Hi,
I’ll try to give you simple answers and share links with you that might help.
Am I correct in understanding that shortcode is necessary for content aware to work?
It’s not if you use both Set as Default Parameters and Inject Default Chatbot (and that you checked the Content Aware checkbox). Note that Content Aware is only handled in the Pro Version. It is also only “aware” of the current page, not the entire website.
The chatbot is awesome, but the fine tuning does not seem to be working, yet.
Fine-tuning is another thing entirely. My article/tutorial about the subject is very important to read: https://meowapps.com/wordpress-chatbot-finetuned-model-ai/.
If Content Aware is good enough for you, nice! It’s simple and easy. If you want to go further, then it will be fine-tuning instead (I say instead because those two features don’t work together, not really, or that would increase exponentially the number of difficulties).
I would also like to style the chatbot a little.
Here are some answer: https://meowapps.com/ai-engine/faq/#position-and-styling. You’ll need to apply your own CSS.
I hope it helps a bit 🙂 Have a nice week-end.