Chatbot Overview

What It Is

The ChurchWiseAI Chatbot is an AI-powered ministry tool for churches -- not a generic question-answering bot. It is deployed as a care agent that represents the church to every person who chats with it, building relationships on behalf of the pastoral team, connecting visitors to ministries, capturing prayer requests, scheduling pastoral appointments, and surfacing church-specific content through a theologically-grounded lens.

A church subscribes to a chatbot plan, and the chatbot immediately knows the church's name, denomination, staff, hours, ministries, events, theological tradition, and doctrinal positions. It speaks from within that tradition, not about it.

Pastoral Model (Not ChatGPT Model)

The chatbot follows the HEAR protocol, not a search-engine pattern:

Hear -- Read between the lines. "What time are services?" really means "I'm nervous about visiting." "Are you affirming?" really means "Will I be accepted here?"
Empathize -- Acknowledge the feeling behind the question before answering the fact.
Connect -- Link their need to something specific at the church: a group, a ministry, a staff member, an event.
Invite -- Proactively offer a next step: "Would you like me to have someone from our team reach out?"

This is fundamentally different from a ChatGPT-style chatbot. The system prompt enforces strict length limits (max 2 short paragraphs), one call-to-action per response, one follow-up question per response, and empathetic hearing before factual answers. It uses progressive disclosure -- earning trust before asking for contact information, never cold-asking.

ONE API Endpoint

All chatbot traffic flows through a single endpoint:

POST /api/chatbot/stream

This endpoint serves all properties (churchwiseai.com, pewsearch.com Pro Websites, embed widgets) and all chatbot tiers. It routes internally to three chatbot types based on plan and source:

Chatbot Type	Source	Plan	Tools	Prompt Depth
Pro Website	PewSearch Pro Website bundle	`pro_website`	1 (prayer request)	Church-info focused, upsell to full
Full	ChurchWiseAI subscription	`starter` / `pro` / `suite`	12-39 (by tier)	Full HEAR protocol, agentic tools

Three UX Surfaces

The chatbot is accessible through three interfaces, all hitting the same API:

Surface	URL Pattern	Use Case
Care Hub	`/care/[slug]`	Full care experience with persona selection (grief, welcome, youth, etc.)
Hosted Chat Page	`/chat/[slug]`	Standalone chatbot page, embeddable link
Embed Widget	JavaScript snippet on any domain	Floating chat widget on church websites

Four Agents

The chatbot uses a four-agent architecture: Coordinator, Care, Stewardship, and Discipleship.

Agent	Role	Tool Count
Coordinator	Front door for all chats. Handles general inquiries, service times, directions, visitor intake, events, children's ministry, volunteer sign-up, staff messaging. Routes to specialized agents when needed.	14 tools
Care	Pastoral care specialist. Prayer requests, grief support, crisis intervention, pastoral visits, callbacks, counseling scheduling, safety flagging, local resources.	10 tools
Stewardship	Financial ministry. Giving links, giving history, benevolence requests. Handles generosity naturally -- never cold, never guilt-inducing.	3 tools
Discipleship	Spiritual growth. Bible verse lookup, small group finder, sermon archives, devotionals, theological deep dives, lesson plans, illustration search, worship playlists.	12 tools

Why Four Agents in Chat, Two in Voice

The voice agent consolidated to two agents (Coordinator + Care) because phone calls are linear and every handoff creates an awkward silence gap. Chat has no such constraint -- text-based conversations tolerate agent specialization without UX friction. The chatbot routes tool calls to the appropriate agent via the TOOL_AGENT_MAP without visible handoffs.

39 Tools Across 3 Tiers

Tools are gated by subscription tier. Higher tiers include all tools from lower tiers:

Tier	Tools Available	Monthly	Annual
Starter	12 tools (visitor care, prayer, callbacks, directions, sermon info, announcements, Bible lookup, connection card, giving link, event registration, safety flag)	$14.95	$149.50/yr
Pro	35 tools (adds small groups, volunteering, pastoral visits, care needs, grief resources, follow-up, counseling, devotionals, facility booking, sermon archive, worship playlist, kids info, benevolence, child check-in, subscriptions, staff messaging, local resources, illustrations, theological deep dive, lesson plans, devotional generation, conversation summary)	$34.95	$349.50/yr
Suite	39 tools (adds giving history, engagement monitoring, weekly reports, draft follow-up messages)	$59.95	$599.50/yr

All chat plans include a 14-day free trial and support both monthly and annual billing (annual saves ~17%).

