Open source · Self-hosted · Bring your own key
The AI receptionist for your website that never makes things up.
Frontdesk answers visitors’ questions from your own information, takes enquiries and bookings, and hands over to your team when it isn’t sure. Built for clinics, solicitors, salons and every small business that answers the same questions all day.
- licence fee, ever
- £0
- licence fee, ever
- to add it to a site
- 2 lines
- to add it to a site
- answers, no guessing
- 24/7
- answers, no guessing
Riverside Physio
AI assistant · answers from our own information
How it works
From your FAQs to a receptionist on your site in an afternoon.
01
Add what you know
FAQs, prices, services and policies as text, PDF or Word files, or import your website. Add your opening hours and contact details once.
02
Paste two lines on your site
One tag and one script. Works on WordPress, Laravel or plain HTML. The widget can’t clash with your styles.
03
It answers, your team steps in
Visitors get grounded answers around the clock. Enquiries land in your inbox, and your team can take over any chat live.
# Paste before </body>. Copy your own key from Assistant → Website widget.<frontdesk-chat key="fd_pk_…"></frontdesk-chat><script src="https://your-frontdesk.example/widget.js" defer></script>
Features
Everything a good receptionist does. Nothing it shouldn’t.
Answers, enquiries, bookings and handover in one place, with the guardrails a business needs before it lets AI talk to its customers.
Answers from your information only
Every answer comes from your knowledge and business details, with its sources shown.
Honest “I don’t know”
No invented prices or policies. Gaps go to an Unanswered list, so you know what to add.
Enquiries and bookings
Collects enquiries with consent and emails them to you. Shows your booking link or real free times.
Live handover
Staff see chats as they happen and take over in one click. Nobody online? It takes a message.
Your rules, in plain English
“Never give legal advice; offer a consultation.” Presets for clinics, law firms and general businesses.
Hard to trick
Resists prompt injection, from visitors and from text inside your own documents. Each business’s data stays separate.
Costs you control
Rate limits per visitor and a monthly AI limit per workspace. At the limit, the chat takes messages.
Bring your own key
Use your own AI provider and model. Keys are stored encrypted and never shown again.
Grounded by design
It can only answer from what you’ve given it.
Each question searches your knowledge, hands the closest extracts to the model as reference data (never as instructions), and the model reports gaps and sources with structured signals instead of wording the app has to guess at.
$ visitor: "Do you take Bupa?"search 5 nearest extracts · this business onlyprompt your rules + preset + extracts as untrusted dataanswer "Yes. We’re registered with Bupa, AXA Health…"cite → Do you accept health insurance?$ visitor: "Do you offer hydrotherapy?"search nothing relevantanswer "I’m sorry, I don’t have that information…"report → added to Unanswered
Retrieval per business
Every search is scoped to one workspace. One business can never see another’s knowledge.
Untrusted data stays data
Text inside an imported page or document can’t give the assistant orders.
Tested, not promised
An evaluation set checks grounded answers, honest “don’t know”, refusing advice and resisting injection, against the model you choose.
Self-host
Your server. Your data. Your AI key.
One command runs the whole thing: dashboard, API, background worker, PostgreSQL with pgvector and Redis. A small VPS with 2 GB of RAM is enough. It starts without any AI key, and each business can add its own.
- Runs on any Linux server with Docker
- Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, or a model you host with Ollama
- AGPL-3.0: free to use, inspect and change
$ git clone https://github.com/ToukirOfficial/frontdesk$ cd frontdesk && cp .env.example .env# add three secrets (openssl rand -hex 32), WEB_URL, SMTP_URL$ docker compose up -d✓ postgres ✓ redis ✓ api ✓ worker ✓ webFrontdesk is running on http://localhost:8025
FAQ
Questions people ask first.
Is it really free?
Yes. Frontdesk is open source (AGPL-3.0) and you host it yourself. The only running cost is your AI provider, billed to your own key, or nothing at all with a model you run yourself through Ollama.
Which AI models does it work with?
Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including self-hosted models with Ollama. You choose the provider and model in the dashboard.
What happens when it doesn’t know an answer?
It says so plainly, offers to take a message or find a person, and lists the question under Unanswered so you can add the missing information.
Where is my data stored?
On your own server, in your own database. Knowledge is searched locally, and only the question plus the relevant extracts go to the AI provider you picked.
Will it work on my website?
If you can paste HTML into your site, yes: WordPress, Laravel, Squarespace code blocks or plain HTML. It works on phones, with a keyboard and with screen readers.
Stop losing customers to unanswered questions.
Set up your workspace, add your FAQs and see your first grounded answer in minutes.