OpenSiteChat

Your mascot, answering visitors on your own website.

An open-source app template provided by Clawnify.com.

Most companies already have a character: the one on the van, the one in the newsletter sign-off, the one everybody at the office calls by name. OpenSiteChat puts that character on your website as an assistant, so a visitor at 22:00 gets an answer instead of a contact form.

It answers from material you control, and nothing else. When it does not know, it says so and takes a message rather than inventing something you will have to honour later.

How it works

Visitor on your site
  └─ one <script> tag → the mascot answers in about two seconds
       ├─ it knows the answer        → done, from your own words
       └─ it does not, or they ask   → the conversation waits for a person
                                        in your inbox, and you reply as you

Two modes, one setting:

• It answers, you can take over. The default. It handles what it knows, and anything else lands in your inbox. The moment you reply, it stays out of that conversation until you hand it back.
• It takes messages, you answer everything. The AI is never called. The widget is a live chat box wearing your character's face.

What it does

• One script tag, any site. It renders in an isolated root, so your stylesheet cannot break it and it cannot leak into your page. No dependencies.
• Grounded answers. Everything it says comes from pages you point it at and notes you write. It is told to hand off rather than guess, and it is checked rather than trusted: an unparseable answer becomes a handoff, not a shrug.
• Real people, in the same thread. Take any conversation over and type as yourself. The visitor sees it on the page they are still standing on.
• Who was asking. Names and emails land on the conversation, so a good question becomes a lead rather than a log line.
• Your character, not ours. Name, picture, colour, opening line, starter questions and house rules.
• Limits that hold. A copied snippet is useless on a site you did not allow, one address cannot flood it, and a per-day ceiling means the worst case is a quiet mascot rather than a surprise bill.

Run it locally

pnpm install
pnpm dev          # UI on :5173, API on :8787

pnpm test runs the checks. pnpm typecheck and pnpm build are the other two gates.

The assistant needs a model key, which Clawnify resolves for you on a deployed install. Locally, put OPENROUTER_API_KEY in .dev.vars if you want it to answer; without one everything else still works and the mascot takes messages.

What it knows

This is the screen that decides whether it is useful or embarrassing.

• Read a page. Give it one of your own URLs. It fetches it once and keeps the words. It is a snapshot, so add the same address again after you change the page.
• Write something down. The things that are true but are not on any page: what you do not do, how you price, who you are not for.

If it answers badly, the fix is here. There is no other place an answer can come from.

Where it may be used

A snippet is public: anyone who views the source of your site can read it. The allowlist is what makes a copied one useless somewhere else, so a mascot with an empty list answers nobody. That is the safe default, not a bug — put your domain in it and the widget works, on that site and no other.

Configuration

Everything is on the Settings screen. Two worth knowing about:

• Answers per day. The ceiling on how many times it will call the model in a day. Past it the widget keeps working and takes messages instead.
• House rules. Added to every answer it writes. Use it for the things you would tell a new hire on their first morning.

Licence

MIT.