Build Layers 3 + 4 of the 5-layer stack. Wire Claude (or GPT) into the webhook from Lesson 3.2. Embed your documents. Run RAG over YOUR data. The echo dies — intelligence is in. Under $50 to set up, under 30¢ per real customer chat.
Each step has concrete outputs. By the end: customer texts in → Claude reads YOUR data → answers with YOUR facts → reply lands on the phone.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 — default for African business ($3/M input tokens; better French and Swahili; longer context). GPT-4o — faster on simple queries, strict JSON ($2.50/M input). Test both on 5 real customer messages, then pick one for production. Don't bounce between models.
Inside your Lesson 3.2 webhook handler, replace the echo with a real LLM call. Anthropic SDK: messages.create(system, user_msg) → AI text. 6 lines. POST that text back through Meta's /messages endpoint. Customer's phone buzzes — but this answer was generated, not echoed.
The agent is only as smart as what it knows about YOUR business. 1) Collect FAQs, product specs, pricing, policies, hours. 2) Chunk into 500-token pieces. 3) Embed with text-embedding-3-small or Voyage AI (1 vector per chunk). 4) Store in Pinecone, Supabase pgvector, or Chroma. ~$0.20 one-time to embed a 1,000-page FAQ.
The pattern that makes the brain actually useful. Customer asks 'delivery to Bujumbura?'. RETRIEVE: embed question → search vector DB → pull top 3 chunks. AUGMENT: inject those chunks into the system prompt as context. GENERATE: Claude reads the chunks and answers with YOUR exact pricing. No hallucination. No generic web answer.
Send the agent 3 things it cannot answer without your data: 'What time do you close on Saturday?', 'How much is delivery to Gitega?', 'What's your return policy after 30 days?'. Compare: Lesson 3.2 echo vs Lesson 3.3 brain. If answers use YOUR facts — Layers 3 + 4 are shipped.
Top AI Africa deploys the full 5-layer stack for African businesses. WhatsApp Cloud API + webhook, Claude wired in, Knowledge Base built on your real product data, monitoring dashboard. Free 15-min strategy call to see if your business is a fit.