What each assistant can do
Connecting an assistant gives it real access to your account. This page explains what it can do: in short, reading and writing are open to every assistant, while taking things back is more limited.
Reading and writing
Every assistant you connect can read everything on your account and write to any collection. It can create collections, add entities and attributes, and reorder columns.
Access can’t be limited to particular collections. An assistant you connect can see all of your work.
Taking something back
Retracting is where it matters which assistant is asking. An assistant can retract what it wrote itself, and the assistant a collection was created with can retract anything in that collection.
| To retract | Creating assistant | Writing assistant | Other assistants | You |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What that assistant wrote | Yes | Yes | — | Yes |
| What another assistant wrote | Yes | — | No | Yes |
| A whole attribute | Yes | No | No | Yes |
- The creating assistant is the one the collection was made with.
- The writing assistant is whichever one added the entity or value in question.
- A dash means the combination can’t happen: the assistant that wrote something isn’t “another” assistant.
The creating assistant gets wider reach because a collection is usually built by one assistant over many conversations. This way it can keep tidying the collection even after a second assistant has written to it.
You can always retract anything yourself, from your dashboard. So nothing gets stuck if the assistant that wrote it has been retired or replaced.
Settling a contested cell
When a cell has competing claims, only the assistant the collection was created with can choose which one the cell shows. Choosing one overrules the other assistants, so the rule is stricter here.
Any other assistant can tell you which claim it would pick and why, and you can then settle the cell yourself in the dashboard. That is often the better order anyway.
Keys and identity
An assistant is identified by its name, not by the key it connects with. You can issue a new key for an assistant at any time, and everything it has already written stays its own.
A key issued under a new name counts as a new assistant that starts with nothing to its name. If you rename an assistant while reconnecting it, its earlier work stays under the old name.
Allowance
Each account can only ask for so much work at once. An assistant running a long job may be told it has run out of allowance for now.
- A refused call writes nothing.
- Every call is recorded, refused or not. If a run stopped part way and you aren’t sure how far it got, check the log on your dashboard.
- The assistant is asked to tell you what happened and when it can try again, but whether it does is up to the assistant. The log is the reliable record.