The AI assistant

Ramble includes an AI assistant that can answer questions, look things up on the web, and propose edits to your drafts. It works on your markdown source, so its proposals preserve your structure. Nothing it suggests changes a draft until you accept it. The rest of Ramble works without the assistant: it is a layer on top, not something the workspace depends on.

Two places you use it

  • In a draft. Open the assistant panel with Cmd+. or the assistant button in the editor. Here it can read the draft you have open and propose edits to it.
  • In the Assistant. Open the Assistant from the sidebar for a workspace conversation about questions, research, and creating new drafts, not tied to one draft. You can also start one quickly from the compose box on your home page. Conversations belong to the workspace you are in, and they are private to you.

Edit proposals

When you ask the assistant to change a draft, it does not edit the text directly. It returns a proposal: a card that summarizes the change, with the lines added and removed, and a diff you can expand to read in full. A proposal can be a small targeted edit or a full rewrite, and the card shows which.

Accept the proposal (the check) to apply it to the draft, or reject it (the cross) to discard it. The assistant can offer more than one proposal at once, and you decide on each separately.

Applying a proposal changes the live draft like any other edit, so Cmd+Z undoes it right away. Undo works within your current editing session, and there is no separate version history, so read a proposal’s diff before you accept it.

Only people who can edit a draft can apply a proposal. A viewer can chat with the assistant and see a proposed change, but cannot apply it.

If the draft changes after a proposal is made, because you or a collaborator edited the same passage, the proposal can go stale and no longer apply cleanly. When that happens, Ramble tells you why and leaves the draft untouched. Ask for a fresh proposal.

Create a draft from a conversation

In the Assistant, you can ask for a whole new draft: an outline, a first version of a prompt, a template. The assistant returns a proposed draft with a title and a preview. Choose Create draft to add it to the workspace, or reject it to discard. Once it is created, you can open it like any other draft.

What the assistant can see

The assistant only sees what you give it.

  • In a draft, it can read the draft you have open.
  • You can attach other drafts as reference with the + button in the message box, or mention them by typing @ and the draft’s name.

It does not read your whole workspace or other people’s drafts unless you attach them. Attached drafts are reference material, and the assistant does not edit them.

Web research

The assistant can search the web and read public pages. A work log under its reply shows what it did, with labels like Read draft, Searched the web, and Read page, so you can see where an answer came from. It reads public web pages, and it uses what it finds as reference, not as instructions to follow.

Choosing a model and managing usage

You can pick which model answers and how hard it thinks, and every workspace has a monthly AI budget the assistant draws on. Those controls, and what happens when the budget runs out, are covered in Models & AI usage.

  • Models & AI usage: model choice, thinking, and the monthly AI budget
  • Agent links: give an AI tool outside Ramble read access to a draft (separate from the built-in assistant)
  • The editor: the source text the assistant works on