How to use Deacon, step by step
Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves. It answers your customers in seconds from your own docs, tells them when it doesn’t know, and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. This guide walks through every step with the exact page and button names, from adding one script tag to answering the questions Deacon missed. The install takes a few minutes, and every step works on the free plan, which needs no card.
Last updated 10 October 2026
Put Deacon on your site in a few minutes
You add one script tag to your site, once. Everything after that, from colours to what Deacon knows, is set in the dashboard and reaches your site on its own. The same tag also counts your visitors, sources and goals on Analytics › Website, so there’s no second script to add.
Sign up free
Use your email or Google. The free plan needs no card and has no end date. Deacon then asks for your website, and that one address sets everything up. It starts learning from your pages, gives your widget your company’s name and colour, and gets your snippet ready. In about a minute you can try it out, before you install anything.
Check your domains
Press Install at the top of the dashboard. The site you gave when you signed up is already under Your sites, so your snippet is ready. It covers your subdomains too, such as docs.yoursite.com and your www address. Add any other address Deacon should run on, such as your site builder’s staging address, with no need for https://. If you signed up without a website, add your domain here, and localhost works if you want to try it on your own machine first.
Paste one line before </body>
Copy your snippet from the Install page and paste it just before the closing </body> tag on every page you want Deacon on. It loads in the background without holding up your page. Any site that takes HTML takes it, such as Shopify’s theme.liquid, a header-and-footer plugin on WordPress, or the custom code settings in Webflow and Framer. Install opens on the steps for your site builder when it can tell which one you use, such as Webflow or Shopify. If your site is your own code, press Copy the prompt instead and paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or ChatGPT. An agent adds the tag and checks it’s live, and a chat tells you where it goes. The snippet below has a placeholder key, so copy yours rather than this one.
<script src="https://heydeacon.com/widget/v1/loader.js" data-key="pk_your_widget_key" async></script>Watch it go live
The Install page keeps checking by itself and says Live, with your domain, once a page on your site has loaded it. A test on localhost or a .test address never counts, so live always means your real site.
If Deacon doesn’t appear on your site
Open your browser’s console first, because Deacon leaves one line there saying what’s wrong. On a domain that isn’t in your list, it stays hidden and names the domain it won’t run on, and the Install page names it too, so the fix is usually an address you haven’t added yet. An unknown key means the snippet isn’t your own, so copy it again from the Install page. The console also says when your site’s Content-Security-Policy blocks the chat, and gives the error when Deacon couldn’t start at all.
Try Deacon for free
Install DeaconMake Deacon look like part of your site
Open Appearance under Your agent. Its three tabs, Copy, Style and Placement, sit beside a live preview you can switch between scenes such as First open, Conversation and Can’t answer, so you see every state before a visitor does. Your changes stay a draft, even through a refresh, until you press Publish, and then reach your site on their own. Revert to live throws a draft away.
The Copy tab
Every word a visitor reads that isn’t an answer, and the preview follows each one as you type.
- Company name
- The name Deacon gives you in its greeting, as in Acme’s AI Assistant. Left blank, it uses your workspace name.
- Greeting
- The first thing Deacon says, up to 300 characters. Left blank, Deacon uses its default, which names your company and says it’s an AI.
- Button label
- The word on the button in the corner of your site, up to 24 characters. It says Help until you change it to something like Ask us.
- Support email
- Adds an “or email you@yoursite.com directly” line under the offer to follow up, for visitors who’d rather write to you.
The Style tab
Pick each colour against the preview. If a pair gets hard to read, a note under it gives the contrast ratio and what to aim for.
- Accent and send button
- One colour for buttons, links and focus rings. The send button follows it unless you set it apart.
- Help button
- Its background and text. The hover and press shades are worked out from your background, so they always match it.
- Window
- The surface and border, and a corner radius from 0 to 32 pixels, with Square, Soft, Round and Default presets.
- Conversation, follow-up card and ask box
- The ink for Deacon’s words, your visitor’s words, your own replies, and captions and sources, plus the email box border and the ask box’s text and placeholder. Replies sit on the window as plain text, not in bubbles.
