Ask AI

Ask AI is Phonely’s in-product assistant. It opens in the app side panel and works alongside the page you are using. Use Ask AI to ask product questions, investigate agent or call behavior, navigate to the right place, and help with supported agent configuration. Its available information and actions depend on the current page, agent, selection, your access, and the capabilities available there.

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Open Ask AI

Ask AI has several entry points:

• On Home, enter a request under What can Phonely do for you?
• On other supported pages, use the Ask AI input in the top app bar.
• Press Command-/ on macOS or Ctrl-/ on Windows to open or close Ask AI.
• Press Command-K or Ctrl-K to search Phonely first. If search does not provide the answer, send the request to Ask AI.

The top-bar input also shows navigation and agent results, recent Ask AI chats, and an attachment control when open.

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Give Ask AI a clear task

Good requests state the outcome and relevant scope:

• “Explain the difference between guidelines and the knowledge base.”
• “Open the flow for this agent.”
• “Can you look into this call in detail?”
• “Why did these selected calls end without an outcome?”
• “Add a fallback path when the appointment lookup returns no result.”
• “Update the selected guideline section to keep responses concise.”

If a request could apply to several agents, flows, or calls, name the intended scope. Ask for evidence or the relevant documentation when a product answer needs verification.

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Investigate a call in detail

From Call Details, select Ask AI to open a new chat focused on that call. After a Test Call, Improve with AI provides a similar handoff so you can explain what you observed and ask Ask AI to investigate. For a detailed call investigation, Ask AI can bring together the transcript, path through the flow, captured variables, block-level events, and available runtime events. This is useful when the visible call summary shows the result but not enough evidence to explain why it happened, or when manually correlating events would be difficult. Start with a request such as “Can you look into this call in detail?” Then add the symptom you observed, expected behavior, or question you want answered. Review the cited evidence and current flow configuration before making a change; some call evidence may be unavailable or incomplete.

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Understand page context

Ask AI follows your navigation context. Depending on the current surface, that context can include the current agent, active flow, selected guideline section, or selected calls. This is why requests such as “explain this flow” or “review these calls” can work without repeating every identifier. The conversation can continue as you navigate, while the page context updates to the new surface. Check the current page and selection before using an implicit reference such as “this” or “these.”

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Continue or start a chat

Opening Ask AI without a new request continues the active conversation. Use New chat when you want a clean context for an unrelated task. Most page or block requests continue an empty conversation or one whose latest request was about the same agent. If the conversation was about another agent, Phonely starts a new one. Call Details investigations, Performance board setup, and A/B test result explanations start a new conversation. Typing directly in the open panel continues the conversation on screen, so check the current agent and page before referring to “this” or “these.” Use Chat history to restore a recent Ask AI session. Removing a chat hides it from that history. Recent chats can also appear in the open top-bar input. Separate conversations run independently. In Chat history, each session shows whether Ask AI is still working on it or needs your attention, so you can start a new task without waiting for another to finish.

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Send a follow-up while Ask AI is responding

You do not have to wait for Ask AI to finish before you add to the conversation. Send another message while a response is still running and Ask AI steers the active response toward your new message instead of holding it in a queue. The current turn stops, and Ask AI continues with the latest context you provided. Use the Stop control on the send button if you only want to halt the current response without sending a new message. You can keep working in the conversation while a flow proposal is open for review; a follow-up request does not force you to resolve the proposal first.

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Reference a flow block

When a flow is open, you can point Ask AI at an exact block instead of describing it. Type @ in either the top-bar Ask AI input or the Ask AI side-panel composer, then pick a block from the list or keep typing to match one by name. Use the arrow keys and Enter to choose a result with the keyboard; Escape dismisses the list. You can also open an editable block’s More options menu and select Ask AI about this block when that action is available. Ask AI opens with the block reference in the composer. Add your question or instruction, then send it. The reference stays in place while you write, edit, or continue the conversation, and asks Ask AI to re-read that block before it acts. Block references only work while their flow is open. If you reference a block and then leave its flow, open the flow again or remove the reference before sending.

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Add supporting material

You can attach one supported audio recording, document, or CSV file to a request. Ask AI reads a CSV’s contents, so you can hand it data such as a zip-code-to-region mapping. Wait for the file to finish processing before sending, and explain what you want Ask AI to do with it. Attachments supplement the current page context; they do not change which agents or organization data you are allowed to access.

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Report an Ask AI issue

Open More Ask AI options and select Report Ask AI issue to report the current conversation. To report a specific response, point to it and select the bug icon beneath it. Phonely includes the relevant conversation diagnostics to help investigate the issue. If you are asked to share identifiers separately, select Copy diagnostic details from More Ask AI options. See Report Issues and Ideas for attachment limits, included context, and guidance on writing a useful report.

