Using your dealer AI assistant
Ask the built-in AI about your inventory, leads, deals, and customers. It answers from your live data and cites its sources.
Your AI assistant is built into the dashboard. Ask it anything about your dealership in plain English. It looks up your real data, answers in a sentence or two, and shows you exactly where the answer came from.
Open the assistant
You can reach the same conversation three ways. Pick whichever fits the moment.
- Quick popup: click the AI button (the sparkle icon) at the top right of any dashboard page. A chat panel opens in the bottom-right corner and stays put as you move between pages.
- AI Home: choose AI Home under Overview in the left sidebar.
- Expand from the popup: click the expand icon in the popup header (its tooltip reads "Open in full window") to open AI Home full-screen at
/ai.
The popup and AI Home open the same active conversation. Your threads are saved to your account, so you can start a question in the popup, continue on AI Home, and return after a refresh or days later. AI Home also lets you open your other saved conversations.
Ask a question
Just type what you want to know and press Send.
- Type your question in the box, e.g. "What Hondas are in stock under $20k?"
- Press Send. You'll see that the assistant is working; the completed answer appears after its tool work and safety checks finish.
- Ask a follow-up. The assistant remembers the conversation, so "only the ones with under 60k miles?" works without repeating yourself.
Things you can ask:
- Inventory: "How many SUVs do we have available?", "Show me anything in recon with over 100k miles."
- The big picture: "How are we doing this month?" (pulls sales + inventory + leads in one answer).
- Leads: "Which leads are unassigned and from the website?"
- Customers: "Tell me about Jane Doe." (gives you her deals, leads, open tasks, and any in-house loan in one shot).
- Deals & tasks: "What deals are pending?", "What's due today?"
- Activity ("who did what"): "Who sold the last deal?", "When did someone last log in?", "What has Sam been working on?" It reads your activity log. ⚠️ Owners can ask about anyone on the team; everyone else only ever sees their own activity.
- How things are set up: "What's our doc fee?", "Who's on the team?", "What plan are we on?", "How are new leads assigned?" It reads a summary of the Settings page and tells you where to change it; it never changes a setting itself. Marketplaces is for owners and managers only, like the page. It never sees passwords, feed links or card numbers.
- Your imports: "Did the auction file go in?", "What failed in yesterday's import?", "Is anything stuck in review?" It reads the Imports page: which batches went in, which are waiting in review with nothing imported yet, and which rows or photos had a problem. It never imports, fixes or retries anything itself; that stays on the Imports page.
- Product how-to: "How do I set up syndication?" It reads the help docs and points you to the right screen.
AI Home shows a short row of suggested prompts under the message box. The suggestions adapt to what needs attention at your dealership; choose one to send it, or type your own question. In the popup, just start typing.
How answers work
A few things make the assistant trustworthy:
- Live data, no guessing. It searches your actual records before answering, so it won't invent vehicles, prices, or counts. If there are no results, it tells you plainly.
- Sources. Under most answers you'll see a Sources card listing each vehicle, customer, deal, or lead it used. Click any one to open that record.
- Page awareness. Ask "tell me about the vehicle I was just looking at" and it knows, because it sees the records you recently clicked through.
- Your data only. It can only see your dealership's data. There's no cross-dealer comparison.
Attach an image or PDF
The assistant can read files you attach, like a window sticker, a title scan, or a batch of photos of a car you just bought.
- Click the paperclip icon next to the message box.
- Pick photos or PDFs: up to 25 files, 25 MB each. Each one uploads as soon as you pick it; a spinner shows until it's ready.
- Add a note like "pull the VIN and specs off this sticker" and press Send. Send waits until every file has finished uploading.
A few things to know:
- Files are kept for 14 days. A file you send is stored, so the assistant can still work with it a few messages later. One nobody files onto a car, a deal, a customer or a lead is deleted after 14 days.
- Many photos are shown to the assistant small. With more than six photos in one message, the assistant sees each one at a smaller size and opens any one at full size when it needs the detail, like a VIN plate.
- It reads each photo first. Before it answers, the assistant reads what each photo is (a title, a VIN label, an odometer, a receipt, your dealer license) and what it says. A VIN it reads is checked against the VIN's own check digit; one that fails is treated as a misread, and it asks for a clearer photo or the typed VIN.
- Many photos, one card. Send up to 25 photos of a car in one message. The assistant asks what they are for (auction, transport, recon, or ready to publish) and, if no photo shows the VIN, which car they are. Answer in your next message and one card adds them all to that car: private and tagged with the stage, or on the website and tagged Complete when they are ready to publish. Undo on the card takes them all off again, so you can put them on another car instead.
- A new car from its photos. Send the photos of a car you just bought, with one showing the VIN (the door-jamb label or the plate at the windshield). The assistant checks that no car in inventory has that VIN, asks what you paid and where you bought it, and one card adds the car, decoded from the VIN, with all its photos, the VIN label and odometer shots included. Nothing is added until you approve.
- Dealership papers go in your files. Send your renewed dealer license, a sales tax return or a new insurance policy: the assistant reads the number and dates and offers to file it in Settings, Dealer info, where the expiry reminders go by it. Owners and managers approve it. Ask "when does our dealer license expire?" any time.
- A license photo fills in a customer. Send a photo of the front of a customer's driver's license and ask to add them (or to update someone already on file). One card shows the photo next to the name, date of birth, license number, state, expiry and address it read, all editable, and files the photo as a license copy on the customer. You approve it in the dashboard, not on Telegram, where it shows masked. It fills in the record; it is not the identity check, which stays yours.
