Smart Assistant

The Smart Assistant is a natural-language assistant that turns a single prompt into a complete, working ControlBird configuration. Instead of clicking through builders by hand, you describe what you want, "Create a status card for my pump", "Provision a Modbus thermostat", "Why is this entity in an error state?", and the assistant generates the configuration, installs extensions, or walks the entity tree to diagnose the problem. It can author rule chains, configure dashboards, provision devices, and run troubleshooting diagnostics.

What the Assistant Can Do

The assistant converts intent into action through a set of built-in tools. Its core capabilities fall into a few groups:

• Configuration generation, single-prompt recipes that assemble complete configurations from a plain-language description.
• Rule chain authoring, accepts a graph definition, validates it, and feeds validation errors back to itself to fix.
• Dashboard cards, creates button, toggle, slider, gauge, entity-state, and chart cards interactively.
• Device provisioning, builds controller → endpoint → mapper → value chains through the device-manager.
• Visual builders, configures faceplates, schematics, and models, including attaching interaction handlers.
• Extension lifecycle, browses the catalog and installs extensions behind an approval gate.
• Diagnostics, walks entity health chains, resolves error fields, queries service status and logs, and analyzes historian data.
• Image-to-configuration, accepts an uploaded drawing or sketch and converts it into configuration.

Configuring a Provider

Before sending prompts, configure at least one model provider through the provider settings dialog. ControlBird supports multiple model backends, each with its own credentials, model, and generation parameters.

Provider settings

A Refresh models action re-fetches the list of models available from the selected provider.

The Conversation Workflow

A typical session follows the same lifecycle from open to completion:

1. Open the Smart Assistant app. It loads the provider list and your existing sessions.
2. Configure a provider (provider, API key, model, optional system prompt).
3. Create or select a session.
4. Type a prompt (optionally with attached images) and press Enter.
5. The assistant interprets your request and carries out the necessary actions in sequence, collecting results along the way.
6. If an action needs approval, the assistant raises an approval request and the session enters a waiting-for-approval state.
7. The response streams in live as the UI updates, and the final message is added to the session history.
8. On completion the session returns to idle, or to an error state with the message surfaced as an error banner.

The Assistant's Tools

The assistant draws on a range of tools covering configuration generation, rule-chain authoring, dashboard cards, device provisioning, visual builders, extension lifecycle, and diagnostics. The most relevant tools for a given conversation are made available as it progresses, so the assistant always has the capabilities it needs for the task at hand.

Rule chain authoring

The assistant can author rule chains from a description, validate them, and correct any validation errors it finds. Rule chains authored by the assistant are runnable immediately, the same as those you build by hand in the Rule Chain Editor.

Approval Workflow

Operations that change your configuration are approval-gated. When one is requested, the assistant pauses and raises an approval request with a risk explanation. The session waits until you approve or reject the request before the operation runs.

Working With Images

You can attach a PNG or JPG to a prompt by pasting or dragging it into the input, and the assistant uses it along with your text. This powers the From Drawing workflow: sketch a layout and let the assistant convert it into a configuration.

Sessions

Sessions are durable, so you can create multiple sessions, rename them, and delete old ones. Selecting a session reloads its message history and resumes live streaming. Each session retains a recent window of messages, and inactive sessions are cleaned up automatically after a period of inactivity.

The Smart Assistant App

The interface opens to an empty state with suggested prompts that steer you toward common tasks, including Status Card, Gauge Display, Faceplate, Schematic, and From Drawing. The sidebar collapses on small screens with a tappable backdrop and touch-optimized targets.

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