Kiosk

Kiosk mode turns askTheodor into a public-facing receptionist on a touch screen. Mount a tablet or screen in a lobby, entrance hall, or shop, launch the kiosk, and a Worker you choose greets every visitor — answering questions, giving directions, taking messages, and helping with bookings or check-in.

It’s the same workforce you already run, pointed outward: one of your workers steps up to the front desk.

What it does

• A worker you pick greets visitors. Choose any worker to be the face of the kiosk, with your own branding — logo, title, accent color, a welcome message, and quick-tap suggested questions.
• It’s multilingual. The receptionist detects the visitor’s language from what they type or say and replies in that same language, so a single kiosk serves an international lobby.
• Optional live voice. Hands-free, full-duplex spoken conversation via Gemini Live (a voice mode where the visitor and the worker can talk naturally, like a phone call). Needs a Gemini provider key, and there’s a per-minute cost.
• Optional 3D presenter. Instead of a simple animated orb, you can show a lip-synced 3D avatar that “speaks” the worker’s replies.
• Locked down for public use. An optional PIN is required to leave kiosk mode, an idle timer resets the screen between visitors, and the display can be kept awake. Set no PIN and anyone can exit freely; set one and the screen stays a kiosk until you unlock it.
• Remote thin-client option. The kiosk can run on a separate, low-powered screen that talks back to your main install over a secure tunnel — so the heavy lifting stays on your machine while the lobby screen stays simple.

A paid add-on

Kiosk is a licensed feature, billed at €50/month per live kiosk. You can run as many as your license covers; each running kiosk counts as one.

Pick a warm worker

A kiosk worker shines when its personality leans warm, concise, and spoken-friendly. The kiosk gently coaches it to behave like an excellent human receptionist — but starting from the right character helps.

Same voice engine as chat

The kiosk’s live voice uses the very same engine as the 🎧 Talk button in Chat — the kiosk just adds the receptionist framing and the optional 3D presenter on top.

In practice

It pays off where the same questions get asked all day, in person. A small hotel lobby at 2am (Wi-Fi password, breakfast times, directions), a clinic or salon waiting area (opening hours, what to bring, how long a treatment takes), a trade stand or showroom (specs, comparisons, “does it work with X”). Multilingual detection matters most in the first case.

Ground it before it meets anyone. Load the Library with your actual FAQs, hours, specs and policies. An ungrounded kiosk will answer confidently and generically, in public, to a customer — which is the worst place to discover the gap.

Lock it down as a public surface. Anyone can walk up and type anything. Set the PIN so nobody can leave kiosk mode, keep the greeter’s tool allowlist narrow, enable the idle timer so one visitor’s conversation doesn’t greet the next, and write an SOP naming what it must never discuss — pricing exceptions, other customers, anything that should reach a human.

Test adversarially before it goes live. Spend ten minutes trying to make it say something you’d regret. That’s a far cheaper way to find the gaps than a customer finding them.

Voice is billed per minute

Live voice needs a Gemini key and bills by the minute — worth knowing before mounting a kiosk in a busy lobby. The text kiosk has no such per-minute cost.

🎓 Learn it hands-on: Kiosks: a public-facing agent

Terms in this page

• Kiosk — a fullscreen, touch-screen runtime that turns askTheodor into a public receptionist; a paid add-on (€50/month per live kiosk).
• Worker / persona — the AI character chosen to greet visitors; see Workers.
• Multilingual — able to detect and reply in the visitor’s own language.
• Gemini Live — a real-time, full-duplex spoken-voice mode (requires a Gemini provider key; billed per minute).
• Full-duplex voice — a live voice mode where both sides can speak and be heard at once, like a phone call.
• 3D presenter — an optional lip-synced 3D avatar that visually “speaks” the worker’s replies.
• PIN exit / idle reset — lockdown controls that require a code to leave kiosk mode and clear the screen after a period of inactivity.
• Thin client — a lightweight remote screen that connects back to your main install to do the actual work.
• Tunnel — the secure connection a remote kiosk uses to reach your main install; see Fleet & Sync.
• Provider — the company supplying the AI model/voice (here, Google for Gemini Live).