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AI Chat

AI Chat is a conversational AI assistant built directly into Copera that answers questions, searches your workspace, analyzes documents, generates images, browses the web, conducts multi-step research, and even schedules meetings for you — all in one chat interface. It understands your workspace context (documents, board rows, meetings, and Drive files), streams responses in real time, supports file attachments up to 10 MB, includes both Think mode for complex reasoning and Deep Research mode for cited reports, and can be invoked from anywhere using Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac) with the ! or $ prefix.

Whether you need a quick answer, want to explore a complex topic in depth, or need to generate a visual, AI Chat adapts to what you need.

Getting Started​

  1. Click AI Chat in the top bar (the orange area button).
  2. You will see the AI Chat welcome screen with a personalized greeting and suggestion cards.
  3. Type your message in the input field at the bottom, or click one of the suggestion cards to get started.
  4. Press Enter or click the Send button to submit your message.

The AI will process your request and stream a response in real time. You can watch the response appear as it is generated.

The Chat Interface​

Welcome Screen​

When you open a new conversation, AI Chat greets you with a personalized message based on the time of day and your name. Below the greeting, you will find suggestion cards with common starting prompts — click any card to pre-fill your message and get started quickly.

Conversations Sidebar​

The left sidebar lists all your conversations, sorted by most recent activity. From here you can:

  • Click New Conversation to start a fresh chat.
  • Use the search field to filter conversations by title or content.
  • Click any conversation to open it.
  • Double-click a conversation to rename it inline.
  • Hover over a conversation and click the delete icon to remove it.

Streaming Responses​

AI responses appear in real time as they are generated. While the AI is working, you will see a small pulsating dot. Once the response starts streaming, the text appears progressively — you do not need to wait for the full response before reading.

Stop Button​

If the AI is still generating a response and you already have the information you need, click the Stop button (square icon) next to the send button to immediately stop generation. This is especially useful for long responses.

Thinking Display​

When you enable Think mode, the AI takes extra time to reason through complex problems before responding. While thinking, you will see a "Thinking..." indicator with a live timer showing how long the AI has been reasoning. Once complete, the indicator shows "Thought for Xs" so you know how much reasoning went into the answer.

To enable Think mode, click the Think chip in the composer toolbar before sending your message.

Providing Context​

The quality of AI responses improves dramatically when you give the AI relevant context about what you are working on. Copera offers several ways to add context to your messages.

Attaching Files from Your Computer​

  1. Click the + button in the bottom-left of the composer.
  2. Select Attach file.
  3. Choose one or more files from your computer.

Supported file types include images (PNG, JPEG, WebP), text files (TXT, Markdown, CSV), and PDF documents. Each file can be up to 10 MB, and you can attach up to 10 files per message.

You can also:

  • Drag and drop files directly onto the chat area.
  • Paste images or files from your clipboard using Ctrl+V (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+V (Mac).

Attached files appear as previews inside the input area. Click the X on any attachment to remove it before sending.

Adding Workspace Context​

Click the @ button in the composer to open the context picker, which lets you attach items from your workspace:

TabWhat You Can Attach
RecentsPages and Drive files you have recently accessed
PagesBrowse and select Copera pages — selecting a parent page also selects all its children
DriveBrowse and select files from your Drive — selecting a folder selects all supported files inside
MeetingsBrowse meeting channel sessions and attach meeting transcriptions

You can also search across all tabs using the search field at the top of the context picker.

Selected items appear as chips above the input field. Click the X on any chip to remove it. You can attach up to 10 context items per message.

Prompt Library​

Access your saved prompts directly from the chat:

  1. Click the + button in the composer.
  2. Select Prompt Library.
  3. Browse or search your saved prompts.
  4. Select a prompt and click Use to insert it into the composer.

If the prompt includes pre-configured context files, those are automatically attached as well.

Search-Powered Responses​

AI Chat automatically searches your workspace data when answering questions. When the AI uses workspace content to form its answer, you will see a Sources section below the response. Each source card shows the document title, a short excerpt, and a link to the original item — click the link to open the source directly.

If there are more than three sources, click Show more sources to reveal the full list.

AI Chat can search the internet to answer questions about current events, external topics, or anything outside your workspace. When the AI searches the web, you will see a "Searching the web..." progress indicator, followed by a response that includes inline citation numbers.

