The Weave Dock

Description

The Weave dock is Weave’s panel on the right-hand edge of PlaidCloud. It is there beside every app and every window in it, so you can ask Weave about what you’re looking at without leaving it. The same dock holds your Weave conversations, the changes Weave proposes, and the jobs it is working on for you.

Weave does nothing until you ask. Opening a project or the dock doesn’t scan anything or call an AI model.

Open and Close the Dock

Closed, the dock is a narrow strip with the Weave mark. A number on the strip counts what is waiting for you: answers that arrived while the dock was folded, jobs and changes waiting for your decision, and the problems Weave told you about that you haven’t read. A moving dot shows that Weave is answering or one of your jobs is working.

Click the strip, or press Ctrl+J (Cmd+J on a Mac), to open the dock. Click › or press the same keys to fold it away. The keys work anywhere in PlaidCloud, in a text box too, except in a code editor.
Drag the dock’s left edge to set its width, from 300 pixels up to half the window.
PlaidCloud remembers whether the dock is open and how wide it is, for you, in whichever browser you sign in from.

When the dock is open, its header shows the conversation in front, with its type when it isn’t an ordinary one (Fix, Help or Weave job), what Weave is looking at, the Weave button, Conversations, which lists your past conversations, and New conversation.

The Weave button counts the problems Weave has told you about that you haven’t read, across all your projects. Its menu lists each project with unread problems, and opens Weave jobs…, Weave email… and How Weave uses your data…. See The Weave Button.

When the dock opens in a project, its first line can be Weave’s latest verdict on the project, such as At 07:40: 3 open problems, 1 is yours., with Open monitor. Once a month it says about how much time Weave saved you in the project last month, with See how; see Weave Monthly Summary. Now and then, at most once a day, it offers a tip about something you haven’t tried yet, such as setting up close readiness for a workflow that runs on a schedule. Not now dismisses that tip for good.

If your workspace administrator has turned Weave chat off, the box says so. Fixing a step still works when the fix assistant is on, and the answers that need no AI model always work.

What Weave Is Looking At

Weave starts from what you have open: the step, workflow or table you are in, the rows or steps you selected, or the error you clicked. Each shows as a chip above the box you type in, such as step Allocate by Driver or 3 selected steps. Click ✕ on a chip to leave it out of your next question.

If Weave can’t open something you had open, it says so and doesn’t use it.

Ask Weave from a Right-Click

Right-click an object, or open its ⋯ menu, to see a Weave section at the top of the menu. Only the actions that apply to that object, and that your role allows, are listed. For example, Check and Where is this used need permission to read the project.

Right-click	Weave actions
A step on the canvas or in the step list	Explain, Where is this used, What changed, Fix, Change…, Document, Ask Weave
Several selected steps	Explain, Ask Weave
A workflow in the list	Explain, What changed, Check, Change…, Document, Ask Weave
A table in the list or in Table Explorer	Explain, Where is this used, Change…, Document, Ask Weave
A column in Table Explorer	Explain, Ask Weave
A dashboard in the Dashboards list	Explain, Tables it reads, Ask Weave
Cells or selected rows in Table Explorer	Ask Weave
An error line in the log	Explain this error, Fix, Ask Weave
A warning line in the log	Explain, Ask Weave

Fix is offered on a step when its last run failed or a finding in the project’s Monitor offers one, and on error lines in the log but not warning lines. Change… is offered only if your role can edit that object. Findings in Monitor offer the same actions: Fix or Ask Weave is the button on the row, and the rest are under ⋯.

Explain, Where is this used, What changed, Check and Tables it reads answer at once in a small window beside what you clicked. They read what they need from your project and most don’t call an AI model. Each answer ends with How Weave knows, which says where it came from.
Fix and Change… open the dock and prepare a change for you to approve. Change… starts the box with Change this step so, ready for you to finish the sentence.
Document and Ask Weave open the dock with what you clicked already in front of Weave.

You can also type / in the box to pick from the Weave actions for what is in front of you, and from your team’s recipes. Under an empty box, Weave suggests up to four things to ask. In a project with nothing open, one of them is What needs attention?.

Ask Weave From Anywhere

The dock opens, ready for your question, from:

The command palette. Press Ctrl/Cmd-K, or click Search in the header, and type a question. Ask Weave offers to ask it about what you have open, first when it reads like a question. Answers lists help topics that answer it, and Do it lists the Weave actions for what you have open. See Search and Commands.
A log entry. Under the Log Message, an error on a step offers Fix, and any other entry Ask Weave.
An error message. The Action Failed dialog, a step that couldn’t be saved, a workflow that couldn’t start, and a failed CSV import offer Ask Weave. See When a Step Fails.
Panel Studio. Ask Weave opens the app’s conversation, and a failed build offers Ask Weave about this error, with the error already in the box for you to send.
Support. Ask Weave opens a help conversation that answers from the documentation and your project, and changes nothing. Talk to a Human attaches that conversation to your ticket.
A dialog that creates something, and an empty list. See Tell Weave What You Want.

Talk to Weave

Where your browser can turn speech into text, the box has a microphone.

