### Answer Yes, you need to publish a new version when making changes to a live Retell chatbot. [(1) ]() When you publish a chat agent, it publishes the latest version and creates a new draft version for further edits. Here's how the workflow works: - Published version is what's live and serving users [(2) ]() - Draft version (

is_published: false

) is where you make your changes - Once you're ready, you publish again to make your draft changes live [(1) ]() For Conversation Flow agents specifically, when you publish: - The published version snapshots any shared Components as local copies to protect production behavior [(3) ]() - Your draft stays linked to shared Components so you can keep iterating - Publish again when you want to promote the latest changes to production You can update your draft chat agent using the Update Chat Agent API endpoint before publishing:

javascript
import Retell from 'retell-sdk';
const client = new Retell({
  apiKey: 'YOUR_RETELL_API_KEY',
}) ;
const chatAgentResponse = await client.chatAgent.update('16b980523634a6dc504898cda492e939') ;
console.log(chatAgentResponse.agent_id) ;

[(4) ]() Then publish when ready:

javascript
import Retell from 'retell-sdk';
const client = new Retell({
  apiKey: 'YOUR_RETELL_API_KEY',
}) ;
await client.chatAgent.publish('16b980523634a6dc504898cda492e939') ;

[(1) ]()

​ To learn more, see the sources I considered: [[1] Publish Chat Agent](https://docs.retellai.com/api-references/publish-chat-agent) [[2] Get Chat Agent Versions](https://docs.retellai.com/api-references/get-chat-agent-versions) [[3] Components](https://docs.retellai.com/build/conversation-flow/components) [[4] Update Chat Agent](https://docs.retellai.com/api-references/update-chat-agent) ​

Feel free to tag @AI Evy with additional questions. I also appreciate feedback, it helps me improve.