> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://cntillion.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How to train an AI chatbot on your own data

> How an AI agent learns from your website and documents, why answers go wrong, and how to keep knowledge tidy. Then add your own sources and test them.

GuideTrain an AI agent on your website and documents, and keep its answers true.

When people ask how to train an AI chatbot on their own data, they usually
picture the model studying their website until it knows it by heart. That is
not how most support agents work, and knowing what happens instead explains most
good and bad answers. This guide covers the mechanism, the mistakes that cause
wrong answers, and how to set up your sources in Centillion.

## What "training" means for a support agent

A support agent does not rewrite the language model. The model stays the same
for every business. What changes is the material the agent reads before it
answers.

The process has two halves. When you add a source, the text is extracted,
split into passages and indexed, so it can be searched later. This indexing
step is what most products call training. When a customer asks a question, the
agent searches that index, picks the passages that look most relevant, and
writes its answer from them. The technique is called retrieval: the model is
given the right page at the right moment, every time.

Two things follow from this design:

* **Updates are fast.** Change a page, re-index it, and the next answer uses
  the new text. No model has to be retrained.
* **The agent only knows what it finds.** If the answer is not in your
  sources, or the search picks the wrong passage, the answer suffers. Most
  quality work happens in the sources.

## What to feed it

Good sources are the ones your team already uses to answer customers:

* **Your website.** Product pages, pricing, shipping and returns, the FAQ.
* **Policy documents.** Terms, warranty conditions, internal guides your team
  follows.
* **Saved answers.** The replies your team types out every week, written once
  as a question with variations and an approved answer.
* **Working notes.** Pages in a tool such as Notion where your team keeps
  current procedures.
* **Closed support tickets.** Real questions and how your team solved them.

Leave out what a customer should never see: internal pricing notes, personal
data, drafts that were never approved. Anything in the index can end up in an
answer.

## Why answers go wrong

**Two pages disagree.** An old pricing page and a new one both match the
question, and the agent quotes the old one. Contradictions are the most common
cause of a wrong answer. Remove or exclude the outdated page; do not rely on
the instructions to pick the right one.

**Noise crowds out the answer.** The search keeps only a few passages per
question. Navigation menus, tag pages, duplicate collection pages and legal
boilerplate all compete for those slots. Import the pages that hold answers,
and skip the rest.

**The content is not text.** Images inside documents are usually not read,
and a scanned PDF is a picture of text. Convert it to selectable text first.

**The page changed and the agent did not.** Websites change outside the
support tool. Without a scheduled re-check, the agent keeps answering from the
version it saw last.

**Nothing to answer from.** An agent with no knowledge still writes fluent
sentences. That is worse than silence. Add sources before you switch a
channel on, and tell the agent in its instructions to say when it does not
know.

## How to check it

Ask the questions your customers ask most, in their words. Then ask a question
the agent should not be able to answer, and check that it says so. When an
answer is wrong, look at which sources it used before you touch the
instructions. The fix is almost always in the knowledge.

## Set it up with Centillion

In [Centillion](https://cntillion.com/docs/introduction.md), knowledge is what your agent answers from. You
add sources under **Knowledge base → Data sources**, and Centillion imports
them and trains the agent automatically after every change, on every plan. The
full reference is [Adding knowledge](https://cntillion.com/docs/agents/knowledge.md).

![Data sources page with buttons for files, website, text, Q\&A, Notion and tickets, and the Auto-resync menu](https://mintcdn.com/centillion/WLpDA0mJ1ryQ1IZ5/images/agents/knowledge-01-data-sources.webp?fit=max\&auto=format\&n=WLpDA0mJ1ryQ1IZ5\&q=85\&s=69093a21359ee9855e173b188aa1c07a)

Knowledge base, Data sources: the six source types and the Auto-resync control in the header.

**1. Add your website**

Choose **Add website**, then **Crawl links**, **Sitemap** or **Individual
link**. Choose **Fetch links** and select the pages to import. A scan finds
up to 500 pages, and one source imports up to 50 selected pages; a larger
site needs several sources.

