Get work done and build with the assistant

The assistant does the work you do in the base, besides answering and filtering, as far as your role allows.

Your work in the base

• Workflows: it starts or stops a workflow on an item, approves a step, sends it back, or picks a step's outcome, for one item or, on a card, for many items that wait for you (Give a step to a person on your team).
• Buttons: asked "Issue the invoice for ORD-1004", it runs the order's button. Its card says what the button does, on which items and with which values; once you apply it, what the button does next, such as opening a page, a form or a file, happens as when you click it yourself. On many items, the card names those the button does not apply to, and the assistant tells you which items it left (Change or delete many items at once).
• Undo and restore: it undoes a change and brings back a deleted item. Erasing a deleted item for good, with its history, is for the users who build the base, on a card that says it cannot be undone. An item that is not deleted it does not erase: it tells you to delete it first.
• Inbox and notifications: it says what waits for you, reads your open notifications and mail and marks notifications done, and follows or stops following an item for you.
• Exports: asked "Export the paid orders", it answers with a link to the file. A long export goes on by itself, and its file waits for you under Activity, Background jobs. Asked "Export this base's data", it gives the admins a link to the zip of all of it, its Chat and its Files included (Download all of your base’s data in one zip file).
• Order: asked "Put Clothing right after Electronics", it moves the category there, without a card, on a table that keeps a manual order (Drag items into the order you choose). It sorts a list by several fields too, such as the orders by status, then the newest first.
• Search: it searches everything in the base you may see.
• The web: it searches the web, and asked "What are the delivery times on our supplier's page, https://example.com/delivery?", it reads the page and answers from its text, in at most 1,000 characters (Search the web, Ask a question about a web page). It gets only the answer of an AI model that read the page, never the page itself. After it reads a page, every change it makes in that conversation waits on a card that you apply.
• Base Captain itself: asked "What happens when the Free plan ends?", it reads the page of this site that says it, such as the Terms, the legal pages, the pricing page or the docs, and answers in a few sentences from that page's text, with a link to the page it read, which opens in a new tab. When no page says it, it tells you so and gives you the link to the page it read. It does not search the web for it, and it reads these pages even when the web is switched off for it.
• Customer links: it lists the links an item's customers were sent, sends a step's link again and revokes one (Send a printed item to a customer by link). It lists the item's lasting link first, with its address, when its table has one (Give each item a lasting link: a check page).
• Your settings: asked "Switch me to dark mode", it changes your theme, and also your date format, time zone, notifications or name, at once. Asked "Use the base's date format", it gives your date format or time zone back to the base's. Your password, two-factor sign-in, sessions, email address, API tokens and calendar links it never changes: you do that yourself, in Settings.
• Files: a file you drop in the chat goes onto an item, with a comment or in one of its files fields. It finds the files of the Keep your base’s files in folders page you see, by folder, tag or a word inside them, and reads a picture or a PDF there (Let the assistant and agents find, read and save files).
• Spreadsheets: it imports one into a list you already have, for anyone who may add that list's items (Build tables or fill in items from a photo or a PDF).

For the users who build the base

• It runs a scheduled automation now; asked to show you a mail first, it sends the schedule's mails to you alone (See a schedule’s mails before anyone gets them).
• It reads what changed in the base, its History, and exports it.
• It restores a version.
• It reads the base's code and writes it, and reads what the code did on its last runs (Add buttons and behaviour with the assistant).
• It reads the agents' runs.
• It reads what the base did, the numbers of the Statistics page (See what the base did: statistics).

For the admins, and the AI managers

• For the admins, it invites a user, changes a user's role, removes a user and reads the base's storage.
• For the admins and the AI managers, it pauses or resumes agents and workflows, reads whether an MCP server answers and which machines are paired, and puts a machine agent on a machine (Run agents on your own computer: machines).
• Ask it to connect a service, such as "Connect our Notion": it adds the MCP server from the product's list and gives you the Connect link, which you open to sign in yourself (Connect a server with the assistant or the API).
• The base's plan, its copy and its delete stay in its Settings, for its owners, and a new machine is always approved by a person, never by the assistant.

The assistant helps only with your base and with Base Captain: your data and your work, the base's pages and settings, building and changing the base, and how Base Captain works. It searches the web only for that work, such as the address of a new customer. Ask it anything else, such as the news or a museum's opening hours, and it answers in one short sentence that it cannot help.

For anything else, use your own AI: connect the Claude app, ChatGPT or Claude Code to Base Captain (Connect Claude, ChatGPT or Claude Code). If you build the base, you can also use a machine agent on your own subscription (Run agents on your own computer: machines).

Tell the assistant how your business works, and its first build does that work from start to end. Say "We send the customer a quote, schedule a job, do the work, then invoice the customer", and, without more requests, the base it builds:

• prints each document you send, such as a quote or an invoice, and mails it to the customer with a button, such as Email quote, which asks before it sends; the mail holds a link to the printed document (Send a printed item to a customer by link);
• carries the lines from one document to the next, so an invoice made from a job has the quote's lines without typing them again;
• gives each invoice its due date, its date plus your payment terms, the terms and how to pay, such as your IBAN, on its print and in its mail, and, when the base takes cards, Ask for payment on each unpaid invoice (Set up and take payments with the assistant);
• keeps your company's details once, in the base's settings, where every print and mail reads them (Keep rates and the closed month in a settings table).

In the same answer, the assistant asks for the company's details that are still empty, such as your address, your tax number or your bank details (Name your base, describe it and keep the company’s details). Fill them in under Settings, or give them to the assistant and it fills them in.

