Zen Cortext – Your AI SDR for inbound

Zen Cortext is an AI sales development representative (SDR) for inbound traffic on your WordPress site. It reads your published pages, posts, FAQs, and case studies into a knowledge base, talks to your visitors in a streaming chat that cites your actual work, and knows when to hand the conversation to a human on your team. Conversations stay in your own WordPress database. You bring your own AI provider key, so there is no SaaS subscription on top.

What you get

For your visitors:

• A streaming AI chat that types responses live, embeddable on any page via the [zen_cortext] shortcode or on a dedicated full-page template.
• A floating chat button that follows visitors across the site (optional, configurable).
• A speaker intro card, welcome message, and four configurable starter question chips.
• Inline follow-up suggestions the AI offers mid-conversation as clickable chips.
• Optional interview / survey scripts the AI weaves into the conversation — qualifying questions, intake forms, custom discovery flows.
• An inline contact-capture form the AI surfaces when the visitor is ready to talk or when it doesn’t know an answer.
• A «talk to a human» handover — the AI can invite specific team members into the chat in real time via Web Push. Offline? It falls back to the contact form automatically.
• Optional voice input on mobile via Groq or OpenAI Whisper.
• Graceful fallback when the AI provider is unavailable — visitors see a polite contact-form message; your team gets an email with the failure details.

For you (the admin):

• Knowledge Base — one-click indexer that pulls in your pages, posts, FAQs, portfolio items; auto-re-syncs when you publish or edit content.
• Knowledge Artifacts — hand-curated structured documents (case studies, positioning notes, specs) that complement the auto-indexed KB.
• Brainstorm — an admin-only AI collaborator with access to your KB + artifacts for drafting new content.
• Live takeover — jump into any visitor conversation in real time from the admin or a mobile PWA.
• Saved Chats — read every conversation with full UTM attribution, AI reasoning, and any leads captured.
• Surveys — build interview scripts the AI runs through naturally.
• Attribution Context — swap the AI’s framing per campaign (different positioning per UTM source).
• Design — brand color tokens with a live preview, font picker, and a configurable float button.
• Prompts — full control over the AI’s persona (system prompt), opening line, and survey framing.
• Team members — pick who can be invited into chats, who receives lead notifications, who gets AI-error alerts.
• Webhooks — fire outbound notifications on lead.captured, chat.started, admin.joined, and more.
• Public API — scoped read-only keys for pulling data into external dashboards.
• Google Ads sync — pull campaign metadata so the AI knows what an ad-clicking visitor was promised before arriving.

How it works

1. You install the plugin and paste your Anthropic API key.
2. The Knowledge Base auto-indexes your published content.
3. You embed the chat on a page (shortcode) or use the full-page template.
4. A visitor arrives. Their UTM / campaign info attaches to the chat. The AI greets them with your welcome message.
5. They ask a question. The AI answers from your Knowledge Base + artifacts — citing your real case studies, FAQs, and service pages.
6. If the AI hits a natural decision point, it can offer the contact form or invite a specific team member.
7. Everything — transcript, lead, attribution, AI errors — is logged in your WordPress database.

Requirements

• WordPress 5.9 or newer.
• PHP 7.4 or newer.
• An Anthropic API key (you bring your own — no markup, no SaaS fees). Sign up at console.anthropic.com.
• Optional: a Groq or OpenAI API key, only if you want voice input on mobile.
• A modern browser on the visitor side (Server-Sent Events support).

Bundled shortcodes

• [zen_cortext] — embed the chat anywhere.
• [zen_cortext_author_bio] — display the author bio card (absorbed from the deprecated zen-author-bio mu-plugin; the legacy tag [zen_author_bio] still works as a deprecated alias).
• [zen_cortext_author_posts_heading] — display an «Author: [name]» heading (legacy alias: [zen_author_posts_heading]).

Non-affiliation

Zen Cortext is an independent plugin. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic, Groq, OpenAI, Google, or Microsoft.

External services

This plugin connects to external AI and analytics services to do its job. By using the plugin you accept that visitor chat content is sent to the providers you configure.

Anthropic API (required)

• What it does: every chat message the visitor sends, plus your system prompt and any relevant knowledge-base snippets, are sent to the Anthropic API so the AI can compose a response. Responses stream back to the visitor’s browser.
• When it is called: every time a visitor sends a chat message; when the admin runs Knowledge Base classification / restructuring; when the admin tests the connection.
• Data sent: chat transcript so far, the system prompt, knowledge-base context snippets, attribution metadata (UTM / source / campaign), the active model name.
• Service: Anthropic.
• Terms of Service: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms
• Privacy Policy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy

Groq API (optional — voice input only)

• What it does: when voice input is enabled and the visitor presses the mic button, the recorded audio is sent to Groq Whisper for speech-to-text transcription.
• When it is called: only when a visitor uses the voice input button on the chat.
• Data sent: the audio blob recorded by the visitor’s microphone.
• Service: Groq.
• Terms of Service: https://groq.com/terms-of-use/
• Privacy Policy: https://groq.com/privacy-policy/

OpenAI API (optional — voice input fallback)

• What it does: same as Groq, used as the fallback when Groq is unavailable or not configured.
• When it is called: only when a visitor uses the voice input button on the chat AND Groq has failed or is not configured.
• Data sent: the audio blob recorded by the visitor’s microphone.
• Service: OpenAI.
• Terms of Service: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use
• Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy

Google Ads API (optional — campaign metadata sync)

• What it does: pulls campaign metadata (campaign name, headlines, status) from your Google Ads account so the AI knows what an ad-clicking visitor was promised before they arrived. The data flow is initiated by a Google Ads Script that you paste into the Google Ads UI; the script POSTs metadata to a wp-json/zc/v1/ads-sync endpoint on your own site.
• When it is called: on the schedule you set inside Google Ads (typically daily).
• Data sent (outbound from Google Ads to your site): campaign id, campaign name, status, headlines, keywords.
• Service: Google Ads.
• Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms
• Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Web Push (optional — admin notifications)

When admin push notifications are enabled, web-push messages are sent through the visitor’s browser-vendor push service (FCM for Chrome, Mozilla autopush for Firefox, Apple push for Safari). These services are governed by the browser vendor’s terms.

Google Tag Manager (optional — your own tracking)

The standalone full-page chat (/talk/) renders its own document and bypasses your theme, so analytics loaded by your theme or a header/footer plugin do not run there. If you enter a Google Tag Manager container ID in Settings → Tracking, the plugin loads the standard GTM container on the chat page (built by the plugin from your ID — you do not paste any code). The container then loads gtm.js from Google and runs whatever tags you have configured in your own GTM account (GA4, Google Ads, the Meta Pixel, etc.). The plugin sends nothing to Google itself; the browser’s request to Google Tag Manager is governed by Google’s terms.

• Service: Google Tag Manager.
• Terms of Service: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/tag-manager/use-policy/
• Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy