How to ask the agent a question

The header of the main site pages, including the fleet board and the alerts page, has an Ask the agent button. Content pages also get a floating Ask the agent pill that hides while the panel is open. The instrument at /app has its own layout with no header button, so there you press Explain this under the inspector, or Ask on the card headed The agent noticed. Both open the same panel. Cab mode has no agent. You do not need an account to ask a question.

When you open it from the instrument, the panel is bound to what you are looking at: the place, height, limit, unit, persona, the hour on the time strip and the readings behind them. It answers about that first and fetches more only if your question needs another hour, height or place. Its starters change with your persona, for instance asking whether you can lift, fly, spray, play or go out at the hour shown. On the fleet board it reads up to 40 of your sites.

Every turn, the agent fetches before it speaks and never forecasts from its own knowledge. It has tools to find a place, read the forecast at 10, 80, 120 and 180 m, read the wind at a given height, count ensemble members, check the nearest METAR or buoy, compare with ERA5 climate, walk a route, find the next hour over your limit and, when you are signed in, read your saved sites. A turn can run up to six rounds of tools, 20 seconds each. Earlier answers in the conversation are context and not data. The agent fetches again, so numbers are never reused from before.

Each value is given with its source, the valid time in site time and the height. Gust is always the 10 m gust and never a gust at height. Ensemble members exist only at 10, 80, 100 and 120 m, so when you ask for another height the agent says which level it used. Odds are plain member fractions, with the count of members, and are uncalibrated. If members are missing the first sentence says ENSEMBLE INCOMPLETE. Answers are plain text of about 120 words or fewer, with no headings. The agent never says it is fine to go ahead. It compares to your limit and stops.

Ask for a number or a comparison. For example: what is the wind at 120 m at 14:00 tomorrow in Clonmel, when is the next hour over 25 mph, how likely is it that gusts reach my limit tomorrow morning, do the observations agree with the model, or why do the models not agree. For your own sites, ask which to shut first. Five kinds of question are refused with a fixed sentence. See why the agent will not answer some questions.

Starters are shown before your first question. After an answer you get up to three follow-up chips chosen from what the agent has not yet checked, such as the ensemble odds, the next hour over your limit, whether the observations agree, or the best window to lift, fly, spray or play tomorrow. They are shortcuts, and you can ignore them.

You can ask anything without signing in. Signing in lets the agent read your saved sites, compare them, and propose saving a rule, which you then confirm. It also keeps your facts and history on your account instead of in the browser. See why the agent asks you to confirm and how the agent remembers. If it cannot read your sites because you are signed out, it says you need to sign in.

The agent accepts 12 questions a minute from one connection, with no daily cap and no plan limit. If the narrating model is unavailable, an engine answers instead with a plain read of the same data. If even that fails you see Agent unavailable and the reason. See what (unverified) and ENSEMBLE INCOMPLETE mean.