Of the three places a model can speak — comments, direct messages, chats — the chat is by far the hardest. In comments a remark stands alone; in a DM the conversation is one to one; in a chat several people talk at once and relevance depends on the last twenty messages.
What makes it difficult
- Context is shared. The question that matters may be three messages above, addressed to someone else.
- Timing is unforgiving. An answer to a question that has already been resolved is noise.
- The audience is watching. Every reply is public and permanent.
What to automate
Recognition and the first reply to a routine question. That is where the time actually goes — watching many chats at once for a reason to speak (how much time chats take).
Set it to answer only when the question clearly belongs to your subject. A model that participates in general conversation to seem human produces exactly the opposite impression.
What not to automate
- Disputes. Nothing good happens when a model argues in public.
- Anything about price or terms — that is a commitment: when to hand over.
- Mentioning yourself. Have it answer usefully and stop; the route to you is the profile — what to put in a profile.
The honesty rule
If somebody asks whether they are talking to a bot, the answer is yes. Attempting to insist otherwise costs more trust than the automation ever saves.
Before any of this
The account has to be established in the chat first. An automated reply from a member who joined an hour ago is removed and remembered — joining without getting banned and how to behave in a chat.
How Neurogram does this
Everything above is manual work that runs into the number of hours in a day. Neurogram does it on your own accounts and without you: it collects channels and audiences, writes comments and replies with a language model, and keeps limits and quiet hours so the accounts survive. See pricing or look at your case.