The chatbot replies, but it answers generically, or says it does not know something you have definitely written about. Work down this list in order — it is roughly ordered by how often each turns out to be the cause.
1. Is there an OpenAI key saved?
The most common cause, and the least obvious.
Knowledge Base indexing and search always run on OpenAI, whichever provider answers your chats. If you selected Google (Gemini) and never saved an OpenAI key, the chatbot still replies perfectly well — it just never consults your articles.
There is no error for this. The chat works; it is simply ungrounded.
Fix: save an OpenAI key under Sohay → AI Settings, alongside your Google one. Then sync.
2. Is the Knowledge Base switched on?
Check Sohay → KB Settings. If it is off, nothing is indexed and nothing is searched.
3. Is the article published?
Drafts are never indexed. Neither are pending or private articles. Only Published counts.
4. Is it actually synced?
Sohay → KB Settings → Dashboard shows a count per state. If your article is Pending, the queue has not reached it — give it a minute. If it is Outdated, it changed since it was indexed and the old text is what the chatbot sees. If it is Error, see When a Knowledge Base sync fails.
If the whole set looks wrong, press Sync All Articles and wait.
5. Does the article read like the question?
If the article is published and synced and the chatbot still misses it, this is usually retrieval rather than infrastructure.
Matching is on meaning, so an article titled “Shipping” competes poorly against a question like “when will my order arrive”. Retitle it as the question and put the answer in the first paragraph. Writing a good Knowledge Base article covers this properly.
6. Is the content actually text?
Anything carried by an image, video, embed, or form is stripped before indexing. An article whose answer lives in a screenshot has, as far as the chatbot is concerned, no answer in it.
An article that is entirely such content indexes as empty and errors.
7. Are you looking at a cached search?
Searches are cached for five minutes. Sync events flush the cache, so this rarely masks an edit — but while you are actively debugging, it is one variable worth removing:
add_filter( 'sohaychat_kb_search_cache_ttl', '__return_zero' );
Take it out again afterwards.
8. Has a filter removed the tool?
If someone has customised sohaychat_tools and dropped
sohaychat-kb/get-information, the chatbot is never told the Knowledge Base
exists. Worth checking on a site you inherited.
Still stuck
Sohay → Diagnostics shows the last 100 log entries, including errors from OpenAI. A rejected key, an exhausted quota, or a failing vector store will show up there.
