Route Rules

Most of the time, Helpie’s assistant finds the right page on its own — a visitor asks about returns, the search surfaces your returns policy, the assistant answers from it and links it. Route rules are for the times you don’t want to leave that to chance: when a question matches a trigger you define, specific content you’ve hand-picked is pinned to the top of the assistant’s reading pile.

Think of it as the difference between a librarian searching the shelves and a librarian who keeps certain books on the front desk because people ask for them every day.

Find them at Helpie > Settings > Route rules.

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What’s Already Automatic

Before writing any rules, it’s worth knowing what the assistant already does on its own — because the best route rule is often the one you don’t need.

Helpie recognises catalog-style questions and finds the matching content itself:

• “Do you sell wool hoodies?” / “What services do you offer?” — matched against your post types by name. A site with a Services post type answers service questions from it automatically; a shop question pulls in products.
• Category and tag matches — “do you do brand design?” finds your Brand Design category and guarantees its actual entries into the assistant’s context, even when the phrasing only partly matches (“all your red t-shirts” still finds the T-Shirts category).
• Portfolio-style questions — “show me your work”, “got any case studies?”, “can I see examples?” find a Projects, Portfolio, or Case Studies post type out of the box, because those words all point at the same idea.
• Review questions — “what are your reviews like?” routes to your testimonials, product reviews, and reviews page.
• A matching page and its children — a question about “workshops” that matches your Workshops page brings its sub-pages along too.

All of this is instant, structural matching — no AI call, no cost. When a route rule and the automatic matching both fire, your hand-picked rule targets go first; the automatic finds follow behind them.

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When to Write a Rule

Reach for a route rule when the assistant should always have a specific page in front of it for a certain topic, and the automatic matching can’t know that:

• Every shipping question should surface your shipping policy page — including questions that say “when will it arrive” without the word “shipping” anywhere
• Questions mentioning a discontinued product should land on the page explaining its replacement
• “Wholesale”, “trade”, “bulk” — three different words, one enquiry page

The pattern: the vocabulary of the question and the location of the answer don’t line up naturally, and you know the mapping because you know your business.

One boundary worth keeping: route rules point at content — they don’t contain it. If you’re tempted to create a rule because the answer isn’t written anywhere, write the page first (the Content Prospector is likely already nudging you), then point a rule at it if needed. Facts live in your content, in one place, where updating them once updates everything.

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Building a Rule

Use the Add new rule form at the bottom of the tab. Each rule has:

Label — a short name for your own reference, like “Shipping questions”.

Match mode — two options:

• Any of these words — the rule fires when the visitor’s message contains any of your comma-separated words or phrases. A single entry can be a multi-word phrase, so return, refund, send back fires on any of the three.
• This exact phrase — the rule fires only when the message contains the trigger text verbatim. Handy for product names or phrases where partial matches would misfire.

Matching is case-insensitive either way.

Trigger — the words or phrase itself.

Content targets — the pages, products, or posts to pin. Search by title, click a result to add it, drag to reorder. The order matters: targets are handed to the assistant in the order you set.

Existing rules appear in a sortable list — drag to reorder them, and use the Enabled checkbox to switch a rule off without deleting it (useful for seasonal rules, like a holiday-shipping-cutoff rule you re-enable each December). Click Save rules after reordering or toggling.

When several rules match the same message, the higher rule’s targets lead. Keep your most specific rules at the top.

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Common Questions

Does a route rule force the assistant to use my pinned page?
It guarantees the page is in front of the assistant, top of the pile — the assistant still writes the answer from whatever content actually addresses the question, and still cites its sources honestly. A pinned page that doesn’t answer the question won’t be pretended into answering it.

Do route rules cost anything per message?
No. Matching is plain text comparison on your own server — no AI call involved.

How many rules should I have?
Few. Rules are for the handful of mappings the automatic matching can’t infer — if you find yourself writing dozens, the kinder fix is usually better page titles, headings, and categories, which help your human visitors and search engines too.

How do I know if a rule is working?
Ask the question yourself in the AI Tester (Helpie > Settings > AI Tester) — its debug readout shows exactly which sources were retrieved for the answer, pinned targets included.