How do startups set up AI support (Intercom Fin, Decagon, custom bots) in a week?

The fastest path is buying, not building: point Fin or Chatbase at your help centre (Fin needs at least 10 public articles), write plain-language guidance and escalation rules, test it against real past conversations, then go live on chat first. Your knowledge base quality is the ceiling on resolution rate, so most of the week goes into fixing docs, not configuring software. If you build custom with Claude or an n8n workflow you get control and lower per-ticket cost, but budget more than a week.

A quick orientation. The real value is below: resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it.