Skip to main content
A common pattern is letting the user type keywords like restart, help, or menu at any point in the conversation to trigger a specific behavior. Typebot does not ship a dedicated block for this, but you can build it with a Reply event combined with Jump and Return blocks.

Reply event vs Command event

These two events are easy to confuse:
  • Reply event fires on every user reply (text, button click, etc.). Use it when the trigger is something the user types or selects inside the chat. This is what you want for restart or help keywords.
  • Command event fires only when a command is sent programmatically via Typebot.sendCommand or the continueChat API. Use it to trigger flows from outside the conversation (a button on your page, an external webhook, etc.).
If you want the user to type a keyword to trigger behavior, use the Reply event.

Implement a restart command

The goal: whenever the user replies with restart, the conversation jumps back to the very first block of the flow.
1

Add a Reply event

From the events sidebar, drag a Reply event onto the graph.
2

Filter the reply content

Inside the event subflow, add a Condition block that checks if the reply content equals restart (case-insensitive if you prefer).
3

Jump to the first block

On the true branch of the condition, add a Jump block pointing to the first block of your main flow.
4

Return on the false branch

On the false branch, add a Return block so the conversation resumes normally when the user types anything else.
The Reply event fires before the reply is validated against the current input. This means the keyword works even if the user is currently on a number or email input.

Implement a help command

Same pattern, but instead of jumping to the start of the flow, jump to a dedicated “Help” group that sends a few text bubbles explaining what the bot can do. End that group with a Return block so the user comes back to where they were.

Handling multiple commands

You can chain several conditions inside a single Reply event subflow:
  • restart → Jump to start
  • help → Jump to help group
  • agent → Jump to human handoff group
  • anything else → Return
Keeping all your command routing inside one Reply event makes it easier to maintain than duplicating logic in every group.