The Placement tab
The button keeps to the bottom edge of the page. On a screen narrower than 640 pixels, the chat opens as a full-width sheet wherever you put it.
- Visibility
- Visible pill, or Invisible, so Deacon opens only from your own button. There’s more on that below.
- Position
- Bottom left, bottom middle or bottom right.
- Side and bottom offset
- Up to 64 pixels each, enough to clear a cookie bar or a floating button of your own.
Teach Deacon your product from what you’ve already written
Deacon answers only from what you give it, so this step decides how good its answers are. Open Knowledge Sources under Your agent, where four buttons add the four kinds of source. Start with your help pages or docs, and add the rest as gaps show up.
Add website
Paste one page’s address and Deacon learns from it straight away. Paste your site’s address and it asks whether to read the site or just add that page. On the free plan, reading the site takes your home page and the pages visitors ask about first, like pricing and help. On a paid plan it crawls the whole website and lists its pages unticked, so you tick the pages or folders that matter, press Save and then Retrain agent. It never takes sign-in, cart, checkout or account pages, each crawl stops at 100 pages, and you re-fetch a page by hand when it changes.
Add file
PDF, Word (.docx), text, Markdown, CSV or HTML, up to 10 MB each. It’s the home for the handbook, price list or onboarding guide that never became a web page, and a scanned PDF works too. Uploading a file with the same name replaces the old one.
Add text
A title and whatever you paste under it. It’s the quickest way in for an FAQ that lives in your notes, or a policy you never published. Using the same title again replaces that source.
Add Q&A
One question, the other ways people might ask it, and the exact answer you want given. Use it for anything that has to be worded just so, like your refund window or what your free plan includes. When Deacon finds your Q&A beside a source that says something different, it goes with the Q&A.
A file, pasted text, a single page or a Q&A starts answering as soon as Deacon has read it. The first read of your site needs no Retrain agent either, because Deacon chooses its pages and learns from them itself. Pages you tick after a later read wait for Retrain agent, and so does an edit to a source that’s already trained, with the old version answering in the meantime.
Each plan holds a set amount of knowledge and reads a set number of pages a month from your website, and the pricing page has the figures.
Then open Playground and ask it what your customers ask most. It’s the real widget answering from your real knowledge, with nothing installed and nothing counted against your answers. Fill in a visitor’s details, such as their plan, to see the answer they’d get. Anything it can’t answer there is a gap you can fill before a customer finds it.
Keeping Deacon up to date
Deacon doesn’t re-read your site on its own, so when you change a page, tell it. Open Knowledge Sources, find the page and choose Re-fetch from the ⋯ menu on its row. Re-fetching is free. It doesn’t count toward your monthly page limit, and it works even when that limit is used up. Each page can be re-fetched once every 24 hours, and its row says when you can do it again.
If the page changed, its row says so and asks you to press Retrain agent. Deacon answers from the old version until you do, so customers never see a half-finished edit. If nothing changed, the row says Up to date and there’s nothing to press. Retrain agent never fetches anything itself, so re-fetch first, then retrain.
Pages Deacon reads for the first time use your monthly page limit. That’s a page you add as a link, the pages Add website reads, and the page a draft of your Instructions comes from. The limit resets each billing month, and once it’s used up, adding a page tells you the day it resets. The pricing page has each plan’s limit.
Pasted text, uploaded files and the answers you write don’t use the limit, so you can always add those. If you need a new page before the limit resets, copy its text into Add text, and Deacon answers from it as soon as it’s read.
Tell Deacon how to talk and when to hand over
Knowledge Sources decides what Deacon knows. Instructions, under Your agent, decides how it behaves. Write a few plain sentences about what your product does and who it’s for, the tone to take, and what to leave for you, such as billing or account problems. Deacon still answers only from your knowledge, so instructions shape how it helps, not what it knows.
