Dify: Before Your Support Bot Answers a Customer, Ask It the Question Your Help Docs Don't Cover

A small support team answers the same questions every day: prices, hours, cancellations. Each answer is quick. Together they fill the morning, and two people on the team can give two different answers to the same question.

A chatbot that answers from your own help docs can take the repeat questions. Building one is the easy part. The real risk is a question your docs don't cover, because the bot sounds just as confident while it makes something up.

I run Stepthrough, free hands-on AI and software training for white-collar workers, and I built a lesson on this with Dify, a platform for building AI apps on top of your own knowledge. (Disclosure: Dify's team and I were in touch about the lesson. No payment was involved, and I used my own free Sandbox workspace.)

The example is Lakeshore Coworking, a made-up coworking space with a small help center in one Markdown file. Every chunk count, score and answer below is what Dify actually produced in my test on October 31, 2026.

Part 1: load the help docs, and fix the split

1. In Dify, open Knowledge and click Create a ready-to-use knowledge base.
2. Click Browse and upload your help file. The free plan took one file at a time, up to 15 MB. Click Next.
3. Click Preview Chunk before you save anything.

That preview is the most important screen in the build. A chatbot doesn't read your whole file for every question. It looks up the pieces that match, called chunks, and answers from those.

The default split on every new line gave me 28 tiny chunks. The heading "Plans and prices" sat alone in its own chunk, away from the prices it was supposed to head. A line like "Unused days do not roll over" no longer said which plan it belonged to.

The help file marks each article with a level-2 heading, so I split there. Under Delimiter, I replaced the value with:

## 

That is two hash marks and a space. I clicked Preview Chunk again and got 8 chunks, one per article, each heading next to its own facts. In your own docs, use whatever marks the start of a new topic.

1. Leave High Quality and Vector Search as they are, and click Save & Process. A file this small took a few seconds.

Part 2: test the lookup before you build a bot

Click Go to document, then Retrieval Testing. This shows which articles a question pulls up, with a score, before any AI writes an answer.

Ask the way a member would, not in your help center's words:

Can I get my meeting room hours back if I cancel at the last minute?

Meeting rooms came back first at 0.95, and that article holds the 2-hour rule. The next two scored 0.70 and 0.46. A strong top match with a clear gap is what you want.

If the right article doesn't come back here, no prompt can save the answer. Fix the docs or the split first.

Part 3: build the chatbot

1. Go back to Studio and click Create from Blank.
2. Click More basic app types, then Chatbot. It's the simple setup: a prompt plus your knowledge.
3. Name it and click Create. Mine was "Stepthrough tests – Lakeshore member help".
4. On Orchestrate, next to Knowledge, click Add, pick your knowledge base and click Add. The model in my free workspace was gpt-5.

Part 4: test the unknown question first, with no rules

Leave Instructions empty for now. Under Talk to Bot, ask something your docs don't answer:

Do you allow dogs in the building?

With no instructions, it did say it didn't know. Then it told the member to check with the front desk, and hinted that policies can differ for service animals. None of that is in the docs. The help center says to email support for anything it doesn't cover.

That's the failure that matters in support: a friendly, confident answer that your company never wrote.

Part 5: write the rules, then test both kinds of question

Under Instructions, paste the rules. Here are the ones from the lesson:

You answer member questions for Lakeshore Coworking. Answer only from the
help center articles in your context. Keep answers to 1 to 3 short sentences
and include the exact price, limit or deadline when the article gives one.
If the articles do not cover the question, say exactly: "I don't have that in
our help center. Please email [e-mail] and we'll reply
within one business day." Never guess, and never add advice or suggestions
that are not in the articles.

Three parts do the work: answer only from the articles, give exact numbers, and use one exact sentence when the articles don't cover the question. Changing the instructions resets the test chat, so click Restart.

Then I asked a question the docs do answer:

I have a Flex membership. What does it cost if I need more meeting room
time, and can I get hours back if I cancel at the last minute?

It used two articles: 2 hours included, $25 per extra hour, and hours back only with 2 hours' notice. All correct, with a citation.

Then the dog question again. This time it gave the exact hand-off sentence and added nothing. Try a few more of your own before you trust it.

Part 6: publishing, and the screen to check first

1. Click Publish. Your instructions are still a Current Draft, and members only get the published version. Publish before you leave the page. When I left without publishing and came back, my instructions and knowledge were gone. (I didn't click Publish Update myself, because the test bot is made up.)
2. Open Access Point. My new app already showed Web App: In Service, with a public link, before I'd published anything. Anyone with that link can chat, and every chat spends your credits. Turn it off with the switch until you're ready.
3. Click Embed Into Site. The second option is a chat bubble at the bottom right, which is what most support teams want. Copy the code into your site's HTML, or hand it to whoever runs your site.

What it cost on the free plan

My Sandbox workspace started with 200 credits and showed 136 after this build: three chat messages on gpt-5, one retrieval test and one small file. So free credits are for building and testing. Check Dify's current plans before real members use it.

Four checks I'd keep

• Preview the chunks. If a heading sits alone, change the delimiter.
• Test retrieval before you test answers. The right article has to come back first.
• Ask the question your docs don't answer, with no rules and then with rules.
• Check Access Point on day one. The public link may already be live.

Practice it step by step

The free lesson has 5 parts. You click through real Dify screens with the made-up help center, and you can download the same Markdown file to try it in your own workspace. It's part of the free course Answer Every Customer in Under 5 Minutes.

Full lesson at learn.ynteractive.com/content/dify-support-chatbot-help-docs