AI assistant
How AI auto-response, Ask AI, approval mode, schedules, vacation periods, and monthly response limits actually behave.
Joely's AI assistant can answer customer messages automatically, or draft replies that your team reviews before sending. It builds its answers from your knowledge base and the ticket conversation.
Auto-response
When a customer posts a message on the portal, the AI prepares an automatic reply if all of these are true:
- AI is enabled for the project
- Auto-reply is enabled in the AI settings
- AI is enabled on that specific ticket (the per-ticket toggle)
- The AI is currently available according to your schedule
- Your monthly AI response quota is not exhausted
The response delay
The AI does not reply instantly. It waits a configurable delay (1 to 10 minutes, default 3) so your team has a chance to answer first:
- If a staff member sends a public reply before the delay elapses, the AI response is cancelled.
- If the customer sends another message during the delay, the timer restarts based on the newest message.
- Customizing the delay requires the Plus plan or higher; on Free, the delay is always 3 minutes.
Pause after a staff reply
An optional setting, off by default: when enabled, the first public staff reply on a ticket turns AI off for that ticket entirely. The AI stays off until someone manually re-enables it from the ticket sidebar. Internal notes do not trigger this.
The per-ticket toggle
Every ticket has its own AI on/off switch in the ticket sidebar:
- New tickets inherit the project-level AI setting at creation time.
- Toggling it requires the
ai.toggle_ticketpermission (project owners always can). - Turning it off stops auto-responses on that ticket only. It does not block Ask AI.
Ask AI
Staff with the tickets.ask_ai permission can request an AI draft at any time from the ticket view (except on closed tickets).
Ask AI always produces a pending draft, even when approval mode is off: the customer never sees it until a staff member approves it. Each Ask AI request counts toward the monthly response quota.
Approval mode
With Require approval enabled in the AI settings, auto-responses are not sent directly. Instead they are saved as pending drafts:
- Pending drafts are only visible to staff with the
ai.approvepermission. Customers never see them. - Approving sends the message to the customer (including their Discord DM notification, if enabled).
- Rejecting permanently deletes the draft.
After 3 consecutive rejections across the project, Joely suggests importing documentation into the knowledge base to fix accuracy at the root. Approving any draft resets the counter, and each staff member can dismiss the suggestion permanently.
Schedule and vacation periods
The AI schedule describes when your team is working. The AI answers when your team is not:
| Configuration | AI behavior |
|---|---|
| No working hours configured | AI responds 24/7 |
| Current time inside working hours | AI stays silent (your team is on duty) |
| Current time outside working hours | AI responds |
| "Respond during working hours" enabled | AI responds 24/7, schedule ignored |
| Active vacation period | AI responds 24/7, schedule ignored |
Details worth knowing:
- All times are interpreted in UTC.
- Overnight time slots (for example 22:00 to 06:00) are supported.
- Vacation periods are date ranges; while one is active, the AI covers everything regardless of the weekly schedule. You can show customers a banner during offline hours and vacations (see Portal customization).
Monthly response limits
Auto-responses and Ask AI requests share a monthly quota tied to the project owner's plan:
| Plan | AI responses per month |
|---|---|
| Free | 50 |
| Plus | 200 |
| Team | 2,000 |
| Enterprise | Unlimited |
What counts: every auto-response and every Ask AI draft (even if later rejected).
What does not count: message correction, message translation, Teach AI extraction, web imports, and GitHub issue generation.
When the quota is exhausted:
- Auto-responses are silently skipped; staff see a notice on the ticket, the customer sees nothing.
- Ask AI returns an error inviting an upgrade.
For paid plans the quota follows your Stripe billing period. On the Free plan it renews monthly, anchored to the project's creation day.
Customizing the assistant
- Name: shown as the author of every AI message (1 to 50 characters, default "AI Assistant").
- Avatar: an HTTPS image URL displayed next to AI messages.
- Custom instructions (Team plan and higher): up to 1,000 characters appended to the AI's system prompt to fine-tune tone and behavior. If the project owner's plan drops below Team, stored instructions are kept but no longer applied.
AI-generated messages delivered by Discord DM always carry a short disclaimer telling the customer the reply was written by an AI.
AI message correction
On the Team plan and higher, staff can polish a drafted reply in one click before sending: the AI fixes grammar, spelling, and tone in the message's original language. Corrections do not count toward the monthly response quota and are limited to 5 requests per 5 minutes per user.