conversation history. Once you build a chatbot, you choose how people reach it: a shareable link, an embedded widget on your website, a Slack bot, a WhatsApp or SMS number, or a programmatic API call. Every chatbot has three parts:
  1. An Agent or workflow as the engine. An Agent autonomously decides which tools to call and in what order based on the user’s message. A workflow runs a fixed sequence of nodes you define. Either way, when a user sends a message, VectorShift runs the underlying engine and returns the output as the chatbot’s reply.
  2. Conversation history. For Agent-based chatbots, conversation history is managed automatically. For workflow-based chatbots, include a Chat Memory node in your workflow to pass prior messages into the LLM so it can reference what was said earlier.
  3. A deployment channel. Once the chatbot is built, you choose how people reach it: a shareable link, an embedded widget on your website, a Slack bot, a WhatsApp or SMS number, or a programmatic API call.

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Two types of chatbots

VectorShift supports two distinct types of chatbots, each designed for different levels of autonomy and control.

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Ready to build?

Build an Agentic Chatbot

Create an autonomous chatbot powered by an Agent that picks its own tools — the recommended way to get started

Build a Workflow Chatbot

Create a chatbot backed by a step-by-step workflow where you control every stage of the logic

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Already have a chatbot?

Chat Assistant vs Website Chatbot

Choose how your chatbot appears to your users — full-page assistant or embedded widget

Deploy to Slack

Let your team chat with the bot directly in your Slack workspace

Deploy via WhatsApp / SMS

Connect your chatbot to WhatsApp or SMS through Twilio

Chat via API

Integrate chatbot functionality into your own application using the REST API

Analytics

Track usage, review conversations, and export data to improve performance