# What you can ask your assistant

> Ask in plain words, like "What's on my plan today?", "Add 'Pay rent' due Friday" or "Move everything overdue to tomorrow." A task without a day goes to your Inbox. Adding or changing tasks needs the matching access level, chosen when you connected.

Talk to your assistant the way you'd talk to a person: there's no special wording to learn. These examples work in Claude, ChatGPT and the other assistants. Change the task names and days to your own.

What an assistant can do depends on the access you chose when you connected: **Read your plan**, **Add tasks**, or **Change and complete tasks**. See [Use Dayplan with AI assistants](https://dayplan.do/docs/ai-assistants).

> **Tip:** Mentioning Dayplan helps the assistant pick the right tool, for example "What's on my Dayplan today?"

## See your plan

These work with every access level.

| Ask | What the assistant gets |
| --- | --- |
| "What's on my plan today?" | Today's tasks, calendar events and free time, plus anything overdue, what's waiting in your Inbox and how busy the coming week is. |
| "What does Thursday look like?" | That day's tasks, events and free time. |
| "What did I finish today?" | The tasks you completed today. |
| "Find my tasks about the launch." | Open tasks with those words in their title or notes. |
| "What's in my Work area?" | The open tasks in that area. |
| "What's in my Backlog?" | The tasks you've parked for later. |

Free time is counted within your working hours, and for today, from now on.

## Add tasks

These need **Add tasks** or **Change and complete tasks**.

| Ask | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| "Add these to my Inbox: call the bank, renew my passport, book the dentist." | Three tasks at the top of your Inbox, in the order you gave them. |
| "Add 'Draft the newsletter' tomorrow at 10, for an hour." | A task on tomorrow's plan, at 10:00, 60 minutes long. |
| "Add 'Pay rent' due Friday, must do, in Home." | A task with a Friday deadline, the Must do priority, in your Home area. |
| "Water the plants every Monday and Thursday." | A task that repeats on those weekdays. It starts today unless you name a day to start on. |
| "Put 'Learn Spanish' in my Backlog for next year." | A task under **Next year** in your Backlog. |
| "Break 'Plan the launch' into steps." | Up to eight steps under that task, in order. |
| "Create a Garden area and add 'Prune the roses' to it." | A new area with its own colour, and the task in it. |

An assistant can add up to 25 tasks in one go, so a whole brain dump fits in one message.

## Change and finish tasks

These need **Change and complete tasks**.

| Ask | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| "Move everything overdue to tomorrow." | Each overdue task moves to tomorrow. |
| "Push my writing block to 3pm." | The task keeps its day and moves to 15:00. |
| "Take 'Old idea' out of today and put it back in my Inbox." | The task leaves its day and goes back to the Inbox. |
| "Mark 'Call the bank' and 'Book flights' as done." | Both tasks are completed. |
| "Actually, reopen 'Book flights'." | The task is open again. |
| "Delete 'Old idea'." | The assistant checks with you first, then moves the task to your Trash. |

Completing a repeating task marks that day done and moves the task to its next day, the same as checking it off in Dayplan.

## How Dayplan reads what you say

- **A task without a day goes to your Inbox,** where you plan it later. Say a day ("add it to today") to put it on your plan. A time without a day means today.
- **A day and a deadline are different.** The day is when you plan to do a task. The deadline ("due Friday") is when it must be done by. Tasks show their deadline as a label such as **Due Fri**. See Deadlines vs scheduled dates.
- **Areas are named:** "in Work", "to my Home area". If no area has that name, the assistant is told which areas you have, so it can check with you or create the area.
- **Priorities** are Must do, High, Medium and Low.
- **Repeats** can be every day, every weekday, every week, every month, every year, or on chosen weekdays ("every Monday and Thursday"). You'll notice that a repeat on chosen weekdays shows as **Custom** in the task's **Repeat** row. That's because Dayplan's own **Repeat** choices don't include it yet.
- **The Backlog** keeps tasks under a horizon: **Next week or two**, **Next month**, **Next quarter**, **Next year** or **Someday** (the default). See How to use the Backlog for later.
- **"Today" follows your day.** If your day runs past midnight (**Settings → General → New day starts at**), so does your assistant's "today".

> **Tip:** Ask for several things in one message. The assistant adds or changes them together, and if one of them can't be done, nothing in that request is changed, so the assistant can check with you and try again.

## What assistants can't do

- **Change your calendar events.** They see event titles and times, so they can plan around your meetings, but events stay as they are.
- **Open your Archived tasks or Trash.** They work with your open and done tasks.
- **Delete anything for good.** Deleting moves tasks to your Trash, where you can restore them. See Archived tasks, Trash and how to restore them.

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Source: https://dayplan.do/docs/assistant-prompts