AI Chat

Working draft — Ask and Build in one article, with the full set of things the AI can actually do in Tabidoo: what it knows about your app, what it can build, what it can change in your data, and what still needs the UI.

How to access it

Click the AI icon in the top-left corner of the interface to open the chat window, then type your request.

What AI Chat knows about you and your application

Before it answers or changes anything, AI Chat reads the context you are in. That is what makes its answers specific to your application instead of generic advice.

Location - which application, table, or record you currently have open.
Structure - all your tables, fields, field types, and the relationships between them.
Access - your role and permissions, so its suggestions fit what you are allowed to do.
Know-how - Tabidoo's own documentation and recommended patterns for common needs.

It can also read what is already set up in your application - the formulas on your calculated fields, the highlighting rules on your tables, the modules and extensions you use, even the form scripts behind your tables - so you can ask what an existing setup does, not only build new things.

In practice this means you rarely need to spell out where something belongs: "add a Status field to this table" or "how many open tasks do I have" both work without naming the application by hand.

Start a new application from a description

Describe what you need to run, and AI Chat can create the whole application in one step - tables, fields, the relationships between them, the modules that group them in the menu, and the extensions the application needs - rather than one piece at a time. It also picks an icon and colour for the application so it looks finished.

Create a fleet management application with drivers, vehicles, and trip tracking.

It knows sensible starting points for common domains and adapts them to what you describe: invoicing, CRM, project management, task management, and marketing.

You can keep iterating in the same conversation - add a table you forgot, rename a field, connect two tables you built separately - instead of starting over. If your application is multi-language, it can fill in table, field, and option names in the languages you use.

Build and change your application structure

Tables

Create, rename, describe, reorder, and delete tables, including their icon. A table you deleted can be restored - just ask AI Chat to bring it back.

Fields - every type Tabidoo offers

AI Chat can create and configure any field type in Tabidoo:

Text - single-line text; required, maximum length, default value.
Long text - formatted rich text, optionally on its own tab in the record detail.
Markdown - markdown-formatted text.
Number, Decimal - whole or decimal numbers; minimum, maximum, decimal places, thousands separator.
Money - amounts, shown to two decimal places by default.
Money with currency - an amount plus its currency (CZK, USD, EUR and others), for use with the Exchange Rates extension.
Percentage - percentage values.
Date, Date and time - dates and timestamps, with a default such as today's date.
Checkbox - a single yes/no switch.
Checklist - a to-do style list of items to tick off, one or several lists in a single field.
Dropdown, Radio, Multi-select - a fixed set of options, each with its own icon, colour, and badge.
Tags - free-form chips typed in by the user.
URL link - a web link with its own label.
File, Picture - one or several attachments per record.
Chat - a message thread on the record, optionally real-time, with or without message deletion.
System fields - filled in by Tabidoo automatically: created by, created on, last modified by, modified on, record version, GDPR hash. Ideal for an audit trail.
Calculated - a value computed by a formula.
Link to another table - a relationship to records in another table.
Button, + Custom - created as empty placeholders; you add the script or HTML yourself in the UI.

How fields behave and where they appear

Beyond the type, AI Chat can set up the whole form layout for you:

Validation and defaults - required, minimum and maximum value, maximum length, default value (including today's date).
Visibility - whether a field shows in the grid, in the edit form, or on its own tab (useful for attachments, long text, chat, and checklists).
Form tabs - group related fields into tabs in the record detail, so a long form stays readable.
Field width - how wide a field is in the form, on a 12-column grid (half width, third width, and so on).
Record title - which field is used as the record's name wherever it is referenced.
Import key - which field uniquely identifies a record, used for imports and for create-or-update operations.
Order - the order of fields on the form and in the grid.

Options with stickers

For dropdown, radio, and multi-select fields, AI Chat does not just add the option texts - it can style each option with an icon, a colour from your theme palette, and a badge, so statuses and priorities read at a glance in the grid. Ask for "Paid, Pending, Cancelled with matching icons and colours" and you get exactly that.

