The AI Assistant
Monofile's AI assistant reads and writes the same files you do, runs as a background task you can close the tab on, and every change it makes is reviewable and revertable.
Where you find it
| Surface | How to open it |
|---|---|
| Any workspace page (web) | The sparkle launcher at the bottom right, the AI Chat item in the sidebar, or Cmd+J (Ctrl+J on Windows and Linux) |
| The home screen | The composer in the middle of the page, which starts a conversation straight away |
| The desktop app | The same floating panel and the same Cmd+J shortcut |
| Inside a document | Cmd+K opens the inline composer, a different and much simpler surface. See The Inline Composer |
The panel is not modal. You can keep writing, switch files and browse while the assistant works, and its edits show up as diffs in the editor as it goes.
The two modes
The mode selector sits in the composer footer and applies to the conversation you are in.
| Mode | Label in the UI | What it can do |
|---|---|---|
| Read-only | Read | Explore, read, search, look things up on the web. It cannot create, change or delete anything |
| Read and write | Write+Read | Everything above, plus creating and editing files, diagrams and boards, versioning actions and share links |
Start in Read when you want an answer about your workspace. Switch to Write+Read when you want work done.
What it can reach
The assistant works inside one workspace, either your personal files or the team workspace the conversation was started in. It never sees another person's private files, and it has no access to your computer.
| Kind of ability | What that means in practice |
|---|---|
| Explore your files | List, read and search your workspace, including shell-style commands such as ls, cat, grep and find |
| Search by meaning | Semantic search across your own files, not just keyword matching |
| Write | Create and edit files, with every change captured as a version |
| Draw and diagram | Turn a description into an editable .draw diagram, or build and rearrange .canvas boards |
| History | List a file's versions, read an old version, take a named checkpoint, restore a file, undo a whole run |
| Share | Create, check and revoke a private share link for a single file |
| Research | Live web search, plus GitHub and Wikipedia lookups |
It cannot publish anything to the community, vote, comment, follow people, or touch files outside the workspace the conversation belongs to. Those live on the public API instead.
How a message runs
Each message you send starts one durable task. It keeps running if you close the tab, you can stop it at any point, and a few destructive actions pause and ask you first. The three pages that follow cover those in order: Long-Running Tasks, Reviewing Changes and Approvals.
Next steps
Long-Running TasksDurable runs that survive reloads and closed tabs, and how to watch or stop them.
Reviewing ChangesThe diff view and the changeset card: keep or revert everything an agent touched.
ApprovalsWhy some actions pause for approval, and how to answer them.
Context and MentionsMention files, attach images and PDFs, and control what the assistant sees.
AI Credits and UsageHow AI usage is metered, the effort presets, and where to see spend.
The Inline ComposerGenerate or rewrite text in place with the editor composer.
Driving the AssistantHand the built-in assistant a task over the API, watch it stream, and stop it.