Bot Personas Guide

What is a Bot Persona?

A Bot Persona is the complete character your bot presents to visitors: name, avatar, tone of voice, opening greeting, voice (text-to-speech), and which AI model powers it. Instead of a generic "Bot" label, visitors see a branded identity like "Sales Assistant" or "Support Bot."

You can create multiple personas and assign each one to a different workflow. Your sales flow uses one persona; your support flow uses another. When a conversation transfers between workflows, the new persona takes over automatically — including its tone, greeting, and voice.

Creating a Bot Persona

1. Go to Settings → Bots in the sidebar.

2. Click New Persona.

3. Fill in the four sections: Identity, Character, Voice, and AI Model.

4. Click Create Persona.

The persona is now available to assign to any workflow or AI bot node.

Identity — Name and Avatar

Name: Up to 50 characters. Shown in the chat header and used in the system prompt so the AI knows its own name (e.g. "Your name is Atlas."). Keep it short — names truncate around 20 characters on mobile.

Default Persona: Mark one persona as Default. It is used whenever a workflow or AI node does not specify a particular persona. The default is shown with a gold star on the Personas page. If you delete the default persona, the next one is automatically promoted so nothing breaks.

Avatar — Preset Gallery: 24 built-in avatars across three styles:

• 🤖 AI Bots — stylized robot illustrations (Atlas, Echo, Nova, Cipher, etc.)
• 👤 Personas — illustrated human-style avatars (Alex, Morgan, Riley, etc.)
• ✨ Illustrated — bold artistic portraits (Aria, Ember, Sage, Zara, etc.)

Avatar — Upload Your Own: Drag and drop or browse any PNG, JPG, GIF, or WebP up to 5 MB. Square crop works best. Minimum recommended size: 128 × 128 px.

Character — Tone and Greeting

Tone

Choose one of four tones. Velaro automatically injects it into the system prompt — you do not need to write tone instructions yourself.

• 😊 Friendly — Warm, approachable, conversational
• 💼 Professional — Formal, precise, business-appropriate
• 💙 Empathetic — Caring, patient, emotionally aware
• ⚡ Concise — Short answers, gets to the point fast

How tone works at runtime: The persona's tone overrides any tone setting on the workflow's AI node. Changes take effect on the next conversation without touching any workflow.

Opening Greeting

An optional message the bot uses to start the conversation. Leave it blank to use whatever greeting is in the workflow or system prompt. When set, it is injected into the system prompt as context so the AI uses it as its opening line.

Example: Hi! I'm Atlas, your sales assistant. How can I help you today?

Keep it under 300 characters. The greeting appears in the chat preview on the left side of the persona editor so you can see how it looks before saving.

Voice — ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech

Voice settings are part of the persona character. When a conversation transfers to a new persona (e.g. from a triage bot to a specialist bot), the new persona's voice activates automatically.

Enable Voice: Turns on ElevenLabs TTS for this persona. Requires the Voice feature on your plan.

Voice: Pick from your available ElevenLabs voices. Voices are loaded from your ElevenLabs account connected in AI Configuration.

Voice Model: Three options:

• Turbo v2.5 — fast, low latency (recommended for chat)
• Flash v2.5 — fastest, lowest cost
• Multilingual v2 — best audio quality, supports non-English languages

Auto-play: Automatically speaks each bot reply when it arrives. Note: browsers require the visitor to interact with the page at least once before audio can auto-play. Auto-play works best after the visitor has clicked or typed in the chat window.

AI Model — Which LLM Runs This Persona

Each persona can use a different AI model. The model is resolved in order:

1. This persona's model — if you select one here, it always takes priority

2. Site default — set by Velaro per your plan; upgrades available on the [→ Billing](/billing) page

3. AI node's model — the fallback setting on the bot node in your workflow

Select Velaro Default to inherit your site's assigned model automatically. This is the recommended setting for most personas — it means Velaro can upgrade your model when your plan changes without you having to update each persona individually.

Available models (subject to your plan):

• GPT-4o Mini — fast, cost-efficient (Basic)
• GPT-4o — best OpenAI balance (Pro)
• GPT-5 / GPT-5 Mini — most capable OpenAI (Enterprise)
• Claude 3 Haiku / 3.5 Haiku — fast, lightweight Anthropic models (Pro)
• Claude 3.5 Sonnet — best Claude balance (Enterprise)
• Gemini 2.0 Flash — fast multimodal (Pro)
• Gemini 1.5 Pro — advanced reasoning (Enterprise)

Contact support@velaro.com to upgrade your plan.

Assigning a Persona to a Workflow

1. Open a Workflow.

2. Click a Bot or AI node.

3. In the node settings, open the Bot Persona dropdown and select any active persona — or leave it on "Use site default" to inherit the Default persona automatically.

4. Save the workflow.

Each workflow node can use a different persona. Your sales flow can use one character, your support flow another. The persona selection, tone, voice, and greeting all switch when the workflow node activates.

Navigating between a persona and a workflow:

• In the AI node editor, click Edit persona → next to the selected persona to jump directly to that persona's settings in the Bots page. A ← Back to Workflow button appears automatically so you can return.
• Click Manage personas → (shown when using site default) to open the full Personas list.

Archiving a Persona

Personas cannot be permanently deleted if they have been used in past conversations — the history must be preserved. Instead, use Archive.

Click the Archive button on a persona card. A confirmation modal appears showing:

• Any workflows currently linked to this persona (with a scrollable list)
• A note that past conversations keep their history intact
• If this is the Default persona: a warning that archiving will auto-promote the next one

After archiving:

• The persona is hidden from the Personas list (show it again with the Show archived filter)
• Any workflows that referenced it fall back to the site's Default persona automatically
• Past conversation transcripts continue to show the original persona's name and avatar unchanged

Restoring an archived persona: Click Restore on the archived card. The persona becomes active immediately.

Duplicating a Persona

Click the Copy (duplicate) icon on any persona card to create an exact copy named "Copy of [name]". The duplicate starts as non-default and non-archived so you can modify it independently.

Use this to build variant personas from a baseline without starting from scratch.

Workflow Assignments Tab

The Workflow Assignments tab on the Bot Personas page shows every workflow and which persona drives it. Two sections:

• Custom persona assigned — workflows with an explicit persona selection on their AI node
• Using site default — workflows that rely on the Default persona

Each row shows the workflow's active/disabled status, trigger type, and the assigned persona with its avatar. Click Change → to go directly to that workflow.

Use this tab to audit your persona assignments and quickly find which flows need updating after you archive or rename a persona.

Tips for Branded Personas

• Use role-based names: "Sales Assistant", "Support Bot", "Billing Help"
• Upload your company logo or mascot for a fully branded experience
• Give each workflow its own persona so visitors always know who they're talking to
• Set Friendly tone for sales flows, Professional for compliance-sensitive flows, Empathetic for support flows where visitors may be frustrated
• Set a greeting that matches the workflow context — a sales greeting is different from a support greeting
• Use Velaro Default for AI model unless you have a specific reason to pin a model to a persona