AI conditions in automation rules with Captain

Automation rules can now act on what a conversation is about, not just on fixed fields like status, labels or inbox. Describe a condition in plain words, and Captain, Chatwoot's AI agent, reads the conversation and decides whether it applies.

Building a rule that sends refund requests to the Billing team, with a Captain condition described in plain words

Describe a condition in plain words

When you add a condition to an automation rule, pick Captain at the top of the list and describe what to look for, for example "customer wants to cancel" or "the customer is asking for a refund". Descriptions can be up to 500 characters.

The condition picker with Captain at the top of the list

Choose Detects to run the rule when the description applies, or Does not detect to run it when it doesn't.

A Captain condition with the Detects and Does not detect options

Works with every event and your existing conditions

The Captain condition is available on every automation event and combines with your other conditions using AND and OR. For example, this rule runs on each new message, checks that it came from the customer, and asks Captain whether they want a refund. If so, it assigns the conversation to the Billing team, adds a label and raises the priority.

The finished rule: Message Created, Message Type is Incoming Message AND Captain detects a refund request, with actions to assign the billing team, add the billing label and set priority to High

For conditions about what a customer says, use the Message Created event with Message Type set to Incoming Message, so Captain judges each new customer message as it arrives.

See it in action

Here, two customers write in a few seconds apart. Lena asks for a refund on a duplicate charge, so the rule assigns her conversation to Billing, adds the label and sets the priority to High. Omar asks how to add an agent, so his conversation is left as it is.

Two new conversations arrive; the refund request gets the billing label and high priority, and the other one is left alone
Lena's conversation after the rule ran: assigned to the billing team, labelled billing and set to high priority by Automation System

Predictable when Captain can't decide

If Captain can't judge a conversation, for example because it has no messages it can read yet, the Captain condition counts as not met and the rest of the rule decides as usual.

How the AI decides

Captain uses a large language model to compare the conversation with your description. It doesn't match keywords: it reads the messages and judges what the customer means, so "I'd like my money back" still matches "asking for a refund", even in another language. It also takes the contact's and conversation's custom attributes into account. It works like an AI classifier you set up with one sentence, with no training data or examples needed.

Go to Settings → Automation, create or edit a rule and add a Captain condition. Captain conditions are available on paid plans.