WordPress Chatbot That Reads Your Site: Skills, Search, and PDFs
Most “train a chatbot on your website” tools want you to paste URLs, upload PDFs, and wait for a hosted index. That is Chatbase’s job. A WordPress chatbot can skip that queue if it already lives next to your posts, pages, and media.
This is not another plugin vs plugin list, and it is not the 5-minute install walkthrough. It is how a support agent on WordPress actually learns: Skills you write, search across published content, and PDFs visitors (or you) link in chat. That is the knowledge layer WP Replai is built around.
Short version: Put policies in Skills when the answer must be exact. Let site search cover blog posts and docs that change often. Let PDF reading handle spec sheets and catalogs. Do not upload a second copy of your site into a SaaS knowledge base unless you need WhatsApp and the rest of that stack.
Three sources of truth, not one dump
A hosted bot treats “knowledge” as files you feed it. A native WordPress agent can split knowledge by how strict it needs to be.
| Source | Use it for | Do not use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Skills (Markdown) | Refunds, shipping windows, pricing rules, escalation | A 40-page blog archive you do not want to maintain twice |
| Website search | Published posts, pages, docs CPTs that change weekly | Private drafts, or answers that must never drift |
| PDF reading | Spec sheets, catalogs, invoices a visitor links | Huge scanned image PDFs (roughly 5MB+ of photos) |
If you wanted a public help center with categories and articles, that is a documentation plugin (BetterDocs, Heroic, Echo). This page is about the chat widget answering from what you already published.
Skills: the answers you refuse to leave to search
A Skill is a brief, not a flow chart. You write it in Markdown. The agent sees every enabled Skill’s description, loads the matching one, and follows the instructions. Toggle a Skill off and it disappears from the agent’s menu.
WP Replai ships two built-in Skills you cannot delete: troubleshooting (step-by-step diagnosis, then escalate) and support email (name, email, priority, transcript to your inbox). Sixteen templates sit next to them: refunds, shipping, FAQ, pricing, business hours, trial info, quotation intake, and more. Import a template, edit it, save it as yours.
Write the description like a filing label, not a topic name. “Return window, eligibility, prepaid label steps” beats “Answers questions about returns.” The agent uses that sentence to decide when to load the Skill.
Example shape for a refund Skill:
## Refund Policy Use when the visitor asks about refunds, cancellations, or money back. ### Eligibility - 30 days from purchase - Digital products are not refundable ### How to request 1. Ask for the order number 2. Confirm eligibility 3. Hand off with the support-email Skill ### If they are not eligible Explain the rule. Offer an alternative, not a fake yes.
Skills can also call tools. Out of the box that is sending a support email or a quotation brief. Developers can register more actions in PHP. Non-developers can ignore that and still run a real front line.
Website search: stop copying the blog into the bot
When no Skill and no shared link already cover the question, WP Replai can search published content on the same site. It gets titles, URLs, and excerpts, then reads the full page of the best match before answering. It does not guess from the excerpt alone.
You turn this on or off under WP Replai → Settings → Agent. Choose which public types are searchable: posts and pages by default, plus any custom post types on the site. Drafts stay out.
Use search for changelogs, tutorial posts, and docs you already maintain in WordPress. Keep money, legal, and “always do X” rules in Skills so a rewritten blog post cannot quietly change policy.
PDFs and links in the conversation
Visitors (and you) can drop a URL. The agent fetches the page and answers from it. If the link is a PDF, it reads the file and focuses on the part that answers the question instead of dumping the whole document into chat.
That is useful for a WooCommerce spec sheet or a PDF catalog you do not want to turn into 80 WordPress pages. It is a poor fit for giant scan-only PDFs. In that case the agent should say it could not read the file and ask what number or SKU they need.
What this is not
- Not a knowledge base plugin. You still publish docs in WordPress (or a KB plugin) if humans need a browsable help center.
- Not a hosted crawl. Logs stay in your WordPress database. Model providers still see message text via OpenRouter, same as any BYO-key plugin.
- Not a general-purpose ChatGPT box. The agent is scoped to your business. Trivia and coding homework get declined on purpose.
A practical setup order
- Install and add your OpenRouter key. Details are in the install guide.
- Fill the business profile. That context is in every conversation, even with no Skill loaded.
- Turn on the Skills that match real tickets: refunds, shipping, troubleshooting. Disable the rest.
- Leave website search on for posts and pages. Add a docs CPT only if you actually use one.
- Ask the live widget the five questions you get every week. Fix Skills where it guessed. Leave search to handle the long tail.
The documentation has the field-by-field reference for Settings, Skills, tools, and models.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to upload my website into the chatbot?
Not with a native WordPress agent. Published posts and pages can be searched in place. Policies belong in Skills. Hosted tools still want an upload or crawl because they do not sit inside WordPress.
Is this the same as a WordPress knowledge base plugin?
No. Knowledge base plugins (BetterDocs, Heroic, Echo) build a help center for humans to browse. A chatbot knowledge layer answers in chat. You can use both: write docs once, let the agent search them.
What should go in a Skill vs site search?
Skills: anything you would fire someone for getting wrong. Search: anything you already maintain as public WordPress content and can tolerate a slightly looser answer.
Can the chatbot read PDFs?
Yes, when someone shares a PDF link. Text-based spec sheets work. Huge image-only scans often do not. Ask for the SKU or page number if the file fails.
Will the agent invent policy?
It follows Skills and retrieved pages. Put the hard rules in Skills. Review conversation logs the first week and tighten anything that drifted.
Bottom line
If you are comparing hosted “upload your docs” products, read the Chatbase alternative post. If you already run WordPress and want the agent to use the site you have, write Skills for the sharp edges and let search plus PDFs cover the rest.
Start the 14-day trial or open the Skills docs and import one template tonight.
