Ask Prodgator
Ask questions about your data and about Prodgator itself. Data answers are looked up with your own permissions; product answers come from these docs.
Availability
Open it from the Assistant item in the sidebar (under Insights), which shows it full screen at with your earlier conversations beside it. Press Ctrl+I (Cmd+I on macOS) to open it as a side panel next to the page you are on, and press it again to close it. You ask questions such as "what failed on main today?" or "which deployments are waiting for approval?". The answer is written while you watch, with the runs, deployments or findings it was based on shown as links under it.
Side panel and full screen
The side panel keeps the page usable: it is not a dialog, and the page moves over to make room. Use the list button in its header to switch conversations, the plus button to start a new one, the expand button to open the same conversation full screen, and the X to close it. On screens narrower than 1024 px the panel floats over the right edge of the page instead, and Esc closes it. Under 768 px the Assistant always opens full screen.
Drag the panel's left edge, or focus it and use the arrow keys, to change its width between 320 and 720 px. The width is remembered in your profile. On a narrow window the panel may be narrower than you chose, and when the sidebar is expanded it can switch to its icon rail to leave the page enough room.
Rename, delete and stop
In the conversation list, use a conversation's menu to rename it (Enter saves, Esc cancels) or delete it. A deleted conversation cannot be restored.
While an answer is being written, the send button becomes a stop button. Esc in the message box does the same. What had been written stays in the conversation, marked as stopped. A message stopped before the model started costs nothing; one stopped after that is charged like a finished message.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+I (Cmd+I on macOS) | Opens the side panel, or closes it when focus is inside it. When it is open elsewhere on the page, moves focus to the message box |
| Enter | Sends the message |
| Shift+Enter | Adds a new line |
| Esc | In the message box while an answer is being written, stops it. Otherwise leaves the panel for the page (and closes a floating panel) |
| Ctrl+Shift+O (Cmd+Shift+O on macOS) | Starts a new conversation, while the Assistant is open |
| F6 / Shift+F6 | Switches focus between the page and the side panel, while the side panel is open (not on phones) |
How an answer is found
The model does not see your data up front. It answers by calling read-only lookups against Prodgator's own data, the same reads the app makes, and it answers from what those lookups returned or from these docs pages. It says when neither answers the question.
| Lookup | What it reads | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| List and get runs | Pipeline runs with status, branch, duration, the names of failing jobs and the failure explanation headline | Pipeline monitoring |
| List and get deployments | Deployments with status, environment, approvals, the policy evaluation and the release risk headline | Release tracking |
| List and get security alerts | GitHub security alerts; the description of a detected secret is never included | Security alerts |
| Metrics | Counts, rates and averages over runs, deployments, findings, approvals and notifications, the same catalog as dashboard widgets | Pipeline monitoring |
| Search and read the docs | These docs pages | Nothing beyond Ask |
| Earlier AI answers | A stored failure explanation, release risk summary or security triage; never starts a new one | The feature's plan entry |
Every lookup runs with your own role and your organization's plan as they were when you sent the message, so Ask cannot show you anything you could not open yourself. Lookup results are passed to the model as data: a commit message or finding description that reads like an instruction is ignored, and links in an answer are shown only when they point to a page or record it looked up.
Using this page
When you ask from a page in Prodgator, your message can carry a short description of that page, so "why did this fail?" on a run means that run. A chip above the message box names the page, for example "Using this page: Pipelines". In full screen it names the page you came from.
- It is off until you turn it on: the chip reads "Not sharing this page" while it is off.
- Click the chip to see exactly what would be sent with your next message.
- The switch in that view, "Share the page I am on", turns it off or on for every message. The choice is saved to your profile.
- The X next to the chip leaves the page out of your next message only.
- It is a per-person setting and does not affect anyone else in the organization.
What is sent is the page name and path, the filters in the address bar, the items you have open or selected, and a short summary of what the page has already loaded (for example the runs in the list you are looking at). Settings, your profile and the Admin Console never send anything. See AI data and privacy for the full list.
The page is only a hint about what you are looking at. It does not change what Ask can read: every answer still comes from lookups made with your own role and plan, and an id in the page description does not give access to anything.
Questions about Prodgator
Ask also answers how-to and product questions such as "how do I set up approvals for a gate?". It searches these docs and links the pages it used under the answer. When it writes an example policy, the example is not compiled or checked; use Draft with AI in the policy editor for a policy that is compiled. When the docs do not cover something, or a feature is not available, Ask says so instead of guessing.
Requesting a feature
When you ask for something Prodgator does not do, such as an integration or a policy capability that is not there, Ask says so and may show a card with a button to request it. The card names the closest feature, or "Something else", and holds a one-sentence summary you can edit.
- Requesting is free and costs no AI credits.
- Nothing is sent until you press Send request. Not now closes the card and sends nothing.
- A request stores the summary you see, your organization's name and plan, and your user id. Nothing from the conversation or the page is attached. See AI data and privacy.
- You can ask once per feature. If you already did, the card shows the date instead.
- You can send up to 10 requests a day.
You can also request a feature without using Ask: open the Help menu in the top bar and choose Request a feature. It is on every plan and for every role, including plans without Ask Prodgator.
What Ask cannot do
Ask only reads. It cannot approve, reject or re-run anything, dismiss a finding, change a policy or a setting, or send anything outside Prodgator. When you ask for such a change, it tells you where in Prodgator to do it.
Answers come from your data or these docs but can be wrong. Check the sources before acting on one.
Conversations and limits
- Conversations are private to you. Nobody else in the organization can open them, and you can delete one at any time. They are kept for 30 days.
- A message is at most 2,000 characters, a conversation holds 20 questions (start a new one after that), and you can send 30 messages per hour.
- One answer makes at most 8 lookups.
- A message that only used the docs costs 1 AI credit. A message that looked up your data costs 1 credit plus 1 per data lookup, at most 3.
- Answers follow your own language setting, not the organization's AI output language.