Using your assistant in Chrome

Praxivara has a Chrome extension that puts your assistant in a panel down the side of the browser, next to whatever you are working on. It is a channel, in the same way WhatsApp or your phone is a channel: the same assistant, the same memory, the same connected apps, and the same conversation you have on praxivara.com. Start a thought in the panel and finish it on the website, or the other way round.

What you need

• A Praxivara account. The panel is a way into the account you already have, not a separate product.
• Google Chrome, version 116 or newer. You can check yours at chrome://settings/help.
• Chrome specifically. There is no Firefox or Safari version at the moment.

Installing it

1. Open the listing on the Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/eankldhpogdigdealpeacbdmcdlfkaim
2. Click Add to Chrome, then confirm.
3. Chrome lists what the extension can do before it installs. For websites it asks for praxivara.com only — the site it talks to. It also mentions reading your browsing history, which is Chrome's phrasing for the extension knowing the title and address of the tab you are asking about, and showing notifications. No other website is granted at install; that is asked for later, one site at a time.
4. Pin it if you like. Click the puzzle-piece button at the top right of Chrome and pin Praxivara Assistant so its button is always visible.

Opening the panel

There are three ways in. The first two open an empty panel; the right-click entries also drop the page or your selection into the message box, ready for you to edit or send:

• Click the Praxivara button in the Chrome toolbar.
• Press Ctrl+Shift+Y, or Command+Shift+Y on a Mac.
• Right-click on a page and choose Ask Praxivara about this page, or select some text first and choose Ask Praxivara about this.

The panel opens beside the page rather than on top of it, so you can keep reading while you type.

Signing in

The first time you open the panel you will see a short screen explaining what the assistant can and cannot do with the page you are on. Read it and press I understand.

Then press Sign in to Praxivara. A Praxivara sign-in window opens; sign in there exactly as you would on the website, including two-factor if you use it. When it finishes, the window closes itself and the panel is connected.

That browser is then listed against your account, and you can disconnect it whenever you want. The door icon in the panel header signs this browser out. Your conversations are not affected — they live in your account, not in the browser.

Each browser you connect is separate. Signing in on your work laptop does not sign you in on your home machine, and signing out of one leaves the other alone.

What is in the header

• New conversation — starts a fresh thread and clears the panel.
• Sign out — the door icon. Disconnects this browser.
• Settings — opens Praxivara on the web, at the page where this browser is listed.

What you can do in the panel

Ask it anything

Most of what people ask has nothing to do with whichever tab happens to be open — draft this email, what did I agree to last week, chase that invoice — and it is treated that way. Your tab is only ever read when the answer needs it, and you can read more about that in Asking your assistant about the page you're on.

Start from a suggestion

An empty conversation offers a few chips to get going — summarise this page, key facts, draft a reply, what's next. Tapping one sends it straight away.

Use a slash command

Type / as the first character of an empty message and a short menu appears: /task, /reminder, /note, /schedule, /image, /excel, /pdf, /search and /page. Picking one fills the box with the opening words so you can finish the sentence in your own words. It does not send anything on its own.

Attach files

Use the paperclip, paste an image straight into the box, or drag a file onto the composer. You can send up to fifteen files at once, each up to 20 MB — images, PDFs, spreadsheets, documents, CSVs, text and log files. Attachments go into your Praxivara Drive exactly as they do on the website.

Dictate instead of typing

Press the microphone and talk. The first time you use it Chrome opens a small tab to ask for microphone permission, because Chrome will not let a side panel ask for the microphone by itself. Allow it there and you are returned to the panel automatically. Each dictation runs up to two minutes; the tick uses what you said, the cross throws it away.

Choose a model

There is a model picker next to the paperclip. It starts on Auto, which lets Praxivara choose for each message. The models offered are the ones your plan includes.

Stop a reply

While the assistant is answering, the send button becomes a stop button. Press it to cut the reply short.

Cards, approvals and everything else

The panel draws answers with the same renderer as the web assistant, so tool results, charts, diagrams and interactive widgets look and behave the way they do on praxivara.com.

That includes approval cards. Anything that needs your say-so — sending an email, spending money, changing something in a connected app — shows the same card here, and nothing happens until you press the button yourself.

Notifications

If a reply arrives while you are looking at another window, Chrome shows a single notification. Click it and the panel comes back. Nothing else notifies you.

Picking the conversation back up elsewhere

The panel remembers which conversation you were in, and a half-typed message is kept as a draft if you close it mid-thought. Because it is the same conversation as everywhere else, you can carry on from praxivara.com, from your phone, or from any other channel you have connected.

A file the assistant makes appears as a row you can click. It opens in a new tab rather than previewing inside the panel.