# How long setup takes

> About five minutes to an assistant answering on your site, and what makes the rest take longer.

Source: https://welcomeai.dev/docs/setup-time
Category: Start here
Updated: 2026-09-09

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## The short answer

**About five minutes** from an empty workspace to an assistant answering on your site, if you start
with content you already have and accept the defaults for everything else.

Everything past that is optional, and each optional thing is small on its own. What makes an
implementation take a day rather than five minutes is not difficulty; it is the number of pieces you
choose to connect.

## The first five minutes

These are the four steps in [Getting started](/docs/getting-started), with what each one actually
costs you in time:

1. **Create a knowledge base.** Seconds. It is a name and a button.
2. **Add your content.** This is the only step whose length depends on you. A pasted answer or a
   single page is indexed in seconds; a long PDF takes a minute or two. You do not wait at the
   screen -- the Documents list shows each one moving through extract, chunk, embed and index, and a
   document answers as soon as it says **indexed**.
3. **Try it in the Playground.** As long as you want to spend asking. Two or three real customer
   questions is enough to know whether the content is there.
4. **Install a widget.** One script tag before your closing `</body>`. Nothing else is required, and
   it does not block your page.

If you have no files to hand, point the [website crawler](/docs/website-crawler) at your help centre
instead and it fills the knowledge base from your own site.

## The checklist is the honest measure

Your workspace has a setup checklist with eight steps, and each one is ticked by a **fact** rather
than by visiting a page:

- name your workspace
- add a source
- choose an AI model, or keep the default
- create a widget
- publish it
- see it answer on your site
- ask something in the Playground
- invite a teammate

The sixth is the one worth knowing about: **Install waits for the widget's own first answer on a real
page.** It cannot be ticked by looking at it, which is deliberate -- it is the only step that proves
the thing works where your visitors are.

The eighth does not appear if your plan has a single seat.

## What makes it longer

Every item below is optional, has its own guide, and can be done later without redoing anything.

**More content, or content somewhere else.** Uploading twenty files is twenty files' worth of waiting,
in the background. A crawl of a large site runs on its own and you can leave the page. Connecting
[WordPress](/docs/wordpress-plugin), [Webflow](/docs/webflow-sync) or your own system through the
[REST API](/docs/rest-ingest) is a one-time connection each, after which new content arrives without
you.

**Sending leads somewhere.** [HubSpot](/docs/hubspot), [ClickUp](/docs/clickup),
[Mailchimp](/docs/mailchimp) and [Slack](/docs/slack) are one connection plus one field mapping each.
The connection is minutes; the mapping is as long as deciding which of your fields a lead's answers
belong in. Slack needs an app in your own workspace first, which takes about two minutes to make.

**Asking for contact details.** A [lead form](/docs/lead-forms) is a list of questions and a layout.
Routing those leads to different places is a rule per destination.

**Your own address for the hosted page.** A [custom domain](/docs/custom-domain) is one DNS record.
It is usually live a couple of minutes after you add it, but that depends on the TTL of whatever was
there before -- a record with a long TTL can take longer to be seen everywhere.

**Making it look like yours.** Colours, typeface, the assistant's name and face, quick actions, the
proactive message: see [widget customization](/docs/widget-customization). Upload a screenshot of
your site and we propose the palette, which turns this from an afternoon into a few minutes.

**Choosing a model, or bringing your own key.** [AI models](/docs/ai-models) is a dropdown. Bringing
your own Anthropic or OpenAI key is pasting a key.

**Your team.** Inviting people and setting roles is a minute each.

## What runs without you

Indexing, crawls and connector syncs all run in the background. You are never sitting at a progress
bar: start a crawl, close the tab, and come back to a knowledge base with your site in it. Scheduled
syncs then keep it current on their own -- daily or weekly, your choice.

The same is true of the first index of a large upload. Your assistant answers from whatever is
already indexed while the rest finishes.

## A realistic plan

- **Today:** knowledge base, your existing help content, a widget on one page. This is the five
  minutes.
- **This week:** the questions the Playground showed you had no content for; the colours; a lead form
  if you want contact details.
- **When you need it:** a connector so content stays current, a destination so leads land in the tool
  your team already uses, your own domain.

Nothing in the second or third group is a prerequisite for the first. An assistant answering from
five documents on one page is a working assistant, and it is five minutes away.

## Frequently asked

**Do we need developers?** For the five minutes, no -- one script tag is the whole install, and
[WordPress](/docs/wordpress-plugin) does not even need that. A connector to your own system through
the REST API does.

**Do we need to migrate anything?** No. Your content stays where it is; WelcomeAI reads it.

**Can we start before we have all our content?** Yes, and it is the better order. Add what you have,
see what the Playground cannot answer, and write only that.

**How long until an answer improves after we add content?** As soon as the document says **indexed**,
which is seconds to a minute or two. See [troubleshooting](/docs/troubleshooting) if an answer still
looks stale -- there is a response cache, and clearing it is a button.