LLM Strategy

Role	Model	When Used
Primary	Claude Haiku 4.5	Default for all conversations
Escalation	Claude Sonnet 4.6	Complex/sensitive conversations (auto-detected)
Fallback	OpenAI gpt-4o-mini	Automatic failover if Anthropic returns 5xx or times out

Prompt caching is enabled on system prompts (cache_control: ephemeral) for ~60% input cost reduction on Anthropic.

RAG System

The chatbot draws from three knowledge sources, retrieved in parallel:

Source	Table	Records	Purpose
Theological RAG	`unified_rag_content`	327K+	Sermon illustrations, devotional content, theological resources -- filtered by the church's theological lens
Church Knowledge Base	`church_knowledge_base`	Per-church	Church-specific FAQs, uploaded documents, custom content (managed via admin dashboard)
Product Knowledge	`product_knowledge`	Shared	PewSearch/ChurchWiseAI feature info, billing, troubleshooting -- injected into all chatbot instances

Embeddings are generated via OpenAI text-embedding-3-small (1536 dimensions). The RAG query returns the top 8 theological matches and all relevant church KB matches, formatted as context blocks in the system prompt.

Theological Lens System

Every chatbot response is grounded in the church's theological tradition. The system supports 17 traditions plus a universal Christocentric default.

Resolution priority:

Client-side override (demo mode only, validated against known lens IDs 1-17)
Church-specific setting in church_theological_lenses table
Auto-detection from denomination via DENOMINATION_TO_LENS mapping
Default: Christocentric (lens ID 10)

The lens drives three layers of theological grounding:

Doctrinal rules from theological_contradictions -- must-include/must-exclude terms per doctrine category (e.g., Baptist lens enforces credobaptism, excludes infant baptism)
Lens vocabulary from lens_knowledge -- preferred and avoided terminology for natural-sounding responses
Church-specific overrides from organization_settings.doctrinal_overrides -- custom practices that override standard positions (e.g., a Reformed church that also does dedications)

Moderation System

The chatbot enforces a four-level escalation ladder:

Level	Trigger	Response
Level 1	Inappropriate/creepy comments	Firm gracious boundary, one redirect
Level 2	Profanity, insults, verbal abuse	Acknowledge without absorbing, boundary after 1 redirect, disengage after 2
Level 3	Threats of violence	Immediate safety flag (critical), crisis resources, stop engaging
Level 4	Self-harm / suicidal ideation	Mandatory 988 + 741741 + 911 resources, urgent safety flag, pastoral connection

Progressive restrictions enforce consequences:

2 violations: 5-minute cooldown
4 violations: 24-hour temporary block
Severe/repeated: permanent block

Crisis safety net: A regex-based pattern matcher runs as a non-negotiable post-processing step. If the user message matches self-harm/crisis patterns and the LLM response is missing any of the three mandatory resources (988, 741741, 911), they are auto-appended. This catches LLM omissions regardless of model or provider.

Pricing

Plan	Monthly	Annual	Tools	Trial
Chat Starter	$14.95	$149.50/yr	12	14-day free
Chat Pro	$34.95	$349.50/yr	35	14-day free
Chat Suite	$59.95	$599.50/yr	39	14-day free

Bundle plans (Voice + Chat) are also available -- see PRICING.md.

Current State

Fully deployed on Vercel via churchwiseai-web
3 demo churches configured (Grace Community, St. Joseph Catholic, The Bridge Community)
3 Stripe subscriptions — Melvindale CoG is the designated internal test account (100% coupon cwa-validation-100pct, sub_1TIUbGFaoK5IPzNowJrWhgDM, all invoices net $0); real paying customers: Zewdei/Medhanialem (starter, 100% coupon through June 2026), Hope Community (starter, cancelling)
LLM provider layer operational (Anthropic primary, OpenAI fallback)
Prompt caching active
Moderation system enforced
FAQ short-circuit operational (zero LLM cost for exact matches)
Usage tracking and per-tier conversation limits enforced

What It Is​

Pastoral Model (Not ChatGPT Model)​

ONE API Endpoint​

Three UX Surfaces​

Four Agents​

Why Four Agents in Chat, Two in Voice​

39 Tools Across 3 Tiers​

LLM Strategy​

RAG System​

Theological Lens System​

Moderation System​

Pricing​

Current State​

See Also​