![Add website dialog after Fetch links, with 50 of 62 pages selected in a tree of the site and the Add website button](https://mintcdn.com/centillion/OVR3XViKbG9zMitv/images/agents/knowledge-02-add-website.webp?fit=max\&auto=format\&n=OVR3XViKbG9zMitv\&q=85\&s=363fe7c0d0538585dad6080729ec3934)

The Add website dialog: choose how to find pages, then fetch and select them.

**2. Add documents**

Choose **Add files**. PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, CSV and JSON are
supported, up to 20 MB each and 20 files per import. PDF text must be
selectable.

**3. Write the answers you want word for word**

Choose **Add Q\&A** for a question with a saved answer and up to 50 ways of
asking it. In chat on your website, with no tools turned on, an exact match returns
your saved answer as written, unless the customer's message includes files:
then the model reads them and writes the reply.

**4. Connect Notion or tickets**

**Add Notion pages** imports pages and databases from a Notion workspace.
**Add tickets** learns from closed Zendesk or Salesforce tickets, on Pro and
up.

**5. Keep it current**

On Standard and up, turn on **Auto-resync** in the header: websites, Notion
pages and tickets are checked for changes every week. On any plan, **Resync
now** refreshes a source by hand.

**6. Ask test questions**

When sources show **Synced**, ask representative questions in the
selected branch draft in Playground. Choose **Publish** before sending one
real question through the channel your customers use, then open it in
**Conversations** to read the answer. Website chat
answers show a confidence score; check any below 0.5 against your
sources.

How an answer is put together in Centillion:

* **Exact questions first.** If the question matches a variant of a Q\&A entry,
  that entry is used without searching. Case and punctuation are ignored.
* **Otherwise a search.** The agent looks for passages by meaning and by
  keyword at once, merges the two lists, and keeps the best six. Those
  passages are what it writes from.
* **Draft edits stay on the branch.** Removing a source from a draft or
  excluding its pages changes that draft. Publish to use the change in new
  customer conversations. Removing a source from the workspace stops its
  retrieval in every version.
* **Only changes are re-indexed.** Unchanged passages are reused, and a failed
  build keeps the previous training available.

## Questions

### Do I need to retrain the agent after adding a source?

No. Adding, editing, removing or restoring a source starts training on its
own. The source shows **Synced** when the branch draft can use it, and you can
close the page while it runs. **Publish** the branch to use its updated knowledge
in new customer conversations.

### How much can I add?

Storage is counted on the text Centillion extracts, per agent: 1 MB on Free,
10 MB on Hobby, 20 MB on Standard and 40 MB on Pro. The size of the files you
upload does not count.

### Why does the agent quote an old price?

Most likely two sources disagree. Find the page that still holds the old
figure, then remove it from the branch draft or exclude it from the website
source. Wait for **Synced**, then **Publish**. New customer conversations use
the updated knowledge; existing conversations keep their saved version.

### Can it read images or scanned PDFs?

Images inside files and Notion pages are not read, and scanned PDFs need
converting to selectable text before you import them.

### Does new knowledge reach a published release?

Every agent starts with version control on. Source changes apply to the selected
branch draft. Published versions keep their saved knowledge; publish a new
version to use the new content in new customer conversations.

## Try it

Add your website through its sitemap and two policy documents, wait for
**Synced**, and ask the three questions your team answers most. Then ask one
it should not know.

> [card] [Start free](https://app.cntillion.com/sign-up?utm_source=docs\&utm_medium=article\&utm_campaign=guides-train-ai-agent-on-website)
>
> Start on the Free plan, or take a seven-day trial of a paid plan. Your agent is live on your site in an afternoon.

> [card] [Book a demo](https://cal.com/patrick-turricelli-smgfks/15min?utm_source=docs\&utm_medium=article\&utm_campaign=guides-train-ai-agent-on-website)
>
> Fifteen minutes with the team, on your own use case.

Or ask the assistant on this page.

## Related

> [card] [Adding knowledge](https://cntillion.com/docs/agents/knowledge.md)
>
> Every source type, its limits, and weekly Auto-resync.

> [card] [Chatbot vs AI agent](https://cntillion.com/docs/guides/chatbot-vs-ai-agent.md)
>
> What an agent that acts for your business needs.

> [card] [Training and publishing](https://cntillion.com/docs/agents/training-and-publishing.md)
>
> How edits become live answers, and how an answer is put together.


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