Telos 0.4.0: Ask AI beside the page

Telos 0.4.0 adds Ask AI, a panel that opens beside the screen you are working on. You type a question in plain language, or say it aloud, and it answers. It can also prepare work for you. This post explains what it does, what it will not do without you, and what it needs to run.

What you can ask

Ask AI answers with text, tables and charts (bar, line, area and donut), plus tiles for headline figures. You can ask who owes you money past the due date, which products are running low, what stock is worth, or run one of the reports in the catalogue. You can also attach an image, a PDF, or a CSV or text file to a question, and the assistant reads it.

Replies are laid out right-to-left or left-to-right paragraph by paragraph, according to the text in each, whatever language the app is set to.

It answers from your records only when you allow it

Business data access is a switch, and it is off by default. An Owner or Admin turns it on for the business, and the change is written to the audit log. With it off, Ask AI is a plain chat assistant with no view of your records.

With it on, the lookups run on your desktop as the person who is signed in. They see what that person's permissions and branch allow, and nothing more. The app shows the reminder "AI can make mistakes. Check important figures." We mean it: use the assistant to find and prepare, and check the numbers that matter.

Suggestions wait for a person

Ask AI can propose seven kinds of work: a draft purchase order, a price change, a payment reminder by e-mail or SMS, a draft sales order, a draft stock transfer, a stock adjustment and a supplier payment. Each proposal goes into the AI suggestions inbox and stays there.

When a person approves one, Telos runs the same service the normal screen would run, as that person, with that person's permissions, in one transaction, with an audit entry. Drafts stay drafts. A stock adjustment or a supplier payment posts real stock or money when approved, so the inbox asks in plain words before it goes ahead, and warns if the stock or the balance has changed since the suggestion was made.

Reminders by e-mail or SMS are not offered in standalone mode, which has no mail or SMS service.

Auto-approval is off, and it is per kind

Some teams will not want to click approve on every draft. Auto-approval is a business setting that only an Owner or Admin can change, and it is off by default. When it is switched on, drafts, price changes and reminders are ticked; stock adjustments, supplier payments and button presses on screens stay unticked until someone ticks each one, with a warning.

Even then, an automatic action runs only as the person who asked, with that person's own permission. If they lack it, the suggestion waits. A supplier payment runs automatically only if the person chose the paying account. Every automatic action appears in the inbox marked "Approved automatically".

Working on the screen

Ask AI can read the open screen, open any screen in the person's own menu, type into fields, scroll and press buttons. A press on a button, switch, checkbox or menu item that may save something asks first: allow once, allow for this question, or don't allow. Each such press is recorded in the audit log before it happens. It never touches its own panel, the sidebar, password fields, or the AI suggestions inbox and AI settings. A Stop button ends the run.

Voice questions in Dari, Pashto and English

Choose a language, record up to 90 seconds, and the speech becomes an editable draft. You read it, fix it, and press Send. It never sends by itself, and it does not speak replies. How well a language is recognised depends on how the speech service is set up on your side: if a language is not supported, the app tells you so and does not translate behind your back.

Internet search, with sources

When the business-data assistant needs facts from outside your records, such as a regulation or a market rate, it can search the internet, up to five searches in one round, and it lists its sources under the answer. It is told not to put your business data into a search query. An Owner or Admin can switch internet search off.

Credits, with no key to manage

You never enter a provider key. Telos runs the connection to the AI service, and you buy credits. Credits are prepaid whole numbers: you buy them in Settings under AI credits or on your account page on the website, pay by mobile money or bank outside the system, give the payment reference, and when our staff approve it the balance rises. Credits do not expire. Chat uses credits by the amount of text read and written, searches and voice use them by their own measure, and the app shows your balance, a low-balance warning and a history. Owners can set monthly spending caps per account, device and user. Prices are on your account page and set by us.

What stays on your computer

Chat history is kept on that computer only, in its own encrypted file, separate for each person and server. It is not part of business backups and is not on any server. Attachments are sent with the question and their contents are not kept afterwards.

What it needs

Ask AI needs internet, an activated licensed device (a trial licence counts) and credit. It works in standalone, LAN and online modes, because the desktop talks to our gateway; a LAN server has no AI of its own. The permission is ai.use, held by Admin, Owner, Branch Manager, Finance, Procurement, Compliance, Warehouse Manager, HR Manager and Project Manager roles.

Read the Ask AI module page, see how deployment shapes work, or download Telos and try it in the 30-day trial.