Ask, review and undo
On this page
The assistant answers from your tasks and proposes changes. This page is the loop you go through: open, ask, review, apply, undo.
Open the assistant#
Press Shift+I, select Assistant in the header, or type in the Ask OpenTodo box at the top of Today or on the Ask screen (sidebar, or g then k). On a wide screen it opens as a panel on the right; on a phone it fills the screen, with the message box above the keyboard. Esc closes it and puts the focus back where it was.
The button, the shortcut, the Ask box and the Ask screen only appear when the assistant is available to you. While it is off, the server owner sees one line on Today pointing to the assistant settings, which Dismiss hides for good on that device; other members see nothing.
Ask and review#
Type a question and press Enter (Shift+Enter adds a line). The answer appears as it is written; lines such as "Looking at Today…" show what the assistant is reading. Screen readers hear the answer a sentence at a time.
When you ask for changes, the answer ends with Proposed changes: one line per task or project, each change in words ("Due Sun 11 Oct → Fri 16 Oct", "Completed", "New task in Garden: Buy seeds").
- Every item is checked. Uncheck what you do not want.
- Apply (or Enter inside the list) applies the checked items. The summary says how many were applied ("4 of 5 changes applied").
- Discard (or Esc inside the list) drops the proposal. Nothing changes.
- Items in a shared project are marked, because other people see the change.
- An item that changed on another device after it was proposed is unchecked and marked changed since proposed. Applying the rest leaves the newer value alone.
- An item that no longer exists on this device is left out with a note.
One proposal holds at most 50 changes. For bigger requests the assistant proposes the first 50 and offers to continue after you have reviewed them.
Applied changes are ordinary edits made on this device: they show at once, work offline, sync to your other devices, appear in the task's history as Assistant, and trigger reminders, webhooks and notifications like any edit.
Small proposals can skip the review when you turn on Apply small changes without review.
Undo#
After applying, Undo appears in the panel and in a short notice at the bottom of the screen. It puts back every value the proposal changed and moves tasks it created to the Trash, in one step, also offline. If you edited one of those fields again in the meantime, your edit stays and the undo names that task. The last 20 applied proposals on a device can be undone.