Docs · Chat
The tool strip
The line of small words that runs under a reply while it works, and what each one means it is doing.
While a reply is being made, a strip of short phrases says what it is doing right now
Each phrase is one tool the assistant has reached for: Searching the web, Calculating, Working in Rhino. The strip is there so that a long reply is never a blank wait, and so that when a run goes somewhere you did not expect, you can see at which step. When none of the named tools fits, the strip says Working. In a collection, Show their working in Room settings turns the strip on and off for the agents.
Finding things out
Searching the web and Reading page: a search, then a page it opens to read in full. Searching materials looks up a metal, a stone or a finish. Calculating does the arithmetic, weights and prices included, rather than estimating them in prose.
Judging and pricing
Applying professional judgement is the assistant writing a considered assessment of a piece, the kind a senior designer would give, rather than a quick reply. Checking pricing reads the price list before it quotes a figure.
Reading what you gave it
Tracing the shape reads the outline of a piece from a picture. Reading template takes a document you keep as a pattern. Browsing projects and Reading project look through a project's chats and files when you asked about something that lives there.
On your computer
Checking your computer, Working in Rhino, Working in Illustrator, Looking at your screen: Bench at work on your own machine. Each of these asked you first, once, for this task, or always; What Bench can reach has the rules.
Waiting on you
Asking you means the run has stopped for an answer: a choice between directions, a permission, a missing fact. It holds until you reply. Changing your mind says how to steer or stop from there.
Questions
The strip
It says Searching the web on a question I thought it knew.
It checks when a fact could have changed: a price, a supplier, a date. The search is charged as a search, on the reply; if you want it to answer from what it knows, say so, or turn Search the web off under the chat box for that message.
The strip stopped on one phrase for a long time.
A step on your computer, a big page, a long calculation. If it says Asking you, it is waiting for you. If nothing moves and nothing is asked, stop the run and ask again; a run that broke is not charged.
More in this chapter
- Replies: copy, edit, try again, versionsWhat the small buttons under every message do, and how a chat keeps more than one version of an answer.
- MemoryWhat the assistant remembers between chats, where to read it, and how to pause it or wipe it.
- VoiceSpeaking instead of typing, having a reply read aloud, and the two rows in Settings that shape both.
- CapabilitiesThe switches that say what the assistant may use: memory, your old chats, its tools, and your computer.