Enhancing education with AI-powered chat

A leading aromatherapy educator approached Kirschbaum with a challenge: students in their certification programs needed a faster, clearer way to research essential oils, safety guidance, and recipes using their extensive catalog of in-depth articles, chemical component reports, and third-party materials.

The client envisioned a conversational reference tool where students could ask questions in plain language – for instance, “Which oils contain linalool?”, “Can I diffuse this around pets?”, or “What’s a good blend for sleep?” – and receive accurate, cited answers grounded in their existing educational content.

Kirschbaum partnered with their team to bring that vision to life.

The Challenge

With content spread across multiple publishing systems, the solution needed to:

1. Pull from an extensive list of company articles plus third-party content
2. Cite and link back to original sources for every answer
3. Support questions about chemical components, safety warnings, and usage scenarios
4. Provide recipe-style “cocktail” guidance for specific use cases
5. Work as an embedded feature inside a paid platform
6. Stay accurate, trustworthy, and easy to use

As safety is a key part of aromatherapy education, the tool also needed to enforce contextual guardrails for topics like use around children, pets, or special health conditions.

Our approach

Kirschbaum began with a tightly-scoped proof of concept. Using OpenAI models and a vector database, we ingested and indexed the client’s article library, splitting content into meaningful chunks so the AI could reference specifics rather than general summaries.

To expand its knowledge, we also integrated with a partner’s external blog system and enabled ongoing ingestion of new material. We built a Laravel-based backend to handle:

• Vector search and article retrieval
• AI querying and response shaping
• Article synchronization
• Embeddable delivery into the client’s platform

Citations are attached to every AI-produced answer before it's returned to the user. This requirement introduced a unique constraint: because the response can’t be finalized until citations are attached, the system cannot stream AI responses in real time. Instead, it assembles and enriches the final answer, then delivers it in one polished message.

The Solution

The result is a clean, conversational AI agent chatbot that allows students to:

• Ask natural-language questions about oils, chemistry, or safety
• Explore chemical components
• Generate recipe “cocktails” for practical use cases
• Click through verifiable citations to original content

Behind the scenes, Laravel performs the heavy lifting, but the system is designed to remain flexible and portable, allowing the client to reuse the core service across future platforms if needed.

This new AI-powered reference tool transforms how students interact with aromatherapy content. Instead of digging through dozens of articles, they can now:

• Research faster
• Trust the information they receive
• Connect concepts across sources
• Stay safe and informed