Docs / Writing

Explain and ask

Explain / Ask is an assistant you talk to. It opens a conversation with your model that stays open while you work: ask anything, follow up, change direction, and refine until you have what you need.

What you can use it for

• Think a problem through: compare options, plan a change, check your reasoning.
• Draft and refine: ask for a checklist, an email, a runbook step or a query, then ask for a better one.
• Work with what you paste in: a configuration, a snippet of code, notes from a meeting.
• Explain something you selected: an error, a log or a stack trace.
• Investigate your systems: attach a database, a Kubernetes cluster, your monitoring or your logs and it works through your question step by step. More

It answers and advises; it does not act on your computer. It does not browse the web, change files or run commands for you.

Start a conversation

1. Open Explain / Ask

   Choose Explain / Ask… from the Verbiqo menu bar icon with nothing selected.

2. Ask

   Type or paste your question and press Ask.

3. Keep going

   Follow up in the same window. Each answer knows everything asked so far. Long conversations are condensed as they grow, so you can keep going; type /context to see how much room is left.

Explain a selection

1. Select what you are asking about

   An error message, a stack trace, a log, a configuration file, or any text you want explained.

2. Choose Explain / Ask

   Press ⌘⇧R and choose Explain / Ask, or choose Explain / Ask… from the Verbiqo menu bar icon.

3. Read the explanation

   Verbiqo says what the text means and what to check.

4. Ask follow-up questions

   Type in the box at the bottom and press Ask. Each answer knows the selection and everything asked so far.

Verbiqo reads all of what you selected, even a long log. If you ask about something your selection does not mention, it says so rather than guessing.

Commands

Type / in the box to see the commands you can use. Anything that does not start with / is a question.

Keeping a conversation

Nothing is saved. The conversation lives in the window and ends when you close it. To keep a copy, press Save Transcript… before closing. Copy copies the latest answer.