What is the Agent?

The Agent is a panel you can open on every page of Tideswell. Press the orb (a small moving ball of coloured dots) in the strip down the right edge of the screen (on a phone browser, at the right of the top bar), type a question in ordinary English, and it answers from your own live data and your team's work.

"How did we do yesterday, and what moved?" is a question you ask, not a report you have to build. So is "what is still open on the Spring launch project?"

Why does it exist?

Because a dashboard answers the questions somebody expected when they built it, and the useful question is usually the next one.

A chart can show revenue down 12%. It cannot tell you that the drop is one polo, that the polo went oversold on Tuesday, that the purchase order covering it with Portside Mills is nine days late, and that this mill has been late on six of its last ten deliveries.

The Agent reads all of those at once because they all live in Tideswell. It can also read the chat thread where Priya Raman flagged the delay, and the task someone opened to chase it.

When would you use it?

Most days, for three kinds of question:

• How is the business doing? Yesterday's numbers, this week against last, what is running low, which orders are stuck.
• What is happening with the work? What is late on a project, what was agreed in a channel, what a document says. See How to ask the Agent about your tasks, chat and documents.
• How do I do this in Tideswell? It reads these help pages and answers with the buttons they name, so "how do I receive a delivery" gets the steps.

When you want something done rather than answered, ask for it. The Agent can prepare a change, such as a new task or new dates on a purchase order, and nothing happens until a person approves it. See How to approve, refuse or undo a suggested change.

It can also draft a post for a channel. The draft waits for you to check it before it goes, per How to approve, refuse or undo a suggested change.

It also brings things to you. Its Inbox holds late-task check-ins and other items to settle, per How to work through your Agent Inbox, and Brain › Memory keeps your own preferences for how it answers.

What can it look at?

Live reads across your workspace, always as you, and only what you are allowed to see:

• Sales: revenue, orders and average order value for today, the last 7 days and the last 30 days, each against the period before, plus how sales moved day by day.
• Reports: the same figures as Selling › Reports, split by brand, category, month or location.
• Stock and demand: what is running low, with its stock per location and days of cover, how many paid orders are still waiting to ship, and how many of a category of products you are likely to sell.
• Products: what sells fastest and slowest, and one named product over any date range.
• Supply: who supplies a brand, a supplier's terms and on-time record, which purchase orders are open or late, what is on them, and what a delivery cost landed. It can also advise on the quantities on one purchase order.
• Marketing: your Klaviyo audience segments and flows.
• Decisions your team recorded, and the records in your own Objects.
• Your team's work: tasks and projects, chat channels and threads, documents and outreach.

See How to ask about stock, suppliers and marketing for how to ask about each area.

What does it keep back?

Customer contact details. It will discuss a customer you have open, with their lifetime spend and order count, and it leaves out their email address and phone number. For those, open the customer directly, per How to find a customer and read their history.

Every change it suggests, in Shopify, in Klaviyo or in Tideswell, waits for a person to approve it. The change then runs under that person's name.

The one exception is a late-task check-in. There it changes a task only after the person it is assigned to replies, as that person, and they can undo it, per How to have the Agent check in on late tasks.

Can you check its work?

Yes, and you should. Each answer lists the steps it took above the text, such as "Reading sales" or "Checking stock".

A What I checked section below the answer holds its confidence, its notes and the figures it used. See How to check where the figures came from.

Two habits it keeps. A figure nobody recorded is reported as "not recorded" rather than as zero. And when it reports a decision beside a measured outcome, it never claims one caused the other.

Who can use it?

Everyone who holds Use the agent on Settings › Permissions. Every role holds it by default, members included, and people without it do not see the orb.

What it can answer follows what you can see. Supplier details need View suppliers, order values and delivery costs need View purchase orders and the buying calendar, and decisions need View decisions. By default, leads and admins hold all three.

Money you are not entitled to see is left out of an answer entirely, never shown as zero.

Preparing changes needs the Brain module on, which it is unless an admin switched it off on Settings › Modules, and Agent approvals switched on for your workspace by Tideswell. Without both, the Agent answers questions only.

Is it on the iPhone app?

Yes. On the Tideswell iPhone app, the sparkle beside the tabs opens it from any tab, and the Home tab has one-tap questions about sales, stock, orders and customers. For questions about tasks, chat and documents, use the panel on the web. See Using Tideswell on your phone.

Read this section in order

Start with How to ask the Agent a question, which covers the panel itself: opening it, following its steps, and finding past conversations. Then read How to ask the Agent about your tasks, chat and documents for questions about tasks, chat and documents.

Read How to check where the figures came from before you quote a figure to anyone. When it suggests a change, How to approve, refuse or undo a suggested change explains the card.

How to reuse a question: starters, skills, digests and saved prompts saves you retyping the questions you ask every week, and How to ask about stock, suppliers and marketing goes deeper on each area of the business. How to work through your Agent Inbox covers the Inbox view.

Three pages cover what it does without being asked. How to read your updates and the daily brief covers the morning summary and the Updates view, and How to add the Agent to chat puts the Agent into your team's channels. How to have the Agent check in on late tasks has it ask people about their late tasks.