Coze is ByteDance’s platform for building AI agents: chatbots and assistants that answer questions, call tools and run workflows, built with little or no code. It exists in two separate versions: Coze (扣子) at coze.cn for mainland China, and coze.com for international users, each with its own accounts, models and publishing channels.
What Coze does
Coze turns a large language model into an agent that follows instructions, uses your data and connects to other services. Its building blocks are:
Visual agent building
Users assemble an agent in a visual editor: they write its instructions, pick a model, and add components, without programming. A school can build a question-and-answer assistant for students; a brand can build a product advisor for its customers.
Plugins and workflows
Plugins connect the agent to outside services such as news, travel, maps or office tools. Workflows chain several steps together. For example, a travel planner can call a map service such as AMap for routes, a weather service for the forecast, and return a complete itinerary.
Knowledge bases and memory
A knowledge base stores the documents, tables and images the agent should use in its answers, such as a product catalog or an internal FAQ. Memory lets the agent remember a user’s preferences across conversations.
Text, images and voice
Depending on the models and plugins chosen, agents can read and write text, process images and work with voice, for example turning an article into a spoken summary.
coze.cn and coze.com: two different platforms
The two versions share a name and an editor, but they are separate services:
- coze.cn (扣子) serves mainland China. It uses models available in China, including ByteDance’s own, and publishes agents to Chinese channels such as Douyin, Feishu and WeChat.
- coze.com serves users outside China, with international models and channels such as Slack, Discord or Telegram.
An agent built on coze.com does not move to coze.cn by itself, and the reverse is also true. A company that serves Chinese customers should build on coze.cn; a team that serves international customers, on coze.com. ByteDance has also released an open-source version of the Coze builder that developers can host themselves.
Who uses Coze and for what
Coze is used by professional developers, by business users with no coding background, and by everyone in between. Common uses:
- Customer service: an agent on a WeChat Official Account or a website answers frequent questions, checks orders and hands complex cases to a person.
- Shopping assistance: e-commerce brands build product advisors that recommend items and answer order questions.
- Education: schools and training companies build teaching assistants, course advisors and language practice partners.
- Personal productivity: individuals build assistants for travel planning, research or writing.
What a foreign company can do with Coze
For a foreign company operating in China, coze.cn is a fast way to test an AI agent before investing in custom development:
- Publish to social platforms: deploy an agent on Chinese channels where your customers already are, such as WeChat or Douyin, to answer questions automatically.
- Connect business systems: through the Coze API and SDK, an agent can read from and write to an ERP or a CRM, for example to look up an order or log a customer request. This is where Coze meets our CRM and business intelligence solutions.
- Build stand-alone tools: an internal search assistant, a translation helper or a sales training bot. Our own AI Sales Coach shows what a dedicated sales training tool looks like.
Before you start, check who owns the account: coze.cn accounts are tied to a Chinese phone number, so the account should belong to your China entity, not to one employee. The coze.cn interface is in Chinese.
How Coze compares with other Chinese AI platforms
Coze does not compete directly with model makers. Baidu AI, Tencent Hunyuan and DeepSeek provide models and APIs; Coze is the layer where you assemble an agent on top of a model and publish it to users. Its strength is speed: a working agent in hours, connected to ByteDance’s channels.
How QPSoftware can help
QPSoftware is a Shanghai digital agency that has delivered websites, apps and business software for international companies since 2009. As a CRM and BI agency in China, we help you decide when a Coze agent is enough, connect it to your CRM and reporting tools, and move to a custom integration when your needs outgrow a no-code platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between coze.cn and coze.com?
They are two separate platforms from ByteDance. coze.cn, also called 扣子, serves mainland China, with models available in China and Chinese publishing channels such as Douyin, Feishu and WeChat. coze.com serves international users, with international models and channels. Accounts, agents and data do not move between the two, so choose the version that matches where your customers are.
Can a foreign company use Coze in China?
Yes, through coze.cn, which requires an account linked to a Chinese phone number. Publishing an agent to a WeChat Official Account or a Douyin account also requires access to that account, which a foreign company usually holds through its China entity or a local partner. Teams without a presence in China can start on coze.com, but it does not reach Chinese channels.
Do you need coding skills to use Coze?
No. Agents are built in a visual editor: you write instructions, add a knowledge base, choose plugins and link steps in a workflow. Coding helps for advanced cases, such as calling your own systems through the API, writing custom plugins, or hosting the open-source version on your own servers.