Tutorial

Write a plain-language rule

The tray calls it an AI rule: a policy in your own words, set to Test.

The pictures are illustrations of the app's screens. The diagrams under each step show what happens around them.

1. Step one

   Where rules live

   The Rules page lists everything that decides what happens to a comment: the built-in rules that come with the tray, and your own. Only AI rules use AI credits. No rule can post, reply or remove a comment. To add one, the channel owner chooses Add a rule, which opens New custom rule.

   Rules Add a rule

2. Step two

   Choose the kind

   There are four kinds. Text rules and pattern rules are free and use no AI: a text rule looks for a word or phrase, a pattern rule for a regular expression. A filter rule is free too. It works from an assessment an AI rule has already made. The AI rule is the plain-language one. It reads new comments against a policy you write, and it's the only kind that uses AI credits. This walkthrough follows the AI rule.

   Text rule Pattern rule Filter rule AI rule

3. Step three

   Write the policy

   The field that matters most is Policy text: what the rule is looking for, in your words. The tray wraps your words in fixed safety instructions that you can't change. They tell the AI to treat each comment as text to assess, never as instructions to follow, and they set the format of its answer. You also choose who the rule protects, and how sure it must be before it holds. Anything below that, or aimed at somebody you didn't tick, goes to Your call instead.

   Policy text Who it protects

4. Step four

   It arrives switched off

   Create rule saves the rule switched off, on purpose. The page tells you: "Created, and disabled until you enable it. Try it against some sample text first." So a rule never starts acting before you've had a chance to try it.

   Create rule Disabled until you enable it

5. Step five

   Preview against sample text

   The rule's own page has a preview box. Paste in some text and see what the rule would do with it. The preview uses the same AI as the real thing and answers on the same page: it would hold the comment, leave it for you to decide, or leave it alone. Nothing is held, nothing is recorded against anyone, and nobody is notified. A preview only reads what you paste. It never runs on your real comments.

   Sample text Preview Nothing is held, nothing rings

6. Step six

   Turn it on, and it asks first

   Turn the rule on and it starts work, but only on comments the tray first sees after the rule was written. It never goes back over your archive. When it matches, the tray asks you in Needs review. A rule you write is always set to Test: only the six categories in the built-in policy can be set to Auto. If you edit the policy later, the new version asks first too.

   Turn it on Test