Meet SagotFN: An AI Assistant That Only Answers From What Is On The Page

We have switched on SagotFN, an assistant that lives in the search bar at the bottom of every page. Sagot is the Filipino word for answer, which turns out to be a fair description of the whole job, because you can ask it a question about whatever you happen to be looking at and it will reply in plain language, in English or in Filipino.

What makes it useful is also what makes it a little unusual, which is that it is not a general chatbot with opinions about the wider world. It answers from the actual data on the page in front of you, and when that data does not contain what you asked for, it will tell you so rather than filling the gap with something that merely sounds right.

Why we built it this way

A general purpose AI will happily tell you what a franchise costs, and it will sound entirely confident while doing so, even when the figure it is quoting comes from three years ago, from a different country, or from nowhere in particular at all. In a decision where somebody is about to commit their savings, a confident wrong number does considerably more damage than no number, so we decided early on that we would rather have an assistant that knows less and is right than one that appears to know everything and is quietly inventing some of it.

That is why SagotFN is deliberately narrow: it is handed the real and current details of whatever you are looking at and it answers from those, and if your question falls outside what it has been given, it will say as much and point you toward somewhere that might actually help.

How to use it, and where

The search bar sits at the bottom of every page, so you type your question, send it, and the answer comes back in the same panel. What it can answer depends on where you happen to be standing: on a brand page it answers about that brand, on an industry, city or budget page it answers about the opportunities gathered there, and on the homepage it can range more widely across the whole catalog.

To give you a sense of what it handles well, on a brand page you might ask what the investment actually includes, what the fee covers, how long the term runs, or whether they have opened anywhere near you yet, while on a city page you might ask which brands serve that city and what entry costs tend to look like there. On a budget page you might ask what a given amount of capital realistically reaches, and which categories tend to cluster around that level.

It also copes with the comparison questions people genuinely ask, such as which of these needs the least money to start, or which of them are open across the whole country, and because those answers are drawn from the same published figures shown on the page itself, what it tells you and what you can see with your own eyes will always agree.

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What it will not do

It will not give you financial or legal advice and it will not tell you which franchise to buy, because that is a judgement about your money, your city and your life, and it belongs with a person who can ask you the follow-up questions that actually matter. When a question turns out to be a decision in disguise, it will say so and point you toward asking for guidance from somebody who can help you properly.

It will also not invent a figure that nobody has ever published, so if a brand has not disclosed something, the honest answer is that it has not been disclosed, and that is the answer you will get rather than a plausible guess.

Your conversation stays yours

What you type into SagotFN is not published anywhere on the site, is not shown to other visitors, and is not attached to your name for anybody to browse through. We do look at how the assistant is performing so that we can improve it, which is a rather different thing from putting your questions on display.

And if you would rather talk to a person than to software, asking for guidance is always one click away and always free.

This is the first version

SagotFN is at an early stage and we would rather treat it that way than oversell it, so it is worth saying that it is good at factual questions about whatever is in front of it and becomes less useful the further you wander from that. It will occasionally misread what you meant, in which case rephrasing the question usually sorts it out.

We will keep improving it and we will report back here as we go, including the cases where it fell short and what we changed as a result. If it ever gives you an answer that looks wrong to you, that is genuinely useful for us to know, so please do tell us.