الأدوات والإجراءات

The AI does not make things up from memory. It calls tools: small, controlled functions that read your data or perform one specific action. This page lists what it has, what you can add, and what is deliberately impossible.

Platform tools#

These are built in. You do not create them, but you can see and switch some in the dashboard.

Catalog results show each item's current price: an item on offer shows its offer price, with the regular price and the offer beside it. The live offers are also in every reply's instructions; see How the assistant uses offers.

Which tools a turn gets depends on your Environment (General business, Restaurant, Store, Appointments), on the capabilities enabled for your workspace, and on where the conversation started. Restaurant and Store workspaces get catalog tools. A general workspace gets knowledge search and handoff, and cannot quote products until a catalog is in use. See Catalog and products.

What the AI can and cannot do#

An order created by the AI lands in your team's queue as a request that staff approve or reject. The AI tells the customer the request was sent to the team, never that it is confirmed. See Orders and payment links.

Storefront co-pilot#

When a customer chats from the Ask button on your storefront, the assistant works differently in two ways:

• It gets the cart tools. It finds the exact item with the catalog tools, asks for any required size or option, then adds it to the cart, changes the quantity or options, or removes it. A combo goes in as one item at the combo price (see Offers and bundles). When it leaves a choice to the customer, the assistant asks for it and puts the answer in the line's note. A combo that requires staff approval goes in too: the assistant says your team confirms it after the order is placed, instead of handing the chat to your team. Other offers need no step: the cart charges the offer price on its own. Every change is checked against your live prices, options, stock and availability, and each one appears in the chat as a chip.
• It does not prepare quotes or create orders there. It points the customer to the cart's Checkout button, and never asks for a name, phone number or address in the chat, because checkout collects them.

Cart tools are available only in conversations started from a published storefront. Turn the co-pilot on in Store, Storefront, AI co-pilot. It needs the AI Assist add-on, and each reply uses credits like any other.

Changing one option group keeps the line's other selections and instructions. For example, changing a sauce keeps an extra topping or an exclusion the customer already chose. An explicitly cleared optional group removes that group's selections; required groups still need a valid choice. An invalid change leaves the saved cart untouched.

Tools page#

Open Automation → Catalog & AI → AI tools (page title "Assistant tools and skills"). It has three tabs: Skills (opens first), MCP connections and Existing tools. You need the AI Assist add-on and an owner or admin role with permission to manage settings.

Existing tools#

Lists your workspace's tool definitions. Each has an approval mode (auto run, needs approval, never auto run) and an Enabled for AI switch. Bootstrap Registry adds the defaults for your environment. Switching off the knowledge, catalog, order, handoff or cooldown entry removes the matching tools from the AI. The order entry is also where confirmed orders are queued for approval.

Sela reserves its platform tool names, the mcp_ prefix and business_skill_read, even when a matching built-in tool is disabled. Custom definitions cannot reuse those names; creating or enabling a collision is refused. Existing conflicting definitions stay stored but are excluded from AI use, and you can still disable them. Names are checked without regard to case or surrounding spaces.

MCP connections#

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) connection lets the AI read public business data from a server you or a partner run, for example a public product feed or store locator.

1. On MCP connections, add a name, an HTTPS endpoint and the authentication: none, a bearer token, or one custom header. OAuth, stdio and local servers are not supported.
2. Run Discover tools. Discovery lists metadata only, and every discovered tool starts disabled.
3. Open a tool and review its schema. Set any fixed inputs (they are hidden from the AI), choose the exact public output fields to expose, and confirm the data is public.
4. Choose the channels where it may be used (none selected means all), enable it, save, and press Test. The test makes a real call and shows only what the AI would see.

Safety rules:

• The server must declare the tool read only, and must not declare it destructive. Others are refused.
• Only fields you select are passed to the AI. Everything else is dropped.
• Results are treated as untrusted external data. They can never set catalog prices, stock or order effects, and cannot reveal private account facts.
• Editing a connection disables its tools. Rediscover and enable them again.

Skills#

A skill is a short set of instructions for a procedure, for example "how to explain our warranty". The AI sees only the names and descriptions of published skills, and opens a skill's full text when it is relevant.

1. On Skills, add a title (80 characters), a description (300), when to use it, and the instructions. The body is limited to 6,000 characters in total.
2. Save the draft, then Publish. Edits keep the previous published version until you republish.
3. Or import a single SKILL.md file (up to 24,000 bytes) with name and description in its header. Files with scripts, includes or allowed-tools are rejected.

You can save up to 20 skills and publish up to 10. Skills rank below platform rules: they cannot add facts, tools, permissions or actions. Use them for how to talk about something. Put facts in the knowledge base.

Plan gating#

All AI features also need the AI Assist add-on. Prices are on Plans and billing.

Staying in control#

• Every action that changes something (quote, handoff, cooldown) follows fixed rules you cannot bypass from persona text.
• Handoff and cooldown can be switched off in Existing tools, and the whole AI on the AI assistant page. See Turning AI on and off.
• To see why the AI acted a certain way, read the conversation and the AI quality report. See Improving answer quality.