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    <title>DEV Community: Mike Vertal</title>
    <description>The latest articles on DEV Community by Mike Vertal (@mikevertal).</description>
    <link>https://dev.to/mikevertal</link>
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      <title>DEV Community: Mike Vertal</title>
      <link>https://dev.to/mikevertal</link>
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    <item>
      <title>We Opened Our Website Chatbot as a Public API (Here’s What You Can Build)</title>
      <dc:creator>Mike Vertal</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2026 13:56:07 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dev.to/mikevertal/we-opened-our-website-chatbot-as-a-public-api-heres-what-you-can-build-1lm5</link>
      <guid>https://dev.to/mikevertal/we-opened-our-website-chatbot-as-a-public-api-heres-what-you-can-build-1lm5</guid>
      <description>&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The short version
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;CrafterQ started as a no-code AI chatbot you drop on a website. Last week we shipped a &lt;strong&gt;Public API&lt;/strong&gt; so you can keep that intelligence and throw away our UI.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Docs: &lt;a href="https://crafterq.ai/docs/developers.html" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;crafterq.ai/docs/developers.html&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Base URL: &lt;code&gt;https://api.crafterq.ai/v1&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Why we did this
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Most website AI products force you into &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; bubble or corner widget. That works for a lot of marketing sites. It falls apart when you want:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A product advisor embedded in PDP / cart flows&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;An assistant inside a SaaS app, not only on the marketing site&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A specialized Q&amp;amp;A experience in a customer or partner portal&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A white-label agent an agency deploys for clients&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In those cases the model, retrieval, conversation state, and actions still matter — the chrome doesn’t. So our chatbot became &lt;strong&gt;one client&lt;/strong&gt; of the platform.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You don’t have to use the CrafterQ chatbot. You can use the CrafterQ intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  What the API covers
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Start and continue conversations&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Stream AI responses&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Retrieve conversation history&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Generate follow-up questions&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Collect feedback&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Submit Actions (lead capture and similar) from your own forms/UI&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Pull agent chat configuration&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Auth:&lt;/strong&gt; JWT bearer from agent &lt;code&gt;chat_config&lt;/code&gt;, and/or &lt;code&gt;X-CrafterQ-Chat-User&lt;/code&gt; for anonymous sessions. Schemas are in the OpenAPI/Redoc reference on the &lt;a href="https://crafterq.ai/docs/developers.html" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;developers page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Three ways to use CrafterQ now
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;No-code widget&lt;/strong&gt; — fastest for marketing sites&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Custom experience&lt;/strong&gt; — your UI, our conversational backend&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Embedded infrastructure&lt;/strong&gt; — agencies / vendors building branded agents on top&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Mental model
&lt;/h2&gt;



&lt;div class="highlight js-code-highlight"&gt;
&lt;pre class="highlight plaintext"&gt;&lt;code&gt;Your UI  →  CrafterQ Public API (/v1)  →  Agent trained on your content
                ↑
         JWT / X-CrafterQ-Chat-User
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;



&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  What I’d try first
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Replace a FAQ search box with a conversational panel that still looks like your product&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Add “ask about this product” on a PDP without a global chat bubble&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Ship an in-app help assistant that triggers your own lead/demo Action&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Links
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://crafterq.ai/docs/developers.html" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;Developer docs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;
&lt;a href="https://crafterq.ai" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;CrafterQ&lt;/a&gt; (free plan, no credit card)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you build something weird with it, tell me in the comments — that’s the whole point of opening the API.&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>ai</category>
      <category>api</category>
      <category>webdev</category>
      <category>javascript</category>
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