# Components

### Triggers for an extended telling

* User questions
  * How does one meditate?
  * How do I do that?
* User requests
  * Tell me a story
  * Tell me all the things you can do
  * Tell me about your vacation
* Bot proposals
  * Would you like to hear some healthy sleep tips?

### Extended telling sequence

* Bot gives the first part of the telling
  * Good message design here will reduce cues to turn transition at utterance end (lots of intonational cues, avoid sequence-ending moves e.g. gratitude, summation, etc…), making it clear bot plans to continue.<br>
* User provides cues to the next step (skipping the option for these user cues can speed things up but also feel like railroading to the user; it can also overwhelm e.g with a ton of chat bubbles from the bot all at once).
  * Cued to continue (“hm mm”, “yeah”, “go on”, “continue”) → loop with more tellings. Note: if the user does nothing during bot pausing for cue, normally this is taken as cue to continue.
  * Cued to stop the telling (“I’m bored”, “can we do something else?”) → exit
  * Cued for repair → trigger repair (see example below)
* Aborting the story

`A: Tell me a story`

`B: Once upon a time, there was…`

`A: {{pause}}`

`B: And then the hero…`

`A: This is boring`

`B: Shall I stop?`

`A: Yes`

`B: Okay`

### Closing cues for an extended telling

* Ask for questions: “Do you have any questions about what I just shared?”
* Summation: “And that’s a short introduction to how square-breathing works.”
* Gratitude: “Thank you for your attention.”
* Well-wishing: “I hope things improve for you soon.”
* Offer to repeat: “Would you like to hear this again?”
* Restatement of the reason for the extended telling (“And that’s a practice that you can use anytime you’re feeling stressed.”).

## Examples

* Training: a walkthrough or how-to, e.g. for how to meditate
* Education: deeper content sharing, e.g. guidance for how to get healthy sleep
* Story, e.g. giving the origin story of the bot
* Quotation, e.g. reciting a lengthy poem or quotation


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.opendialog.ai/opendialog-platform/conversation-designer/conversation-design/conversational-patterns/extended-telling/components.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.