Hover over any citation number to see the source website and its icon. Click the citation to open the source in a new tab.

When the AI uses web sources, a Sources panel appears at the bottom of the response listing all referenced websites with their URLs.

Web Page Analysis​

You can ask the AI to read and analyze any web page:

  1. Paste a URL into your message.
  2. Ask a question about the page content (for example, "Summarize this article" or "What are the key points from this page?").

The AI will fetch and read the page content, then answer your question based on what it finds.

Image Generation​

AI Chat can create images from text descriptions. Simply describe what you want and the AI will generate it.

  1. Type a description of the image you want (for example, "Create an illustration of a modern office workspace with natural lighting").
  2. Send your message.
  3. While the image is being generated, you will see a "Generating image..." indicator followed by a loading skeleton.
  4. Once ready, the image appears inline in the conversation.

You can click the image to open it in a full-screen lightbox, where you can view it at full size and download it. For a complete guide, see Image Generation.

Deep Research​

For complex topics that require thorough investigation, AI Chat offers a Deep Research mode that conducts multi-step research with citations.

  1. Click the Deep Research chip in the composer toolbar to enable it.
  2. Type your research question and send.
  3. The AI creates a research plan showing the sub-questions it will investigate.
  4. Review the plan, adjust the depth tier, edit sub-questions, and click Start (or wait for the 60-second auto-start).
  5. The research runs in the background — you will be notified when it completes.

Deep Research produces comprehensive, well-cited reports. For a complete guide, see Deep Research.

Scheduling by Chat​

AI Chat can also handle your calendar. Ask in plain language to check your day, find a time across several people, or book a meeting, and the assistant does the scheduling work for you — proposing a time, creating the event, and sending invites. It always acts as you, within your permissions, so it can only touch your own calendar and the bookings you host.

For example:

  • "Find a 1-hour slot with Maria and James next week."
  • "Schedule a project sync tomorrow at 2pm for 30 minutes."
  • "Move my 3pm to 4pm."

This same scheduling power is available to every Copera AI agent, not just this chat. For the full picture, see AI Scheduling Across Every Agent.

Working with Responses​

Rich Formatting​

AI responses support full markdown rendering, including headings, bulleted and numbered lists, code blocks with syntax highlighting, tables, bold and italic text, and links.

Response Actions​

Hover over any AI response to reveal the action bar:

ActionDescription
CopyCopy the full response text to your clipboard
Play AudioListen to the response read aloud — click again to stop playback
RegenerateAsk the AI to generate a new response to the same message
ReportFlag an inaccurate or unhelpful response for improvement

Code Blocks​

When the AI includes code in a response, it appears in a syntax-highlighted block with a header showing the programming language. Click the Copy button on the code block header to copy just the code.

Citations​

When the AI cites web sources, citation numbers appear inline in the text as small badges. Hover over a citation badge to see the source domain and favicon. Click the badge to open the source URL in a new tab.

Conversation Management​

Editing Messages​

You can edit any of your previous messages to refine your question:

  1. Hover over one of your messages.
  2. Click the Edit icon (pencil).
  3. Modify your message in the inline editor.
  4. Click Save to submit the edited version, or Cancel to discard changes.

When you save an edited message, the AI generates a new response based on your updated text. This creates a conversation branch — your original conversation thread is preserved.

Thread Navigation​

After editing a message, a thread navigator appears below it showing how many versions exist (for example, "1/2"). Use the arrow buttons to switch between the original and edited branches of the conversation. Each branch maintains its own response history.

Deleting Conversations​

Hover over any conversation in the sidebar and click the delete icon to remove it permanently.

Keeping Passwords Out of the Chat​

The message box has a lock. Use it to seal a password, an API key or a private note: it goes into your personal My vault, and your message carries only a chip with its name, so the AI never sees what's inside. If you type something that looks like a password, Copera offers to Seal and send before it goes out. See Vault.

Creating Agents​

AI Chat works for you alone. When your team needs a shared AI teammate, ask AI Chat to create an agent: it shows a plan card with the agent, who gets access and its budget, and creates it when you click Build it. You then talk to the agent in its own channel in Channels, not in AI Chat. See AI Chat and Agents.