Relationships between tables

AI Chat can create all four kinds of link and set up both sides of it:

Many-to-one - the most common one; each record points to a single record in another table, picked from a lookup on the form (a communication belongs to one contact).
One-to-many - the same link seen from the parent; the parent's form shows a sub-table of its children, which you can add and edit right there.
Many-to-many - both sides can link to many records (projects and employees).
One-to-one - a unique pairing; the same record cannot be linked twice.

On top of the link itself, it can:

Pull columns from the linked table onto this side, so you see the customer's phone number directly in the Orders grid.
Aggregate linked records - a count of them, or the sum, average, minimum, maximum, or a listed-out text of one of their columns (total amount of all order items, latest trip date).
Make linked columns available to reports and scripts, so they can be used in reports, workflows, form scripts, and formulas.
Link records to users when the Users and roles extension is installed - for example an owner or assignee field.

Calculated fields

A calculated field's value is worked out by a formula on the server every time the record is saved. AI Chat writes the formula for you from a plain description.

Formulas can:

do arithmetic and rounding - price times quantity, amount plus VAT, round up or down, minimum, maximum, average, absolute value, percentage of a total;
work with text - join values together, upper, lower and proper case, first or last characters, length, replace, turn text into a number;
work with dates - add days, months or years, difference between two dates in days or hours, extract the year, month, day, hour, weekday or ISO week, and format a date;
read values from the same record, columns from a linked record (the customer's hourly rate), aggregations over linked records (the number of order items, the sum of their amounts), and the current user.

Formulas are a single expression for a single record, so they cannot read other records or tables, run multi-step logic, or call anything outside Tabidoo - that belongs in a workflow or a form script.

When a calculated field recalculates: a calculated field is recalculated when a record is created or saved, and once for all existing records right after its formula is set. It does not update on its own as time passes, or when a linked record changes. So a field like "days until deadline" will not count down by itself - it needs a scheduled workflow that re-saves the records.

Conditional formatting

AI Chat can add rules that highlight your data when a condition is met - colouring a whole row or just a single cell, with a meaning (success, warning, danger) rendered either as coloured text or a filled background that follows your theme.

Conditions can combine several criteria with AND/OR and nested groups, and can look at columns from a linked record.
Dates can be relative - today, today+7, today-3 - so "due within a week" keeps working without maintenance.
A rule can single out records that belong to the person looking at them.
The rule belongs to the table, so it applies everywhere the table is shown - grid, calendar, and Gantt.

Highlight tasks in red when the deadline has passed and the status isn't Done.

Modules, extensions and appearance

Modules group tables in the menu. AI Chat can create them with a colour from your palette and either an icon or a short letter abbreviation, and one table can sit in more than one module.

Extensions can be installed or removed on request: Workflow Automation, Users and roles, Data Audit, Reporting system, Custom Data Source, Scripting Extensions, Snapshots, System log, Exchange Rates, GDPR report templates, and Links to documents.

Appearance - the application's icon and colour, table icons, and module icons and colours are all things you can simply ask for.

Work with your data

Adding, changing and deleting records

One record or many at once - dictate a single new contact, or import a whole batch in one request.
Create or update by key - using the table's import key, existing records are updated and missing ones created, which is what you want when re-loading a list you already have.
Delete by condition - "remove test records from last month". It is worth asking for the count first, since deleted records cannot be recovered.
Errors are reported per record - in a batch, one bad row does not stop the rest, and you are told which rows failed and why.
Audit log - changes are recorded in the record's history as usual; AI Chat can skip that if you explicitly ask.

Attachments, checklists and links

Upload files and pictures to a record, and clear an attachment field.
Fill in checklists - the items and which of them are ticked.
Attach and detach linked records - add three employees to a project, or clear the customer on an order.

