# The Assistant

> What the firm-wide Assistant can see and do across cases, how to reach it from the keyboard, and the boundary it never crosses.

Every case has its own [Assistant tab](/docs/getting-started/the-agent/#asking-it-directly)
scoped to that case. Alongside it, **Assistant** in the main sidebar is not
tied to any one family: it can be pointed at a single case, at your whole
firm, or asked without any case in mind at all.

## What it can see

Each conversation with the Assistant has a context, shown next to the message
box, and you can change it at any time:

- **General**, for anything about your funeral home: questions across all
  your cases, your team and your workload, or nothing case-related at all.
  New conversations start here.
- **A specific case**, when you want it reasoning about one family only.

(Screenshot: The Assistant, asking How can I help today?, with suggestions such as Find a case and Draft an email to a vendor above the message box.)

Switching context on an existing conversation changes what it can draw on
from that point; starting a new conversation lets you choose the context
before asking anything.

(Screenshot: The context picker next to the message box, open on General and the list of cases.)

## What it can do

Ask it in plain language, the same way you would ask a colleague:

- Questions about a case: what is missing, what was agreed, what is coming
  up next.
- Drafting: a reply to a family member, a note for the file.
- Questions across your firm, in the General context.

(Screenshot: A conversation with the Assistant in General: asked what services are on this week, it answers with a table of four services and points out the one to watch.)

It answers from what is actually on the record. If a case does not say where
a service is being held, it will not guess one.

You can also attach files to a message (up to five, 20 MB each), dictate
with the microphone, or switch to voice mode and simply talk. When you share
a file that belongs to a case, the Assistant can save it to that case and
shows you where it went.

## Getting to it from the keyboard

You do not need to open the Assistant page to start asking it something.

- **Type to focus.** On the Assistant page, and on every tab of a case, just
  start typing and the message box takes over. On a case it reads *Ask the
  agent anything*, and sending opens the case's own **Assistant** tab.
- **The command palette.** Press `Cmd+K` (or `Ctrl+K`) from anywhere in
  Lethra to open it. Typing a question rather than a name is recognised as a
  question, and pressing Enter sends it straight to the Assistant, scoped to
  whichever case you were viewing when you opened the palette. The same
  palette finds cases, conversations, documents and leads by name, and offers
  shortcuts like drafting an email or adding a note for the case you are on.
- **`Cmd+N` (or `Ctrl+N`)** on the Assistant page starts a fresh
  conversation in **General**. From anywhere else, use **New conversation**
  in the command palette.

(Screenshot: The command palette opened on a case: questions and shortcuts for that case, recent conversations, and Create new case.)

Recent conversations are kept so you can pick one back up rather than losing
your place.

## The approval boundary

The Assistant answers questions and drafts things at your request. It does
not send anything to a family, file anything official, or take an action on
a case on its own initiative: that is what the [agent](/docs/getting-started/the-agent/)
does in the background, and the same rule applies to both.

> **Caution:** Anything the Assistant drafts on your behalf still goes through the same
> approval you would give any other draft. Asking it to write something is not
> the same as sending it.
## Scheduled check-ins

You can ask the Assistant to come back to something by itself, once or on a
schedule: "Review our ads every Monday at 8 and email me what to change", or
"On the 1st of each month, look at the blog and suggest three new posts".

- It repeats the schedule back to you in plain words before saving it.
- Repeating check-ins run daily, weekly on chosen days, or monthly, at a time
  in your funeral home's timezone. You can have up to 10 active.
- Each check-in has its own conversation, so every new report sits under the
  last one. If you chose email, the report also arrives from your funeral
  home's assistant mailbox, and replying continues the conversation.
- Your check-ins appear under **Scheduled** in the sidebar, where you can
  pause, resume or delete them. You can also just ask: "stop the weekly ad review".

During a check-in the Assistant only reads and suggests. It never publishes,
changes budgets, sends emails to families or edits anything; budget or publish
changes can only be prepared for you to approve. If a check-in fails three
times in a row, it pauses and tells you why.

## Next

How drafts wait for you and how to approve them:
[The inbox, in depth](/docs/communication/inbox-in-depth/).

Source: https://lethra.ai/docs/communication/assistant/