SETUP GUIDE

Your AI employee, start to finish

Written for someone who has never set up software before. Seven steps, about 20 minutes, and nothing here needs a developer.

Think of it like hiring someone. You write the job description, hand them a folder of information about your business, show them where the phone is — and then they get on with it. That is exactly what you are about to do, except your new employee lives on your own computer.

If you can install a normal program on your computer, you can do every step below.

1

Create an account 1 min

Click Create Your AI Employee at the top of any page. Your name, your business name, an email and a password. That's it.

Your subscription is $33 a month. Cancel whenever you like — there is no contract and no cancellation fee.

2

Choose the job it will do 3 min

Pick one of nine roles. They genuinely behave differently — this is not the same robot wearing different name tags:

  • Order Taker — takes orders and always confirms quantities before finishing
  • Customer Support — answers questions from your own documents
  • Receptionist — greets people, gives hours and directions
  • Appointment Setter — refuses to leave a time vague; pins down an exact day and hour
  • Lead Generator — chats with visitors and captures their contact details
  • Sales Agent — asks what the customer actually needs before pitching
  • Complaint Taker — never argues, never minimises, calms the situation first
  • HR Agent — answers staff policy questions, hands off anything sensitive
  • Custom — you describe the job yourself

Then it asks a few real questions about your business — different for each role. Pick Order Taker and it asks your restaurant's name, what's on the menu, whether you deliver. Pick Lead Generator and it asks what you're offering and who your ideal customer is. Everything you type here becomes real knowledge your AI employee uses with customers.

Give it a name, pick a tone, click Create.

3

Download two things 2 min

On the next page you'll get:

  • The Hire Alien app — a normal program for Windows or Mac
  • A settings file — named after your agent, like hirealien-order-taker-1-agt_x8k2.json

If you create several AI employees, each gets its own settings file with its own name — so you always know which is which.

4

Open the app and give it your documents 5 min

Install and open the app. Click Import config.json and pick the file you just downloaded. Your AI employee appears in the sidebar.

Go to the Documents tab and drag your real business files straight onto it — your menu, price list, opening hours, refund policy, FAQs. Plain text, Markdown or CSV files work.

These files never leave your computer. The app reads them right there on your own machine. We never receive them and have no way to.

5

Connect its brain 3 min

Go to the Connect AI tab and choose which AI does the actual thinking. You have three options:

  • A free local AI — runs entirely on your own computer, nothing sent over the internet at all. Costs nothing beyond your monthly fee.
  • OpenAI (ChatGPT) — the most capable option. You pay OpenAI directly for what you use.
  • Claude — also excellent. Same idea, you pay Anthropic directly.

Whichever you pick, you paste your key here in the app. That key stays on your computer. We never see it.

Then press Start. Your AI employee is now working.

6

Try it yourself first 2 min

Go to the Test Chat tab and talk to it like a customer would. Ask something real. If you chose Order Taker, place a pretend order — you'll see a card confirming exactly what it understood, item by item.

Try to catch it out. Ask about something your documents don't cover. It should say it isn't sure and offer to get a person, not invent an answer. That's deliberate.

7

Put it in front of customers 4 min

Open the Channels tab. This is where you connect it to the outside world.

Your website. Copy the snippet shown in the app and paste it into your website, just before the closing </body> tag. It looks like this:

Paste into your website
<script src="https://cdn.hirealien.ai/widget.js" data-agent-id="your-agent-id" data-runtime-url="your-address" defer></script>

If you use WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace or Wix, look for a setting called "custom code", "header/footer scripts" or "code injection" — it's the same place you'd paste a Google Analytics tag. A chat bubble appears in the bottom corner. That's your AI employee, live.

Phone and WhatsApp. Click Go Live in the app — this opens a secure connection so calls can reach your computer. No router setup, no technical work. The app shows you two web addresses. Paste them into your Twilio account (a separate phone service you'll need an account with):

Paste into Twilio → your number → Voice
https://your-hirealien-address/api/voice/incoming/your-agent-id
Paste into Twilio → your number → Messaging
https://your-hirealien-address/api/whatsapp/incoming/your-agent-id

The app shows the exact addresses with your real agent ID already filled in — just copy and paste them.

WHY IT'S WORTH IT

What you actually get

It never misses a call

Research on small businesses consistently finds most calls go unanswered during working hours, and most people who can't get through simply move on. Your AI employee answers instantly, every time.

Your data stays yours

Your documents, your customers' conversations, and your AI key never leave your computer. This isn't a promise about how we behave — the software has no path to send them.

It captures real information

Orders arrive as actual items and quantities. Leads arrive as real contact details. Not a chat transcript you have to read through afterwards.

It knows when to step back

For a genuine dispute or anything it can't answer honestly, it hands over to a real person and tells you why — instead of guessing.

It tells you what it's missing

Live stats show the questions it struggled with, so you know exactly what to add to your documents next.

One flat price

$33 a month per AI employee. No per-message charges and no premium tier — every channel is included from day one, along with the phone number we buy for your AI and the calls it answers. The AI itself is separate: bring your own key, or buy credit from us at about 0.04¢ a conversation.

Two honest things before you start. Your AI employee runs on your own computer, so that machine needs to stay switched on — the same as a router or a card terminal. And for anything genuinely complicated, it's built to fetch a human rather than pretend it can cope.

Create your AI employee for 30 days

Stuck on any step? Ask us — a real person answers.