Cloud Quickstart
Connect your community and start deflecting questions in under 5 minutes — no infrastructure or Developer Portal required.
1. Create an account
Go to app.answerloops.com and sign in with GitHub or Google. No credit card required to start.
2. Complete the onboarding wizard
On first login, the onboarding wizard launches automatically. It has four steps — you can finish all of them now or skip any step and return to it from Settings later.
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| Connect community | Add Discord, Slack, GitHub, Telegram, Email, or Widget |
| Seed KB | Upload files or paste a URL to crawl |
| Configure AI | Choose your AI provider and tune the confidence threshold |
| Go live | Review your settings and enable the bot |
3. Connect your first channel
Click "Add AnswerLoops to Discord" in the wizard. This opens a standard Discord OAuth screen where you authorize the bot on your server.
- No Discord Developer Portal access needed
- No bot token to copy
- After authorization, your server's channels appear in a picker — select the ones where you want the bot to listen
If you manage a forum channel, select it here too. AnswerLoops listens for new forum posts via the ThreadCreate event and ingests replies inside the thread automatically.
Click "Connect Slack" in the wizard. You'll go through a standard Slack OAuth flow — approve the permission scopes and pick your workspace.
After OAuth, select the channels where the bot should listen. No Slack admin approval or manifest upload required on the cloud plan.
Click "Connect GitHub" in the wizard (Settings → GitHub → Connect GitHub). Install the AnswerLoops GitHub App on your organization or repository.
Once installed, Issues, Discussions, and their comments are ingested automatically. AI replies post back as GitHub comments on the same thread.
Telegram — Provide your Telegram bot token. AnswerLoops registers a webhook automatically.
Email — Copy the inbound webhook URL from Settings → Email and configure forwarding in your email provider.
Website widget — Copy the <script> tag from Settings → Widget and paste it into your site's <head>.
4. Seed your knowledge base
Go to Knowledge Base (or continue in the wizard's "Seed KB" step) and add your content:
Drag and drop one or more files into the upload area. Supported formats: PDF, DOCX, MD, TXT, CSV.
Files are chunked, embedded, and ready to search within about 30 seconds.
Paste a URL into the URL field and click Import. AnswerLoops uses Firecrawl to fetch and embed the page (or up to 25 pages for a full site crawl).
Typical crawl time is 15–60 seconds depending on page count.
In Settings → GitHub, enable Repo Sync. AnswerLoops imports all Markdown files from the configured repo. Re-sync manually or enable automatic sync on push.
5. Test a deflection
Post a question in one of your connected channels that you know is covered by the content you just imported. You should see AnswerLoops reply within a few seconds.
If the AI doesn't reply, the confidence score may be below your threshold. Check Tickets to see the score, and lower the threshold in Settings → AI Config if needed.
If a question comes in that the AI can't answer well, it will appear in Knowledge Gaps so you can address the content hole.