Robot

Meet Robot

Robot is an assistant that works on your documents with you. You ask in plain words; it reads what's there, makes the change, and says what it did. Everything it changes can be undone, like your own edits.

Robot is experimental. It gets things wrong, sometimes confidently, and what it can do changes from week to week. Check what it made before you rely on it.

Robot is off until you turn on AI features in Settings, under AI, and add a key (below). Then open it with Robot, or ⇧` anywhere in the app. It works in every editor, on the document that's open: Paint, the Font Editor and the Music Composer. In Recents it can read your documents and start new ones.

Drag its window by the title to the right edge of the screen to dock it there: the page makes room beside it, on every page Robot opens on. The button in its title bar docks and undocks it, and the docked window's left edge sets how wide it is. On a narrow screen it always floats.

Your key

Robot runs on your own API key, from Anthropic or from OpenRouter, chosen in Settings, under AI. Make an Anthropic key in Anthropic's console, or an OpenRouter key in OpenRouter's settings; OpenRouter reaches many companies' models on one key. Each provider keeps its own key and budget, so switching loses neither. Keys stay in this browser: requests go from here straight to the provider, never through Pteropixel's servers.

A new chat asks which model to run on and how hard it should think, and the next new chat starts with the same. On OpenRouter the model list shows the ones used lately; type in it to search every OpenRouter model that can use tools. Models differ in what they can do: one that can't see images or read PDFs is sent a line saying what was left out instead, and one that doesn't think has no effort to set. Both can change mid-chat from the usage line; the next message then pays once to read the whole conversation into the cache again, and Robot says how much before you switch. A higher effort or a larger model costs more per message. Ask Robot for a brief and it writes one (the Export panel's Brief) and puts it in the chat to download or copy.

When Robot edits a document, it's marked AI-assisted. An artwork or a font carries it in the Record section of Artwork setup or Font setup. A composition carries it in the Composition window's Record section for its notes and form, and in the menu beside an interpretation's name in the Interpretations panel for how it's played. Turn a mark off and it stays off, whatever Robot does after.

Each message is billed to the account of the key it runs on: Anthropic's console shows your usage and billing, OpenRouter's its activity. Through OpenRouter, the spend Robot counts is what OpenRouter reports it billed. OpenRouter sends each message to one of the companies that run the model, and they differ in price and in quality; the Usage view lists which ones served the chat. A long chat costs a little more with every message, because the conversation so far goes with each request; Robot keeps repeated parts cheap, but a new subject is best started as a new chat.

The line beside the send button shows what the chat has cost, its context against the point where Robot summarises it, and how long its cache has left: a message within the hour rereads the conversation at a tenth of the price. Press it for today's spend, and the piece's: every chat talked to from a piece counts toward it, one that only read it from elsewhere doesn't. An editor's Settings, under AI, shows the same for its document along with Robot's notes on it; Recents' shows every document's total and Robot's notes on your work in general. Once the cache has lapsed, a banner takes the message box's place and says what the next message will cost; Continue chatting brings the box back. Robot stops a request at its budget (by default $1) and for the day at the daily one ($10); set them and the currency in an editor's Settings, under AI, for each provider. Prices come from OpenRouter's list of models, read when Robot opens (Anthropic's API doesn't list its prices, so Claude's are OpenRouter's listing of the same model).

A chat stays on the provider it began on, named in the window's title. If Settings now use the other provider, or the key has changed since the chat last ran (or it last ran in another browser), a banner takes the message box's place: going on sends the whole conversation to the provider and key set now, billed there, and the banner says roughly what reading it in costs. Nothing is sent until you press Continue.

What it keeps

Chats are kept in this browser, and saved with your work (in agent/chats), so your other devices see them: with GitHub storage alone, when you next save a document; in a folder or with cloud storage on, by themselves a few seconds after they change. On Anthropic, images and PDFs you attach are uploaded once to your Anthropic account's file storage and deleted when you remove them or delete the chat; on OpenRouter they go with each message instead. Robot's notes on your work are saved with your documents (see Questions and notes).