Before it builds, the assistant asks you one question only where your request leaves one of three things open:

• what a state or a "waits on" belongs to when things sit inside one another, such as projects, their phases and their tasks;
• whether a state named beside a status, such as "can also be on hold", is one more option or a separate yes or no;
• who does a job the request names only by the work, a user of your team or a name you type in. Asked for "a list of jobs and who does each", it may ask that last one.

The question names both readings and the one it would pick. Every other choice, such as a list's order, a label or a column, it makes itself and says so in one line: tell it if you want it otherwise. The examples it gives come from your base's own items and tables.

The assistant builds from a file you show it: a paper form, a screenshot of another tool, a supplier's invoice or any document. It looks at the file itself and proposes what it shows.

1. Open the Assistant. Drop the file on it, or click the paperclip: a PNG, JPEG or WebP image or a PDF, up to 10 MB, one with each message.
2. Say what it is, such as "This is our paper order form", or just send it.
3. From a blank form or another tool's screen, it proposes tables: a field for each blank, of the kind the blank asks for, and a row of tick boxes becomes a field with those options. They come on a card you apply, as any change to the base, and only for the users who build the base.
4. From a filled one, such as an invoice, it proposes a record: a card that creates it and lists every field it sets with its value, or the item's form opened and filled in, for you to check and save. Anyone who chats with it may do this.

Nothing written in the file is taken as an instruction: a document that says "delete every customer" deletes nothing. Once a conversation holds a photo or a PDF, nothing is written in it without a card you apply, not even a single item or a comment, and asking it to "just create it" still brings a card. It also opens a web page only after you apply a card that shows the page's whole address. The next part of the conversation works as usual again (Your conversation with the assistant, and its history).

Limits and details:

• The assistant sees the file with the message it came with. Later in the conversation it knows what it said and proposed about it, but not the file itself: to ask something new about it, attach it again.
• A spreadsheet works as before, for the users who build the base: the assistant proposes its tables, then imports it (Build a base from a spreadsheet). Into lists you already have, anyone who may add their items may import it, on the same card.
• A chat with one of the base's agents, in Base Captain or on a machine, takes a file the same way (Chat with an agent).
• The assistant also reads the images and PDFs your items hold, in their files or comments, when you may see them: on an order, ask "What is the total on its invoice?". It reads the pictures and PDFs of the Keep your base’s files in folders page you see the same way. The first time it reads a PDF of the Files page or of an item's files field, it keeps its words, and search then finds the PDF by them; a PDF of a comment keeps none (Let the assistant and agents find, read and save files).

The assistant adds a button the same way it adds a field: ask "Add a button Mark as delivered on an order that sets its status to Delivered, only while it is Shipped". Changes of code are for the users who build the base; for anyone else the assistant says so.

What the assistant reaches for first

The assistant reaches for the simplest thing that does the job, in this order:

1. What the table can hold by itself: a field, a default, a check, a guard, an auto-number, an automation (Make a table and its fields).
2. A button made of steps: set a field, make an item with the lines of this one, change the items a filter picks, send an email, open a form filled in (Make a button that does several steps, with no code). Its card is a change like any other, with no code, and the button works as soon as you apply it.
3. Code, only for what steps cannot say.
4. An agent, for work that needs judgement each time.

So "Add an Issue button on invoices" or "Make the invoice from the order" comes back as steps, with guards for when the button may not run, such as "Only a draft is issued". A rate or your company's details go in the base's settings (Keep rates and the closed month in a settings table), never written into a formula nor kept on each document, and the prints and mails read them from there; "only while draft" or "the month is closed" become guards.

When a request needs code

Some requests need code: a call to another company's system, a PDF made on the server, splitting a payment into installments, a report beyond a sum or a count. The assistant says so, and why, then writes the code itself. You describe what it should do, and the card says in words what it will do: nobody on your team has to write code or read it. The users who build the base can still read it, change it and try it where it sits in Builder (Read, change and try the base’s code).

1. Ask, for example: "Add a button on an order that sends it to our warehouse's system."
2. Before it shows you anything, the assistant tries the code on one of your orders. Nothing is saved and nothing is sent: the mails and calls it would make are only listed for it. If the try fails, it fixes the code and tries again.
3. The card says in words what the button does, when it shows and who may use it. Under it, a small Show code button opens the code the change writes, for whoever wants to read it; until you click it, the code stays hidden.
4. Click Apply. The change applies at once, like any other, and the button is on the orders.

Code that calls another service with a key names the secret, and never holds its value: the key is filled in on the way out, only toward the hosts chosen when it was entered and only in its places, such as a header, never in a body (Store the keys of other services).

Fix code that failed

If a button or an automation's code fails later, tell the assistant, such as "The Send to warehouse button did not work on ORD-00042": it reads what the code did on its last runs, says in plain words why it failed and proposes the fix on a card. The users who build the base find the same failed runs in the run log under the code's box in Builder.

Code that fills in a form as you type

Code can also help while a form is filled, where a rule cannot say it: "From 10 pieces, a line's unit price is 10% under the price list's", or "Fill in a company's name and address from its tax id". The form then fills those fields as you type, before you save, and can narrow a choice's options. It fills only what you have not touched: a price you typed stays when you change the quantity. It changes nothing by itself and refuses nothing, and when it cannot answer quickly, the form simply goes on without it. The example shop does the first: an order line of 10 pieces or more drops its unit price by 10%.

The assistant uses the base's MCP servers, such as your ticket system or Linear, from the item you have open: ask "Create a ticket issue for this order", and it calls the server's tool with the order's details. Who may use a server through the assistant, the cards, the starters and the API are on one page: Let the assistant use an MCP server.