Getting started
Create your Nerva account, your first agent, and your first conversation in under 10 minutes.
This guide walks you from sign-up to your first live agent. Total time: ~10 minutes.
1. Create an account
Visit nerva.ai and sign up. You'll land on a brief onboarding flow that creates your organization — the top-level container for your agents, integrations, billing, and team.
If you're invited to an existing organization, click the invite link in your email and you'll be added to that org instead.
2. Pick a channel
Nerva supports four channels. Pick whichever fits your use case — you can add more later:
| Channel | Best for | Setup time |
|---|---|---|
| Voice | Inbound and outbound phone calls | ~10 min (needs a phone number) |
| Chat | Web-embedded chatbot on your site | ~5 min |
| SMS | Text conversations | ~10 min (needs a phone number) |
| WhatsApp Business API conversations | ~15 min (needs WhatsApp Business setup) |
3. Create your first agent
From the dashboard, click Agents → New agent and pick the channel. Each channel has a slightly different setup — see the dedicated guides:
The minimum required to launch: a name, a system prompt (what personality and behavior you want), and an LLM model. Everything else has sensible defaults.
4. Test your agent
Every agent has a Test panel in the editor. For voice agents you get a WebRTC dial-in to talk to your agent in-browser; for chat agents you get a live chat window. Use these to iterate on your prompt before pointing real traffic at it.
5. Connect to the world
Once your agent works in test mode, hook it up to real channels:
- Voice agents need a phone number. Buy one in Dashboard → Phone numbers or import an existing Twilio/Plivo number.
- Chat agents need to be embedded on a website. See Chatbot widget embedding.
- SMS / WhatsApp agents need a phone number provisioned for messaging.
6. Plug in your tools (optional)
Connect Nerva to the rest of your stack:
- CRM integrations — sync calls and chats to GoHighLevel and other CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho coming soon).
- Webhooks — receive real-time events at any URL when calls or chats happen. Great for Zapier, n8n, or your own backend.
What's next
Pick the channel guide for what you're building: