Provider: Workers AI (default)

"model": { "provider": "workers-ai" } — the default: leave model out. See Models and providers for other models with the same knowledge base.

Answers with Cloudflare Workers AI, from HelpPuff's own knowledge base: your website and files, learned into Vectorize and D1 on your account by a background Workflow. Everything runs on your Cloudflare account and fits the Workers Free plan. No other account or key is needed.

Set up

npx @knowtific/helppuff          # the default

That is all. The setup page starts learning your site. An agent can do the same automatically with --onboarding defaults, or leave page selection to the setup page with --onboarding dashboard. See Knowledge base for how it crawls, reads files and finds answers.

How an answer is made

1. The question is embedded (@cf/baai/bge-m3) and searched two ways at once: by meaning in Vectorize and by keywords in D1's full-text index.
2. The two result lists are merged, and the reranker (@cf/baai/bge-reranker-base) re-reads the best ten and keeps those that actually answer the question.
3. The model (GLM-4.7 Flash by default) writes a short answer from those passages and the business details, with links to the pages it used.
4. Nothing relevant? It says it is not sure and offers a callback, instead of guessing.

Options

The common ones; every option is in the Configuration reference.

Option	Default
model	@cf/zai-org/glm-4.7-flash	Any Workers AI chat model. Compared for speed, quality and answers a day on AI models
reasoning	medium	How long the model thinks before answering: low, medium, high. Thinking keeps answers safe; deeper helps multi-step questions, but is slower to start and the thinking is billed. It cannot be switched off. Near the daily budget it drops to low. See AI models
fallbackModel	—	Tried once if the main model fails
timezone, locale	—	e.g. Australia/Melbourne, en-AU: "are you open now?", spelling
maxAnswerSentences	4	Shorter is cheaper and reads better in a chat
historyMessages	6	Earlier messages sent with each question
retrieval.rerankerModel	@cf/baai/bge-reranker-base	null turns re-scoring off (Settings → Advanced → "Double-check answers")
retrieval.minScore	0.2	Passages scored lower are dropped
retrieval.embeddingModel	@cf/baai/bge-m3	Changing it re-learns the site on the next deploy
tools.callback	true	"Talk to a person" means a callback: it asks only for the contact details it does not already have
tools.businessHours	true	Opening hours and "open now"
budget.dailyNeurons	9000	Past this many neurons in a UTC day, visitors get your contact details and a callback form
gateway	—	An AI Gateway id, for caching and logs in front of every model call

Change any of them with helppuff config set backend.<option> <value> and deploy, or in the dashboard (model, thinking, reranker, time zone, language).

Speed

With the default settings a reply starts streaming in about 4 seconds (measured by a visitor, see AI models). Where the time goes, for a typical message measured from a Worker: limits and context ~25 ms, keyword search ~20 ms, embedding 50–400 ms, vector search ~230 ms, reranking 300–800 ms (capped at 0.8 s), then the model: its thinking (about 2 s with GLM-4.7 Flash at Medium) and its first words. See where yours goes with:

helppuff ask "How much is a service call?" --timing

Cost

Measured in Workers AI neurons: 10,000 a day are free. A typical answer uses a few dozen, so the free allowance covers a few hundred answers a day; Settings → Knowledge in the dashboard shows today's use. Crawling costs neurons only for pages that changed. See Costs and limits.