Finding records

Ask in words and AI Chat translates it into a proper query. It can search full-text across a table, ignore diacritics (so "Novak" finds "Novák"), combine conditions with AND/OR and nested groups, and filter on columns from linked tables. Beyond the usual comparisons - contains, starts with, empty, greater than, in a list of values - two conditions are worth knowing about:

Duplicates - find records whose value appears more than once, which is the quickest way to clean up a table.
Mine - find the records that belong to the person asking, without naming yourself.

Reports and analysis

AI Chat can answer questions about your data instead of just fetching rows:

Counts of records matching a condition.
Totals, averages, minimums and maximums over a whole column.
Grouped results - by a field, or by the year, month, week or day of a date field ("revenue by month", "hours by status").
Columns joined in from linked tables, so a report on Orders can show the customer's region.

One thing to keep in mind: in a grouped report the conditions apply to the main table, not to the joined ones.

Show me total revenue by month for paid orders.
Which customers have a duplicate email address?

Scripting and development help

AI Chat knows the typed model of your application, so it can draft TypeScript for form scripts, workflows and custom logic that matches your real tables and fields, including form validation and error handling. It can also read the scripts already on your tables and explain what they do.

What it cannot do is save that code for you: you paste the result into the field in the Tabidoo UI. We recommend reviewing and testing generated code before using it in production.

What AI Chat can't do yet

Some things still need to be done by hand in the Tabidoo interface:

Views, saved filters, and kanban or grid layout settings - these cannot be created or changed from chat at all.
Saving scripts - form scripts and the code behind Button and Free HTML fields are drafted by AI Chat but pasted in by you. Those two field types are created as empty placeholders.
Workflow Automation scenarios and role or permission management - AI Chat can install the extensions and explain how to set them up, but dedicated support for building the scenarios and roles themselves is being prepared.
Changing the owner of an existing application - ownership is set when the application is created.
Previewing a change before it happens - there is no dry run, so changes take effect as soon as you confirm them.

Before you ask for a big change

Some actions can't be reversed

Deleting an application is immediate and permanent.
Deleting a table can be undone afterwards - just ask.
Deleting records cannot be undone - there is no recycle bin for data.

Updating several existing records? Say what stays the same

When you ask to update many existing records at once, mention only the fields that should change and say the rest stays as it is - for example "only change the status, leave everything else as is". A field that is not part of your instructions may otherwise be cleared instead of left alone.

Three more things that make results more reliable

Be specific. Name the exact table, field, or record you mean - a vague request is more likely to touch more of your application than you intended.
Split very large builds into a few requests. As a rough guide, applications stay easiest to work with up to about 20 tables and 50 fields per table, and building in a couple of steps makes it easier to check the result as you go.
Rename internal field names early, or not at all. A field's internal name is what scripts, integrations and formulas refer to, so renaming it later breaks anything that used the old name.

Large data operations also count towards the API limits of your plan, so a very big import may be processed in batches. Usage of AI itself is covered by credits - see AI Credits & Usage.

More example prompts

Building

Create a fleet management application with drivers, vehicles, and trip tracking.
Group my Invoices, Customers, and Payments tables into a module called Billing.

Structure

Add a Projects table with Name, Client, Deadline, and Status fields, linked to my existing Clients table.
Add a VAT rate field as a percentage and a calculated field for the amount including VAT.
Show the total of all order items on the order, and the number of items in the grid.
Put the address fields on their own tab and make the note field full width.

Data

Add a new customer named John Smith with email john@example.com.
Assign all unassigned tasks with a deadline this week to me, and leave everything else as is.

Analysis

How many open tasks do I have, grouped by project?
Show me total revenue by month for paid orders.

Interface components

Message input area
Mode selector - building a new application from a description, or asking about and changing the one you are in
Agent selection - a fast model for quick questions, a thinking model for more complex requests (see AI models)
Conversation history

Getting the best results

AI Chat already has your application's context, so short requests work. What improves accuracy is naming things exactly - the table, the fields, the conditions - rather than describing the outcome in general terms. For anything structural, it also helps to say what should stay untouched.

What's next

Dedicated support for Workflow Automation scenarios and roles and permissions, and custom AI agents, are coming soon.