Attendant – AI Site Search & Content Finder

Attendant is an AI-powered site search chatbot that helps your visitors find content on your website. When someone asks a question in plain language, Attendant searches your own posts, pages, products, and listings, then answers right in the chat — so visitors reach the right page without digging through menus. It combines conversational search with knowledge Q&A in one chat widget.

Replies stay short and scannable: the assistant links to matching pages as clickable buttons, offers tappable choices when the next step is a selection, and guides the visitor with one question at a time when a search comes up empty. The conversation is remembered in the visitor’s own browser so it survives page changes and refreshes. When the assistant genuinely cannot help, you can optionally let it offer a callback and email the request to your team.

Mode 1 — Smart Search (for sites with listings)
A visitor says: “Find me apartments in Lisbon under €500K with 3 bedrooms” → Attendant extracts the parameters, searches your WordPress database, and answers in the chat with clickable buttons to the matching listings.

Mode 2 — Knowledge Q&A (for all sites)
A visitor says: “What is your return policy?” → Attendant searches your indexed content and answers the question with source citations.

The AI automatically picks the right mode based on what the visitor is asking.

Key Features

• Auto-discovers your site — scans post types, taxonomies, and custom fields (ACF, MetaBox, WooCommerce) automatically
• Function calling — uses OpenAI’s tools API for guaranteed structured search parameters, not fragile text guessing
• Direct database access — queries WordPress directly (no HTTP crawling = faster, more accurate)
• Clickable source buttons — every answer links to the matching pages as buttons, so replies stay short and scannable
• Tap-to-answer chips — when the next step is a choice (refine the search, pick a time), the visitor taps an option instead of typing
• Guided help on no results — when nothing matches, the assistant offers real alternatives drawn from your own content and asks one question at a time to narrow things down
• Conversation history — the chat is remembered in the visitor’s own browser, so it survives page changes and refreshes; a “New chat” button and a “Previous chats” list are built in
• Callback / lead capture (optional, off by default) — when the assistant cannot help, it can offer a callback, collect the email the visitor provides (and optionally a phone number and preferred time), and email the request to you
• RAG Q&A — embeds your content, searches by cosine similarity, answers with source links
• Custom Q&A pairs — admins can add specific answers that always take priority
• About-this-site context — a short description you write that helps the assistant understand what your site is for
• Manual or background indexing — index on demand with a live activity log, or let it run in the background; the widget stays hidden until the first index completes so visitors never see half-indexed answers
• Bring Your Own Key — works with your own OpenAI API key, no SaaS subscription required
• Privacy-first — conversation logging and lead capture are both OFF by default; IP addresses are never stored

Who It’s For

• Real estate directories (find properties by price, bedrooms, location)
• Job boards (find jobs by type, salary, location, remote)
• WooCommerce stores (find products by price, category, attributes)
• Event sites (find events by date, location, category)
• Doctor/medical directories
• Any WordPress site with custom post types

Requirements

• PHP 8.0 or higher
• WordPress 6.0 or higher
• OpenAI API key

External services

This plugin connects to the OpenAI API. This is required for the AI chat features: OpenAI turns a visitor’s natural-language question into a structured search of your own content and writes the answer.

What is sent, and when: only when a visitor sends a chat message, the plugin sends that message text plus the titles and short excerpts of the matching content from your own site to OpenAI. If you enable the optional Semantic Q&A mode, the text of your selected content is also sent to OpenAI during indexing to generate embeddings. Your API key, your full database, and IP addresses are never sent. Nothing is sent until you add your own OpenAI API key and turn the chat widget on — both are off by default.

The service is provided by OpenAI, L.L.C. Please review their policies:

• Terms of Use: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use
• Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy
• API data usage policies: https://openai.com/policies/api-data-usage-policies

Privacy

Three features can handle personal data. All are OFF by default and only do anything once you, the site owner, turn them on.

Conversation history (in the visitor’s browser). The chat keeps a copy of the current conversation in the visitor’s own browser using localStorage so it survives page changes and refreshes. This data never leaves the visitor’s device except as the normal chat messages already described above. It is not stored on your server or in your database. The visitor can clear it at any time with the “New chat” button or by clearing their browser storage.

Conversation logging to files (optional, off by default). When you enable file logging in Settings, the plugin writes each exchange (the visitor’s message and the assistant’s reply) to a dated log file in a protected folder inside your uploads directory, so you can review how the assistant is used. IP addresses are never stored. Session identifiers are stored only as short one-way hashes used to group a single conversation. Logs are kept for 30 days and then deleted automatically, and only a logged-in administrator can download them. No conversation data is sent anywhere by this feature; the files stay on your server.

Callback / lead capture (optional, off by default). When you enable lead capture and a visitor explicitly agrees to be contacted, the plugin collects the email address the visitor provides (and, if they choose, a phone number and a preferred time) and emails that request to the address you configure, using your site’s normal email. It is rate-limited to one request per conversation and a daily maximum. This information is handled by whatever email service your WordPress site already uses; the plugin does not store it in a database or send it to any third party of its own.

You are responsible for disclosing these features in your own privacy policy if you enable them.