Chat Triggers

Overview

Chat triggers let your widget chatbot drive concrete actions in your product instead of just answering questions. When a user message matches a trigger you’ve defined, the chatbot proposes a call-to-action button in the conversation. If the user confirms, Hacktionbase fires a signed webhook to your backend and a real-time event to the originating session so your app can react instantly — redirect the user, prefill a form, create a resource, anything you wire up.

How a trigger flows

User types a message in the widget
Vector search pre-filters trigger candidates by intent description
LLM extracts the declared fields from the message
Chatbot proposes a CTA button under its reply (e.g. "Create project")
User clicks the CTA (explicit confirmation)
Hacktionbase fires the signed webhook + emits a WS event to the session
Your SDK handler (or backend) runs the action

Confirmation is mandatory in v1 — nothing executes without the user clicking the CTA. This protects against accidental side effects from a misread intent.

Anatomy of a trigger

Field	Description
Key	Stable identifier used by your SDK handler (e.g. `create_project`).
Intent description	Plain-text description of when the trigger should match. Embedded for vector search — write it the way you’d describe the user’s goal.
Fields	Typed parameters the LLM extracts from the message. Each field has a `name`, `type` (`string`, `number`, `boolean`, `enum`), and `description`.
CTA label	The button text shown under the bot’s reply (e.g. “Open billing”).
Audience scope	`authenticated` (identified users only) or `anonymous` (allowed for everyone).
Channels	Webhook URL (signed HMAC), WebSocket event (forwarded to the SDK), or both.
State	`draft` or `active`. Only active triggers participate in detection.

Audience scope

Authenticated — the trigger only matches when the user has called Hacktionbase.identify(...). Use this when the action depends on knowing who the user is (create a record under their account, redirect to their dashboard, etc.).
Anonymous — allowed for visitors who haven’t been identified. The WS event is routed by anonymousId. Use for low-stakes navigation or generic prefill.

Plan gating

Chat triggers are available on the growth, scale, and galaxy plans. The free plan can read trigger configuration but cannot activate any.

Limits

Limit	Value
Active triggers per tenant	50
Fields per trigger	10
Webhook payload	64 KB
Webhook timeout	5 s
Webhook retries	3 (exponential backoff, then DLQ)

Webhook delivery

Webhooks are dispatched asynchronously via SQS so your endpoint’s latency never blocks the chat reply. Each request is signed with an HMAC header your backend can verify to ensure authenticity. Failed deliveries are retried with backoff and end up in a dead-letter queue you can inspect from the dashboard.

What’s next

See Hacktionbase.onTrigger to handle trigger events in your frontend.
See Trigger pipeline for the platform-level architecture.

Getting Started

SDK Reference

Widget

Concepts

Overview

How a trigger flows

Anatomy of a trigger

Audience scope

Plan gating

Limits

Webhook delivery

What’s next

​Overview

​How a trigger flows

​Anatomy of a trigger

​Audience scope

​Plan gating

​Limits

​Webhook delivery

​What’s next

Overview

How a trigger flows

Anatomy of a trigger

Audience scope

Plan gating

Limits

Webhook delivery

What’s next