Click the microphone and ask your question. Your words fill the box as you speak.
Stop talking. Weave sends the question two seconds later.
Weave reads a one-sentence summary of its answer aloud. If the answer is a change for you to approve, it says so, and you approve it on the card as usual.

Click the microphone again, or press Escape, to stop listening or speaking. Listening also stops, keeping your words unsent, if you fold the dock, switch conversations or switch browser tabs. If nothing is heard for 8 seconds, or your browser blocks the microphone, a line under the box says what to do. Speech follows PlaidCloud’s language setting.

Your browser turns your speech into text. Where it can’t do that on the device, it may send the audio to its own speech service. PlaidCloud receives only the text. See How Weave Uses Your Data.

Teach Weave Your Project’s Terms

When you correct Weave, such as in this project, margin means revenue less freight, it offers a Remember for this project card: the line it would remember and where. Click Remember, and Weave uses that line from the next question, for everyone in the project. A project Architect can see, change and remove these lines on Monitor → Expected; see What Weave Has Learned.

Keep an Answer

Under an answer, Keep ▾ keeps it as a standing request, a metric, a scenario, a recipe or a pinned answer. See Keep Answers and Standing Requests.

Follow Weave’s Progress

When you press Send, a short list above the answer shows what Weave is doing, in plain words, starting with Reading what you have open. Each line gets a check mark when it finishes, and the list folds away when the answer is complete.

Approve a Change

Weave never changes anything until you approve it. When it proposes a change, it shows a card with what will change, how far it reaches, and what happens next. The change is saved only when you approve the card in the browser: you can’t approve a card from the mobile app, and Weave can’t approve one for you.

A card shows:

What changes, in a box for each setting titled with the step and the setting, with the old value and the new one on separate lines. A SQL statement, expression or long mapping is shown whole, with its line breaks.
What Weave will do after saving, as a plain sentence such as Then: re-run Allocate by Driver with ERP posting off and check…. Weave turns ERP posting off for every run a card starts.
How far the change reaches, when it affects steps in other workflows, such as Changes to this step affect 8 downstream steps in 2 workflows. A step or workflow you can’t open is counted, not named.
Anything Weave couldn’t include, such as a step your role can’t edit, as Not added: and the reason.
Whether the change can be undone. A card that can’t be undone says This can’t be undone before you approve it.

The card’s buttons are Approve followed by the number of changes, such as Approve 1 change or Approve 6 changes, Not now to leave things as they are, and Change… to ask Weave again with your request filled in. Change… never edits the card: Weave answers with a new one.

One press covers the whole card, even when it changes several steps. After you approve, the card shows that the change is applied and Weave re-runs what it fixed and says plainly whether the problem is gone, for example Fixed and re-run: Allocate by Driver succeeded in 4 min, 46,812 rows, within its usual range. If Weave couldn’t confirm, it says why, for example that the workflow was already running, and never says the problem is fixed. A step that posts to an ERP system or runs another workflow isn’t re-run.

For fixing a failed step, see Fixing Workflow Errors with AI.

Cards Waiting for You

When Weave prepares a change while you’re away, because a job you started needed your decision, the card waits in that conversation until you decide. In that conversation, a row above the chat shows a Waiting for you badge, the card’s title and an Open button. Choose Open to see the card with its approval button, labeled Weave prepared this while you were away. Only you can see and decide it, and only on the web.

If the step or object changed since Weave prepared the card, approving it first shows how things look now and asks again. Nothing is saved until you approve what you can see. A card is closed with the reason when what it would change no longer exists.

Undo a Change

Every change Weave makes that can be undone shows Undo, with one line on what it covers. On a card that fixed several steps, one Undo covers all of them. The same button is on the change’s entry in Monitor → Activity, so you can undo after the conversation is closed.

Undo opens a window showing what undoing does: the settings it puts back, each as it is Now and After Undo, or what it removes and what it keeps, with the reason. Choose Undo to go ahead, Undo & Run to put a step’s settings back and run it, or Cancel.

Undo restores only what Weave changed. Edits other people made since are kept, and anything Undo can’t restore is listed. A project Weave created is moved to the Projects trash, where you can restore it.

Jobs That Keep Working

Some things Weave does take a while. A job keeps working if you close the dock, change apps or close the browser tab.

Choose Weave jobs… from the Weave button in the dock’s header to see your jobs. Each shows its title, its state (Working, with how long, Needs you, Done or Stopped) and its latest progress line. Open takes you to the conversation at its answer or its card, and Stop ends a job that is working.
The Weave button shows a marker while any job is working.
When a job ends, or needs a decision from you, a message appears in whichever PlaidCloud window you have open. If the job ran for more than a minute and wasn’t stopped, you also get a notification on your phone if you use the mobile app. Opening it takes you to the job’s conversation. Decisions are made on the web.

Open a Link to Weave

A link to PlaidCloud can open the dock with its context ready and an action waiting as a button, such as Fix. Weave runs by itself only an action that changes nothing. A link never starts a run.

Weave in the Monitor Tab

The project’s Weave tab keeps Monitor. Its chats and conversation history are in the dock. Someone whose role has no Findings sees one line there, Ask Weave in the panel on the right, with Open Weave.