Which Robot handles each conversation

Overview

By default, the Robot that answers a conversation is the inbox's Robot. That covers most cases and needs no configuration: you connect a Robot to an inbox and it handles everything that arrives there.

But one inbox usually receives very different things. A sales WhatsApp number receives pre-sales questions, support from existing customers and collections from overdue accounts — three conversations with different tone, knowledge and tools. You can already route each one to a different team. Now you can route each one to a different Robot.

When you set a Robot for a specific conversation, it replaces the inbox Robot on that conversation — it is not added to it. Exactly one Robot answers, always.

Prerequisites

• Maestro configured on the account (Settings → Maestro).
• At least two Robots, each with its own persona, instructions and tools.
• To switch from an automation, macro or FlowBuilder: administrator permission to edit those rules.

Step by step

From the conversation panel

1. Open the conversation and go to the Maestro side panel.
2. Click the AI Robot on this conversation block. The account's Robots are listed.
3. Pick the Robot. The switch applies from the contact's next message.
4. To undo it, click Use the inbox default Robot again. That option appears only when there is something to undo.

The block shows the current Robot and, when it was set for that conversation, the Routed to this conversation tag — so you can tell "somebody chose this Robot here" apart from "this is simply the inbox's Robot".

Directly below it, the Autonomy mode card lets an administrator choose Autopilot, Copilot or Hybrid for this conversation only. The choice is independent from the Robot, persists until reset, and can be removed with Use Robot default.

From an automation

1. Settings → Automations → new rule.
2. Choose the trigger and conditions — for example, when the conversation is created and the contact belongs to company X, or when the collections label is added.
3. Under actions, choose Set the AI Robot for this conversation and select the Robot.

The conditions are the same ones every automation has: contact, company and conversation attributes, labels, custom fields. That is where the flexibility lives — the Robot is decided by the condition you wrote, not by a fixed rule of the system.

From a macro

Same action, available in the macro action list. Useful when the decision belongs to the agent: they open the conversation, recognise a collections case, and run the macro that switches the Robot.

From the FlowBuilder

The action appears in the Chatwoot action node. Useful for flows that qualify the contact first and only then decide which Robot takes over.

From the API

POST /api/v1/accounts/{account_id}/conversations/{conversation_id}/assignments
Content-Type: application/json

{ "assignee_id": 18, "assignee_type": "AgentBot" }

assignee_id is the Robot's id. Without assignee_type, the endpoint still assigns a human agent — its historical behaviour is unchanged.

From MCP

The assign-a-conversation tool accepts the same fields. It lives in the Conversation Assignments toolset, which is enabled by default in Settings → MCP.

Settings & options

Use cases

• Collections: when the overdue label lands, the conversation moves to the collections Robot, with its own tone and tools.
• Enterprise customer: conversations from company X go to a Robot with strategic-account instructions.
• Post-sale: once the sale closes, a flow moves the conversation to the onboarding Robot.
• Soft escalation: instead of transferring straight to a human, move to a more specialised Robot first.

Tips, limits & best practices

• The switch applies from the next message onward. A reply already being composed finishes with the previous Robot — switching mid-turn would be worse, producing a reply that is half of each.
• The conversation loses its human assignee. A conversation is handled by a person or by a Robot, never both. Setting a Robot removes the assigned agent.
• Auto-assignment does not steal it back. A conversation held by a Robot does not count as "unassigned" for round-robin.
• A disabled Robot stays in the list, marked Off. That is deliberate: a choice made while it was on must remain explicable after somebody turns it off. While disabled, the conversation falls back to the inbox Robot.
• The service sequence starts over. If the previous Robot had a step sequence, the step the conversation was on is discarded and the new Robot starts its own sequence from the beginning. The alternative is worse: the new Robot would open mid-script on a script that is not its own, or — more likely — the stored step would not exist in its sequence and the conversation would end up with no sequence at all, with no error anywhere.
• Pausing does not depend on a Robot being on this inbox. Pausing is about the conversation: while it is active the button is available even when the panel says No Robot on this inbox. That matters in exactly the case where it is needed most — an inbox that keeps delivering to Maestro with no Robot bound. There the panel also shows the warning "Inbox delivering with no Robot bound", and the real fix is to tick the inbox in the Robot's inbox list (or remove the bot from the inbox).
• The conversation history is preserved. The summary of what the contact already said still applies: the new Robot does not re-ask what has already been answered.

Troubleshooting

The panel says "No Robot on this inbox" but something is answering. That is the divergence the "Inbox delivering with no Robot bound" warning describes: the inbox keeps delivering to Maestro, but no Robot is bound to it. Pause the conversation (the button is available) and then tick the inbox in the Robot's inbox list — or remove the bot from the inbox in Settings → Inboxes.

I switched the Robot and nothing changed. Check that the conversation is not paused (the panel shows Paused) and that no FlowBuilder flow holds priority over it. In both cases no Robot answers, whichever one is set.

The Robot I want is not in the automation list. The list holds the account's Robots. If you just created one, reload the automations screen.

The action ran but the conversation still has the old Robot. Check that the chosen Robot has a webhook URL configured. A Robot with no URL receives no messages at all — which is why the action refuses the switch instead of leaving the conversation without any AI.

It switched on its own. Look for the entry on the conversation timeline: every Robot switch is recorded there, with who did it. If it names an automation, one of your rules matched its conditions.

See also

• Autonomy and human approval
• Actions per reply and closing