Creating and Editing Files​

AI Chat can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, Markdown files, PDFs, and designs in Drive, and edit files you already have, even while other people are working in them. Ask, for example, "Draft the Acme services agreement from the deal on the Sales CRM board and put it with our other contracts." AI Chat saves the file in Drive, in the folder you are working in when you ask (or where you tell it to), and gives you a link to open it. It can also put pictures into documents and presentations, for example an image you attach to your message.

Every change AI Chat makes to a file appears in the file's AI changes list and can be reverted later. When one request changed several files, the receipt in the conversation has a Revert all from this run button. See AI in Office Files.

Designs (apps, dashboards, slide decks and pages) you build with AI Chat live in Drive → Designs. When AI Chat builds one, a card with a live preview appears in the conversation; click Open design to open it in Drive → Designs, and use the back arrow to return to the chat. The AI Chat area no longer has its own Artifacts list. See Designs in Drive.

Quick Access​

From the Right Rail​

AI Chat is in the right rail on every page, including inside an open document or spreadsheet. Click it to open a conversation in a drawer next to your work. In the desktop app, you can pop the conversation out into its own tab.

From Drive Home​

The composer at the top of Drive Home sends a request to AI Chat with the type of file you want to create.

Send a message directly to AI Chat from anywhere in Copera:

  1. Open global search with Ctrl+K (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+K (Mac).
  2. Prefix your query with ! to send it to AI Chat.
  3. Press Enter — a new conversation opens with your message already sent.

Use $ instead of ! to include workspace search results as additional context for the AI response.

From Voice​

If you use the Copera desktop app, you can start an AI Chat conversation from a voice command. Your spoken message is automatically sent to AI Chat, where you can continue the conversation by typing.

Tips and Best Practices​

tip

Be specific in your requests. Instead of "Write a summary," try "Write a one-paragraph summary of the Q3 marketing plan, focusing on the new product launch timeline." The more detail you provide, the more useful the response will be.

tip

Attach relevant documents before asking questions about them. The AI can read and reason about the content of attached files, giving you much more accurate and contextual answers.

tip

Use the Think mode for complex reasoning tasks like data analysis, strategic planning, or debugging. The AI will spend extra time reasoning through the problem before responding.

tip

When you need authoritative, well-cited research, enable Deep Research mode. It conducts a thorough multi-step investigation and produces a report with citations you can verify.

tip

You can paste images directly into the chat. This is useful for quickly asking the AI to analyze a screenshot, diagram, or photo without going through the file picker.

Frequently Asked Questions​

Can AI Chat access all my workspace data?​

AI Chat searches through documents, board data, and transcriptions in your workspace to find relevant information when answering questions. It only accesses data that you have permission to view.

How many files can I attach to a single message?​

You can attach up to 10 files per message. Each file can be up to 10 MB. Supported types include images (PNG, JPEG, WebP), text files (TXT, Markdown, CSV), and PDFs.

Can I continue a conversation later?​

Yes. All conversations are automatically saved. Open the conversations sidebar and click any previous conversation to continue where you left off.

What happens when I edit a message?​

Editing a message creates a new branch of the conversation. The AI regenerates its response based on your updated text. You can navigate between the original and edited branches using the thread navigator arrows.

Can the AI read web pages?​

Yes. Paste a URL into your message and ask the AI to analyze it. The AI will fetch the page content and answer questions about it.

How long does Deep Research take?​

It depends on the depth tier you choose. Standard research typically completes in a few minutes. Deep and Very Deep tiers take longer due to more extensive investigation. You will be notified when the research is complete, so you can continue working on other tasks in the meantime.

Can AI Chat schedule meetings for me?​

Yes. Ask it in plain language to check your day, find a time across several people, or book a meeting, and it will propose a time, create the event, and send invites. It acts as you and within your permissions. See AI Scheduling Across Every Agent.

  • AI Chat and Agents — Create shared AI teammates by asking
  • Vault — Seal passwords and keys so they never reach an AI
  • Deep Research — Conduct thorough, multi-step research on complex topics
  • Image Generation — Generate images from text descriptions
  • AI Scheduling Across Every Agent — Let any Copera AI agent book on your behalf
  • AI in Pages — Use AI directly inside the page editor
  • AI in Office Files — Edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with AI and revert changes
  • Designs in Drive — Apps, dashboards and pages built with AI Chat
  • AI in Boards — AI-powered row creation and formula assistance
  • Bankai Voice — Voice-powered AI interaction