You don’t have to start from a blank box. The website you signed up with is already under Start from your website. Press Write a draft, and Deacon reads that page and writes a first draft into the box. Reading it uses one page of your monthly page limit. Nothing is saved until you’ve read it, fixed what it got wrong and pressed Save. Deacon follows them from its next answer.
Open Deacon from your own button
As soon as the script has run, your page has a small Deacon object, so any button or link can open the chat.
<button onclick="Deacon.open()">Ask a question</button>Deacon.open(), Deacon.close() and Deacon.toggle() do what they say. Deacon.preload() loads the chat without showing it, so calling it on hover makes the click feel instant. To react when the chat opens or closes, listen for the deacon:open and deacon:close events on window. They fire however it happened, including a visitor pressing Escape.
To use only your own button, choose Invisible on the Placement tab of Appearance. Deacon then puts nothing on your page until your code opens it, from your nav, your help menu or an empty state. While the button is hidden, the Install page opens with the button code showing, so you don’t forget it.
You can also tell Deacon who’s asking. Set window.deaconContext above the snippet with details such as the visitor’s plan, and Deacon takes them into account when it answers and shows them beside the conversation. After a sign-in or an upgrade, call Deacon.setContext({ plan: 'Team' }), which changes only what you name. It takes up to 12 details, and they come from the visitor’s browser, so never send a password, a token or an internal id.
The same object sends goals to Analytics › Website. Call Deacon.track('Sign up') when someone signs up, or add data-deacon-goal="Sign up" to the button, and you’ll see which sources bring the visitors who do. Deacon claims no keyboard shortcut, so it never clashes with one of yours, and it never throws an error onto your page.
When Deacon can’t answer, and how it gets better
Every question goes one of three ways. Deacon answers it in seconds, asks one question back when it’s too vague to answer, or says it doesn’t know. Here’s what your customer sees, and what you do about the questions it couldn’t answer.
When your content has the answer
- The visitor opens Deacon from the button in the corner or your own, and sees your greeting above a box that reads Ask AI
- Deacon answers in seconds, from the passages it finds in your content, in the language they wrote in
- An answer taken from a page on your site usually links to that page, so they can read more
- A question too vague to answer, like “it’s broken”, gets one question back instead of a guess
- The conversation follows them from page to page and survives a reload
When it doesn’t
- Deacon says it doesn’t know, in its own words, instead of making something up
- Under its reply it asks “Want the team to follow up?” with a box for their email, and your support email if you’ve set one
- When they leave an address, the conversation shows as unread and you get an email three minutes later, unless someone on your team has opened it or has the dashboard open. Asking for a person emails you too
- You reply from Conversations. If their chat is still open, your reply appears there under your name and Deacon steps back. If they’ve gone, it’s emailed to the address they left in that conversation
- Hand back to Deacon lets it answer again, and the question it couldn’t answer waits for you with an Answer this button
This is Answer once, and it’s how Deacon gets better. Filter Conversations by Unanswered to see the questions your content missed, in your customers’ own words. Press Answer this, check the question under When customers ask, write your reply under Reply with and press Save & check. Tidy up with AI polishes a rough note first if you want it to. Every answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next person who asks, and the more you answer, the less it needs you.
Save & check then asks Deacon the question again and shows you the reply it now gives. When it now answers, Deacon also checks similar open questions and tells you how many your answer covers too. A question that isn’t worth answering, like a wrong number, can be dismissed.
The same questions show you what to fix and what to build. Topics on Analytics › Widget group similar questions, count how many people asked and label most of them as a how-to, a feature ask, a bug report or a pricing question, so you hear from everyone who asked, not just the few who email. The same page shows how many people wrote in, the share Deacon answered and the languages they wrote in, and names the page where people get stuck once one stands out.
None of this needs a helpdesk, a ticket queue or someone watching the chat at night. Deacon answers what your content covers, and the rest waits for you in Conversations.
Questions about using Deacon
Try Deacon for free
Sign up with your website, paste one line, and Deacon answers your customers from the pages you’ve already written. It answers in seconds and shows you what they need, and the free plan needs no card.
See every feature, compare the plans and prices, or read what to do after you launch.