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Search and the assistant

The top bar has a search box and an assistant button. Search finds projects, documents, and catalog items in the selected organization. The assistant answers questions and does tasks with the Imbi API.

Find something

  1. Press Cmd+K (macOS) or Ctrl+K (other systems) on any page. The search box in the top bar gets the focus. You can also click the box.
  2. Type some words, for example payment service.
  3. Use the Up and Down arrow keys to select a result.
  4. Press Enter to open the selected result.
Key What it does
Cmd+K or Ctrl+K Puts the focus in the search box and selects its text
Up, Down Moves the selection through the results and the Ask Imbi row
Enter Opens the selected result. On the Ask Imbi row, asks the assistant. When the list is closed, opens it again
Tab Asks the assistant. See Ask the assistant from search
Esc Closes the list

Search starts 200 ms after you stop typing.

Results

Search is semantic: it compares the meaning of your words with the meaning of the stored text. A result does not need to contain your exact words.

The list shows the results in groups. Projects is first, then Documents, then the other types. The other groups are Project types, Link definitions, and Document templates, plus each other type that the search can open. Each group shows a maximum of 5 results. A project result also shows the project score.

The search covers the items of the selected organization:

  • The organization, its teams, environments, project types, integrations, tags, document templates, and link definitions.
  • Projects, their releases, and the packages they use.
  • Documents of projects, project types, and users, and their comments.

Search does not show items of archived projects. The list shows only results that it can open, and only results with a close enough match.

When nothing matches, the list shows No results. When the search fails, it shows Search failed. Try again.

Search needs the search:read permission. The admin, developer, default, and readonly roles have it. The API is GET /organizations/{org}/search?q=<text>.

Imbi updates the search index when you save an item. If search does not find an item that exists, an administrator can rebuild the index with the Reindex Search maintenance operation. See Maintenance.

The last row of the list is Ask Imbi about "\<your text>". Press Tab, or select the row and press Enter. Imbi then:

  1. Starts a new assistant conversation.
  2. Opens the assistant panel.
  3. Sends your text to the assistant, together with the first 3 search results as context.

The assistant

Open the assistant

Click the sparkles button in the top bar (its label is Assistant). The assistant panel opens on the right side of the page. Click the button again, or click Close in the panel, or press Esc in the panel, to close it.

The panel stays open when you go to other pages. The page content moves to the left to make space for it.

Send a message

  1. Type your question in the box at the bottom of the panel. For example: Which projects of the payments team have no PagerDuty service?
  2. Press Enter to send. Press Shift+Enter to add a new line.
  3. Read the answer. The assistant streams it while it writes.

While the assistant works, the panel shows what it does, for example Searching projects or Running \<tool name>. After the answer, the panel lists the tools that the assistant used.

To stop an answer, click the stop button. Imbi keeps the text that the assistant wrote before you stopped it.

Each message has these buttons:

Button What it does
Copy to clipboard Copies the message text
Retry On an answer: removes the answer and sends the question again

Each message that you send includes a context block with your name, email address, roles, and the selected organization. The panel does not show this block.

Conversations

Imbi stores each conversation. Only you can see your conversations. The assistant makes a short title for a conversation from the first question and answer.

In the panel:

Button What it does
History Lists your 10 most recent conversations. All conversations… opens the full page
New conversation Starts an empty conversation
Open full page Opens the current conversation at /assistant/<conversation id>

The full page, /assistant, lists all your conversations in the groups Today, Previous 7 days, and Older. Use Search conversations to filter the list by title. Click New conversation to start one. Click Open in side panel to go back to the page that you were on, with the panel open.

The UI cannot rename, archive, or delete a conversation. The assistant API can: PATCH /conversations/{id} renames or archives, and DELETE /conversations/{id} deletes.

A conversation can have a maximum of 100 messages. Then the assistant answers that the conversation reached the maximum number of turns. Start a new conversation.

What the assistant can do

The assistant acts as you. It uses your access token for each call to the Imbi API. Thus it can read and change only what your roles let you read and change. The assistant can make changes, for example create a project or edit a team. It does not ask you to confirm a change first. Read its plan before you ask it to change something.

The assistant gets its tools from these sources:

Source Tools
Imbi API One tool for each API operation, made from the API's OpenAPI document. The sign-in, MFA, and status operations, and each operation marked as not for AI, are not tools
MCP servers The tools of each enabled MCP server in Admin. Their names have the form mcp_<prefix>_<tool>. See Assistant and MCP servers
Browser tools navigate_to opens a page of Imbi in your browser. refresh_data reloads the data on the page after a change
refresh_openapi_spec Reloads the API tools and reconnects to the MCP servers, without a restart

In one answer, the assistant can do a maximum of 10 rounds of tool calls (IMBI_ASSISTANT_MAX_TOOL_ROUNDS).

The system prompt comes from the imbi-assistant/system prompt in the prompt CMS. A new conversation uses the model of that prompt version. If the prompt version has no model, it uses IMBI_ASSISTANT_MODEL. A conversation keeps its model after it starts. An administrator changes the prompt and the model in the CMS. See Prompts. For the service and its settings, see Assistant.