Why I Built My Own Website Chatbot

I wanted to build a chatbot, so I built one that represents me by proxy on every page of my site. Here is why, what my chat helper does, and the rules it follows.

I wanted to build a chatbot. That is the honest answer. I design AI-native products for a living, and the best way to understand a kind of product is to build one yourself, start to finish.

So I asked a simple question: which chatbot would be most useful for me to build? The answer was right in front of me. Haven Smith & Company needed a helper that could represent me by proxy, on every page, at any hour.

I wanted visitors to get a real answer at midnight, from my own book. Digital organization, digital safety, and digital legacy and estate planning matter so much, and so many people need help with all three. I cannot help everyone myself, but my chat helper can help far more people than I can alone.

That is the heart of all my work. My accessibility work, my A+ Audits, and my research and design all do the same thing: they make helpful information easier to reach and easier to use.

What my chat helper does

My chat helper sits on havensmith.company and on every site in my family of brands, and it knows which site you are on. It does two jobs.

First, it answers questions about my services, products, and prices, using only the words on my site. When the answer is not there, my chat helper says so and points you to my contact form. It relearns my whole site every time the site is rebuilt, so new pages and prices reach it right away.

Second, it answers digital life questions, like “Which password manager should I use?” or “My mom keeps getting scam calls.” For each question, my chat helper searches my book, Accounted For, and my Digital Life Management System, and pulls the few sections that fit. Then it answers the way I would in a session and names the chapter or guide where the answer lives.

The rules matter more than the model

My chat helper runs on Claude, Anthropic’s AI model. The model is only part of the work. The rules are where the design lives, and I wrote mine the way I would brief a new person on my team.

1. Answer questions about my business only from my site, and never guess at a price, a date, or a promise.
2. Be honest about limits. My chat helper cannot see your phone or laptop, so it tells you to check the exact steps on the maker’s official support site and to compare two sources.
3. Protect people. My chat helper reminds you never to type a password, recovery code, or account number into any AI chat, including mine.
4. Put urgent problems first. When money is moving or someone is in your email, my chat helper leads with the first moves and sends you to your bank’s official number.
5. Never promise an outcome. My chat helper says what a step does, not that a step will fix everything.
6. Sound like Haven Smith & Company: warm, plain, and confident, with links only to my own pages.

A proxy, not a replacement

My chat helper is an AI assistant, and it says so. It talks about me as “Ashley,” never as me. It knows what is on my site and in my book, and it is honest about everything else.

What this means if you hire me

This is how I approach AI-native product research and design for every client: start with real content, write clear rules, and design for the person on the other side of the screen.

Open the chat helper on this page and ask it a digital life question. If you want a chatbot like this one for your business, tell me about your project. And if you want the method behind its answers, get the free first chapters of Accounted For.