Setup assistants

A setup assistant sits in your own portal, where your customers are signed in. They tell it what they want ("a booking form for the hall, with a deposit") and it sets it up in their account, in your system. It asks for anything it needs, shows exactly what it will change, and changes it only when the customer presses Approve.

Nothing goes to you for approval first. The customer is the one who approves, and only for their own account.

How it stays safe#

• Only the actions you choose. You connect your API and switch on what it may use. It can't call anything else.
• The customer's own access. Your portal gives it a short-lived key for that customer only, so it can never do more than the customer could by clicking. We never store that key, and the AI never sees it.
• Changes wait for Approve. Actions are reads (looking things up) or changes. Reads run when needed. Changes are only proposed: the customer sees each step and presses Approve or Not now. Only GET endpoints can be reads.
• No passwords or payment details in chat. When something needs them, such as a payment gateway, it sends the customer to the right page of your portal instead.
• A full record. Every conversation, read, proposal and result is on the Conversations tab.

The list#

Settings › Setup assistants lists your assistants in a table. The label at the top says None yet, how many are live, or Off when none is live.

The ⋯ menu at the end of a line has Open, Switch on or Switch off, and Delete…. Switch on is greyed out until the assistant is ready.

Set one up#

1. 1

   Go to Settings › Setup assistants and click New setup assistant. In the pop-up, give it a Name your customers will see (for example Form helper) and click Create assistant. It opens on the Connect tab.

2. 2

   On Connect, enter your API address under Your API and click Save. Then paste your API description (OpenAPI or Swagger, as JSON or YAML) under Your API description and click Read it. It says how many actions it read. Each endpoint becomes an action, switched off.

3. 3

   On Actions, switch on the ones it may use. Click Edit to describe each in plain words, and for changes, how a step reads to the customer (for example "Add the field {label}").

4. 4

   On Instructions, say what it's for and what to suggest when it can't help, choose the AI model, and click Save.

5. 5

   On Install, copy the code under Add it to your portal into your portal. Choose the Claude API key. Create the signing secret under Who the customer is. Add your portal's address and the pages it may link to under Where it runs, and click Save.

6. 6

   Click Switch on at the top of the page.

Until everything is in place, the top of the page shows Not ready and a list headed Before customers can use it:. Switch on stays greyed out until the list is empty. The list can say:

• Connect your API: add its address
• Choose at least one action it may use
• Create the signing secret your portal uses to say who the customer is
• Add the portal address it runs on
• Choose a Claude API key

The tabs#

Connect#

Delete assistant…, at the bottom left, removes the assistant, its actions and its conversations. Nothing it set up in your system is undone. This can't be undone.

Actions#

A table of every action from your API description:

Edit opens a pop-up:

• What it does: plain words the assistant reads to decide when to use it.
• Kind: only for GET endpoints. Reads: runs when needed, or Changes: needs the customer's Approve. Other endpoints are always changes.
• How a step reads to the customer: only for changes. It's shown on the Approve card. Put a value's name in curly brackets, for example "Add the field {label}".

Click Save in the pop-up to keep your changes.

Instructions#

Click Save to keep both.

Install#

Click Save to keep the addresses and links.

Conversations#

A table of every conversation, newest first. Conversation is the customer's first message. Then come the Customer, how many Messages and proposals, and the Last message. A red A change failed label marks conversations where an approved change didn't work.

Click a conversation to read it in a pop-up. You see the customer's messages, the assistant's replies with what it read, and every proposal with its steps and status:

Switch it off#

Click Switch off at the top of the page, or in the ⋯ menu in the list, and confirm. It disappears from your portal straight away. Nothing it set up is undone.

What your developers add#

Your portal's server needs to provide two things for the signed-in customer:

We recommend changes go to a draft first, with a preview, so customers can check before anything goes live.