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Choose how flow changes are applied

When Ask AI can edit the selected flow, a mode selector next to the composer lets you choose how its changes reach the draft:

• Review is the default. Ask AI prepares a proposal for you to check and apply.
• Auto apply writes changes authorized by your request or approved plan directly to the draft.

Auto apply retains planning, scope, and validation safeguards. Ask AI verifies the applied draft; test the affected paths before using it with callers. A focused block request stays limited to that block. The selector appears only for a writable flow on the agent or campaign surface, and only when you have permission to edit that agent’s flows. It is not available while viewing a historical version. When Auto apply writes a change, the conversation shows a receipt of what was applied and the affected blocks are briefly highlighted on the canvas so you can check or clear them.

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Review changes before relying on them

In Review mode, check the proposal before applying it:

1. State the intended caller or business outcome.
2. Review the proposed flow on the canvas. Added, removed, and changed blocks are highlighted; select a block to inspect its proposed settings.
3. For a focused proposal started from a block’s Generate with AI strip, inspect the highlighted fields and select Apply changes. If you reject an individual change, the proposal returns to per-change review: accept or reject the changes, then select Submit changes. Other flow proposals use this per-change review directly. The draft does not change until you apply or submit the proposal.
4. Check the affected configuration and test the important paths before relying on the result with callers.

In Review mode, accepted flow changes are applied together to the current draft. If the draft changes before you submit, the proposal can become outdated and must be prepared again. In Auto apply mode, Ask AI writes the approved changes to the draft for you. In either mode, draft auto-save does not publish the changes. On Performance, Ask AI can propose changes to cards, views, and saved metrics or filters. Those proposals have their own review and apply actions; see Edit Performance with Ask AI.

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Keep notes for an agent

With an agent open, ask Ask AI to save useful business context, decisions, or follow-up work as notes. Those notes persist across Ask AI conversations for that agent. For example, ask “Save our appointment rules for this agent” or “Find the decisions we made about callbacks.” Ask AI can list, search, read, edit, move, archive, and restore notes. Writing or changing them requires edit access to the agent. Saves do not require a separate confirmation step; check Ask AI’s reported result when you ask it to save something. The agent’s standing brief, /BRIEF.md, holds concise context used in its Ask AI turns when available. It is limited to 16 KiB. Other notes are read when needed rather than loaded into every turn. Archiving a note hides it from normal listing and search until restored. These are Ask AI notes. Saving them does not publish information to the voice agent’s knowledge base or change its guidelines. Use the relevant configuration tools when callers need the information.

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Test a draft conversation with Ask AI

Ask AI to test an inbound draft when you want evidence that one caller scenario follows the intended path. Describe the caller, the behavior you expect, and any exact result that matters. Ask AI runs a text-only conversation starting from a Talk, Collect, or Ask Exactly block and returns a transcript, the blocks visited, captured variables, and the result of its checks. Each run covers one caller case and one path, with up to six requirements checked individually. Results distinguish requirements you stated from ones Ask AI inferred. An inferred mismatch is an observation to discuss, not a reason by itself to change the flow. When time allows, a mismatch or a successful repair-verification result is rerun once. Check whether the result reproduced, varied between runs, or could not be confirmed before treating one test as proof. Include the caller’s number or a local call start time in the agent’s timezone when the scenario depends on them. Supply representative values for data the path needs before it can collect them. Simulated values must match their declared types; call-derived values should be supplied through the test’s call context rather than replaced with arbitrary variable mocks. Actions outside the deterministic test boundary, including Code blocks and connected integrations, are represented by visible assumptions instead of being executed. Check those assumptions in the result before relying on the outcome. If the test setup is incomplete or invalid, correct it before concluding that the flow is defective. Use conversation tests to check an inbound draft’s conversational and routing behavior. They do not test a published version, outbound flow, phone or audio behavior, a live integration, or every branch. Run separate cases for other important paths, and use Test Call for voice, chat, and published-version checks.

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Ask AI and Test Call

Test Call is a separate tool that shares the app side panel with Ask AI. It appears when the current page has an agent to test; it is not available on Home or other pages without agent context. Use the main Test agent action for Web Call in Talk mode. Use the chat icon on the right side of the same button for Web Chat in Chat mode. When started from the Flow Editor, Web Call and Web Chat test the selected flow’s current draft. Use the Draft / Live control in the Test Call panel to switch between the latest draft and the published version; switching restarts the test. If a flow has never been published, its draft is used as the fallback. Place Phone Call for an outbound flow uses the published version, falling back to the draft only when the flow has never been published. See Test and Publish for the recommended release process and Test from a selected block when you need to isolate part of a complex draft.

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Ask AI and documentation

Ask AI can retrieve Phonely documentation for general product knowledge. When an answer depends on an agent, organization, call, or current selection, it can use the live context and capabilities available on that surface instead. Documentation explains the product generally; your current Phonely configuration remains the source of truth for your setup.