- Point your phone's camera at it. On a phone, the camera button beside Attach opens the camera straight away. Each photo you take is added to your message, up to 25.
- A title finds its car. Send a photo of a title, a registration or a bill of sale: the assistant reads the VIN, finds that car in your inventory, and offers to file it on the car's documents. If no car has that VIN, it says so and asks what to do.
- It asks before it guesses. For photos of a car, it asks what they're for (auction photos, transport, recon, or ready to publish) unless you said, and which car they belong to when none of them shows a VIN. Only ready-to-publish photos go on your website.
- Nothing is filed until you approve. A photo or document goes onto a record only when you approve its card. Photos added to a car never carry the phone's location.
- iPhone HEIC files are converted to JPEG by your phone when you pick them from Photos. A HEIC sent as a file can't be read; save it as a JPEG first.
Have the assistant do things
Beyond answering, the assistant can prepare changes for you: start a deal, mark a car sold, assign a lead, create a task, write a vehicle description, record an in-house loan payment, and more.
Every change starts as a reviewable proposal. In Ask first mode, the assistant waits for you. If the dealership owner has enabled Autopilot for an eligible routine action, the application may try that proposal automatically after the reply finishes and the final safety, role, and permission checks pass.
- Ask it to do something, e.g. "Mark A100 sold" or "Assign the Jane Doe lead to me."
- A proposal card appears under the reply with the details filled in.
- If it is marked Needs approval, review it and edit any field you want to change.
- Click Approve to apply a manual proposal, or Reject to dismiss it. In web chat, when the reply contains exactly one proposal, you can also reply "yes" or "no"; the browser binds that reply to the exact card. Telegram typed text never authorizes a proposal. Autopilot-eligible cards are attempted only after the final checks and update with their outcome.
For a card marked Needs approval, nothing has changed yet. Money, irreversible, communication, background-job, schedule, and support actions always remain manual, except a templated email, which may go out on its own at Run it or when the owner picks it under Fine-tune. Review money actions like a buy-here-pay-here payment especially carefully, because approval books real money on the loan.
An Applied card has a confirmed result. A Needs review card means execution may have started but the result could not be confirmed. It is locked to prevent a duplicate. Choose Reload status, then inspect the affected record and activity trail before taking another action.
Actions are gated by your role. Owners and managers can do anything; sales reps work inventory, leads, customers, deals, tasks, and title paperwork; accounting works customer records, tasks, title paperwork, loan and deal payments, and vehicle costs, but not the rest of inventory or the sales pipeline. If you can't do something in the app, the assistant won't even offer to do it for you, and it re-checks your role again at the moment you approve.
Controls while it's working
- Stop this response: while the assistant is working, the Send button becomes Stop. Click it to stop the live display. The answer still finishes and saves in the background, so a reload shows it in full.
- Regenerate: under the latest completed answer, click Regenerate for a fresh take on the same question. It is not available for proactive messages or replies with an action card, because those approval records must remain intact.
- Edit: hover your last completed message and click Edit to reword it and resend. Like Regenerate, it stays hidden when the reply contains an action card or arrived proactively.
- New conversation: click New conversation in the panel header to start a clean thread. Your old messages stay in your audit log. They're just cleared from view.
Turn the assistant off everywhere
The Stop control above only stops the live display for one response. An owner or manager can turn the dealership's assistant off everywhere under Settings → AI assistant.
Turning it off blocks new chats, new approvals, background work, scheduled runs, proactive AI messages, Telegram replies, and the public storefront salesperson. It keeps your instructions, memories, Autopilot choices, and schedules. A response or action already underway may still finish, and a message or payment already sent cannot be recalled.
The settings card shows how many background jobs were cancelled, how many schedules were suspended, and whether any cleanup step needs attention. Turning the assistant back on restores schedules that were running before the stop. A schedule you paused yourself stays paused, and cancelled background jobs do not restart automatically.
Pressing either control again is safe. Another Stop keeps the original record of who stopped the assistant and when, but repairs any leftover active jobs or schedule suspension. Another Resume repairs schedule state without reviving cancelled jobs. The page reports the on/off state that was actually saved even if activity logging or the storefront refresh has a problem; in that case, it tells you that the public chat may take a few more minutes to update.
FAQ
Is the popup a different chat from the full page?
No. They share one saved conversation tied to your account. Open either one and you'll see the same history.
Will the assistant change something without asking me?
Only if the dealership owner deliberately enabled Autopilot for that eligible routine action. Every write still begins as a proposal, and the application rechecks the current policy, your role, feature access, action risk, proposal values, and injection safeguards before trying it. Anything ineligible or blocked stays on a Needs approval card.
Why does the assistant say it can't do something I asked?
Actions are limited to what your role allows in the app. For example, a sales rep can't record an in-house loan payment. That's reserved for managers and accounting, so ask an owner or manager to handle it.
What are the "Sources" under an answer?
They're the exact records the assistant used to answer: vehicles, customers, deals, or leads. Click any source to open that record. This is how you verify an answer instead of taking it on faith.
Can it compare us to other dealers?
No. The assistant only has access to your dealership's data.
Does the AI on my public website show prices it shouldn't?
That's a separate assistant. The one on your storefront answers shoppers and is locked down, so it never reveals your costs, customer personal info, deals, or documents. The dealer assistant covered here is for your team and sees your operational data.
Where do I manage saved preferences and memories?
Go to Settings → AI assistant. If you tell the assistant to "remember" something about how you work, it prepares a proposal; you approve it unless the owner has pre-authorized that routine action in Autopilot. You can review or remove saved memories there.