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Documentation Index

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This guide walks you through creating your first AI assistant from scratch. By the end, you’ll have a configured assistant ready to use — and optionally shared with your team.
Time to complete: 5-10 minutes
What you’ll build: A custom AI assistant configured for your use case
What you’ll learn: The three creation paths, configuration basics, and testing in chat

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Prerequisites

1

Create an Account

Sign up at app.quiva.ai
2

Verify Your Email

Check your inbox and verify your email address

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Three Ways to Create an Assistant

QuivaWorks offers three paths to create an assistant:

Create with AI

Describe what you need and QuivaWorks builds the initial configuration for you. Best for starting from scratch.

Clone

Duplicate one of your existing assistants as a starting point. Best when you have something similar already.

From Marketplace

Install a pre-built assistant from the community. Best for common use cases with a head start.
In this guide, we’ll use Create with AI — the fastest path for most people.

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Step 1: Start Creation

  1. In the left sidebar, navigate to Assistants
  2. Click the Create Assistant button
  3. Select Create with AI
A setup dialog will appear. Describe what you want your assistant to do: 
A customer service assistant for a SaaS product. It should answer questions
about the product, help users troubleshoot issues, and know when to escalate
to a human agent.
Click Generate and QuivaWorks will create an initial configuration with a suggested name, description, and instructions.
Be specific in your description. Mentioning the domain, the task, and any constraints (like “escalate when needed”) produces much better initial configurations.

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Step 2: Review Information Settings

After generation, you’ll land in the Information tab. Review and refine what was generated.

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Name & Description

Give your assistant a clear name that team members will recognise: 
Name: Customer Support
Description: Handles product questions, troubleshooting, and support escalations

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Team vs. Personal

Choose who can access this assistant:
Visible to all members of your account. Use for shared workflows, standardised processes, and company-wide tools.Choose this for most production assistants.

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Instructions

Instructions define your assistant’s role, personality, and behaviour. They’re the most impactful part of your configuration: 
You are a customer support specialist for [Your Product].

Your responsibilities:
- Answer questions about product features and pricing
- Help users troubleshoot common issues step-by-step
- Escalate to a human agent when needed: billing disputes, account
  security issues, or when a user explicitly asks for a person

Your personality:
- Friendly, professional, and patient
- Solution-focused — always try to resolve the issue before escalating
- Concise — don't over-explain unless asked

Guidelines:
- If you don't know something, say so and offer to connect them with the team
- For billing or account issues, escalate to a human
- Always confirm the issue is resolved before ending the conversation
Good instructions include: role, responsibilities, personality, tone, and specific behavioural guidelines. Think of it as onboarding a new team member in writing.

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Step 3: Configure Provider Settings

Click the Provider tab to set the AI model. All assistants use Claude Haiku 4.5 by default — fast, cost-effective, and included in all QuivaWorks plans. No API key required. Your plan’s credits are used automatically. Claude Haiku 4.5 handles customer service, research, content, data extraction, and the vast majority of business workflows extremely well. It’s the right starting point for almost every assistant.
On Team and Enterprise plans, you can connect your own Anthropic API key to use specific Claude models. When using your own key, you’re billed directly by Anthropic instead of consuming QuivaWorks credits. Learn more →
For this guide, leave the default selected and move on.

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Step 4: Add Knowledge (Optional)

Click the Knowledge tab to give your assistant access to your specific content. Knowledge lets your assistant answer questions based on your documentation, FAQs, policies, or any other reference material — not just its general training. You can add knowledge from:
  • File upload — PDFs, Word documents, text files
  • URL — Web pages and documentation sites
  • Manual entry — Paste text directly
For your first assistant, you can skip this and add knowledge later. The assistant will still work based on its instructions alone.

Learn more about Knowledge

How to add and manage knowledge sources →

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Step 5: Connect Integrations (Optional)

Click the Integrations tab to connect your assistant to external systems via MCP. Integrations give assistants the ability to take actions — look up orders, search a CRM, create tickets, or call your APIs. For your first assistant, skip this for now and add integrations as you need them.

Learn more about Integrations

How to connect tools and APIs →

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Step 6: Save and Open in Chat

Click Save to save your configuration, then click Open in Chat to test it. Try a few questions that match your use case:
  • “What features does your product have?”
  • “I’m having trouble logging in, can you help?”
  • “I want to speak to a human”
Evaluate the responses: are they on-brand? Does the assistant stay in scope? Do edge cases (like asking for a human) behave correctly? If something is off, go back to Instructions and refine the guidance — then test again.
Use the thumbs up/down buttons on responses to flag what works and what doesn’t. These votes feed into the Learning system so you can improve the assistant over time.

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Step 7: Share with Your Team (Optional)

If you created a Team Assistant, your team can already find and use it in their own sessions. To collaborate on a specific conversation in real-time:
  1. Open the assistant in chat
  2. Type @ to mention a team member
  3. They’ll receive a notification and can join the session instantly

Learn more about Collaboration

Real-time session sharing and @mentions →

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What’s Next

Your assistant is live. Here are the most impactful ways to build on it:

Add Knowledge

Give your assistant access to your documentation and content

Connect Integrations

Link to your CRM, ticketing system, or custom APIs

Improve with Learning

Use feedback votes and insights to refine behaviour over time

Automate with Flows

Trigger your assistant automatically via webhook, schedule, or email

Prompt Engineering

Write better instructions for better results

Advanced Configuration

Explore all configuration options in depth