Primeros pasos
The assistant
Ask the assistant to find, start, check and manage apps in your own words. It asks you to confirm every change before it happens.
Aún sin traducir. Por ahora esta página solo está en inglés.
En esta página
The assistant is a chat inside your dashboard. Tell it what you need in your own words, like "I need a photo backup for my family" or "why did my app stop?", and it finds apps, starts them, checks how they're doing and explains what went wrong.
It never changes anything on its own. Before it starts, stops, updates or removes anything, it shows a confirmation card in the chat, and only your click runs it.
Where to find it
Ask Setup in the corner of every dashboard page opens it. In the simple view, the home page also shows the chat right under "What do you need?", and Ask about this on an app opens it with that app in mind. Recent conversations brings back earlier chats in the same workspace. More in Simple and detailed view.
What it can do
| You ask it to | What it does | Asks you first |
|---|---|---|
| Suggest an app | Searches the catalog by what you need and recommends one | No |
| Explain an app | Says what it does, what it needs and which outside services it uses | No |
| Read a link | Reads a repository, Space or docs page and works out how to run it | Only if the link didn't come from you |
| Start an app | Starts it as a one-hour trial or as a kept app | Yes |
| Check on your apps | Lists them, or tells you if one is running and responding, how much trial time is left, whether an update is ready and when the last backup ran | No |
| Explain a problem | Reads recent jobs, failed checks and up to 60 log lines, then explains the cause and the next step | No |
| Change an app | Stops, starts, restarts, backs up, restores, keeps, updates or removes it | Yes |
| Help with outside services | Explains what an app needs outside Setup, such as email sending, the ways to set it up and what they may cost | No |
| Clean up leftovers | Finds things in your connected accounts that belong to no app, and removes one when you ask | Only for removing |
It also answers questions about Setup itself, such as safety, prices and self-hosting. When its knowledge doesn't cover something, it says it doesn't know.
Confirmations before every change
When the assistant wants to change something, it shows a card with the app's name, what will happen and a button that says exactly that: Start the trial, Restart it, Update it, Remove the app. Not now cancels.
Two changes can't be undone, so they need a ticked box as well:
- Restore replaces the app's data with a backup (the latest one, unless you name another). You tick "I understand that changes since the backup will be lost."
- Remove deletes the app and everything stored in it. You tick "I understand the app and its data will be deleted for good."
Removing a leftover at an outside service works the same way.
If you write a new message instead of answering a card, the card counts as declined and nothing happens. If you decline, the assistant accepts it and doesn't ask again for the same change.
Languages
The assistant answers in the language of your latest message. If that isn't clear, it uses the interface language (English, German or Spanish), which you set under My account (/dashboard/account).
How it talks depends on your answer to "How familiar are you with technology?". With "Not at all" it uses everyday words and avoids terms like runner, container or logs. With "A lot" it is short and technical. You can change the answer under Dashboard and assistant in the settings.
The model behind it
Setup doesn't host language models, and the assistant is no exception. It uses a hosted model through OpenRouter. Unless the server is set up differently, that model is anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5.
Each workspace can bring its own OpenRouter key, so its usage is billed to the workspace instead of the Setup server:
- Create a key at openrouter.ai under Keys.
- Open the workspace's Settings in the sidebar and its AI tab: /dashboard/settings/assistant for your personal workspace.
- In Assistant AI key, paste it into OpenRouter API key and press Save key.
Only owners and admins of a team can change its key. Setup stores the key encrypted and never shows it again, only its last four characters. Remove key goes back to the server's key.
Without any key, the assistant says "The assistant isn't set up on this server". Everything else keeps working with the buttons on each page, and admins see Turn on the assistant.
What it can't do
- Change app settings. Automatic updates, backup schedules, how many backups to keep, status pages and app names are set in the app's Settings tab.
- Edit recipes or choose a runner. Use the detailed view for both.
- Manage the workspace. It can't add runners, invite members, create API keys or change billing.
- Take account keys. For a connected account it gives you a link to the Connections page, where you paste the key yourself. It never asks for keys in the chat.
- Look inside your apps. It sees status, checks and log lines, not the files or data an app stores.
- Work in another workspace. It acts only in the workspace you're in.
It also has limits: 8 messages a minute and 60 an hour per person, and 4,000 characters per message.
Privacy of conversations
- Conversations are saved on the Setup server, linked to you and to the workspace. Recent conversations shows your last 20. Other members of a team, owners and admins included, can't open them.
- To answer, the assistant sends the recent part of the conversation (up to 60 messages) and the results of its lookups to the model through OpenRouter. OpenRouter's terms and those of the model provider apply to what they receive.
- There is no button yet to delete a single conversation. Deleting your account deletes your conversations, and deleting a team workspace deletes the conversations in it.
For developers
The assistant and the MCP server share one agent layer with the same validation and workspace rules as the REST API. Its tools run as the signed-in user, limited to the conversation's workspace, never with admin rights.
Only the system prompt and your own messages count as instructions. READMEs, logs and error messages reach the model as marked untrusted data, and a link found in them needs your confirmation before the assistant reads it. Confirmations use the AI SDK's tool approval: the model can only request a change, and approval requests are signed, so a forged "approved" runs nothing. To connect your own agent, see MCP and API keys.