Ed AI Assistant

Ed includes an AI assistant that can help authors work with BPMN diagrams and supporting process files. Use it as an authoring assistant, not as a substitute for reviewing and running the model.

What the Assistant Can Help With

The assistant can help:

  • inspect the current BPMN diagram;

  • suggest or make BPMN changes;

  • create or update form schema files;

  • explain workflow behavior;

  • run a diagram during authoring;

  • debug common form, script, and routing issues;

  • draft documentation for process models;

  • query the built-in Ed documentation reference when the answer depends on documented Ed behavior;

  • read the project collaboration journal and artifact index when they exist;

  • create advisory project journal entries when team notes appear to drift from the project description.

  • create offline Jira draft files from journal entries or directly from the current conversation;

  • review conversational Jira drafts and record explicit human approval before an exact action can be proposed.

Good Requests

Useful requests are concrete and include the intended outcome.

Examples:

  • “Add a User Task that collects requester name and email, then run the diagram to the form.”

  • “Review this diagram for disconnected paths and unclear gateway labels.”

  • “Create a Jinja-rendered dropdown from the fruits task data variable.”

  • “Explain why this gateway is taking the fallback branch.”

Review the Assistant’s Work

After the assistant changes a model:

  • inspect the BPMN diagram visually;

  • check generated JSON Schema and UI Schema files;

  • run the diagram with realistic data;

  • confirm task data contains only values that should persist;

  • confirm the final model still matches the business process.

Project Collaboration

When a workspace includes project-description.md, collaboration/artifact-index.md, and collaboration/journal/*.md, the assistant uses them as project context. Team notes remain project files so they can be reviewed, synced, and versioned with the BPMN source.

The assistant may add an ed_guidance journal entry when it sees possible drift from the project description, but it should not silently rewrite another team member’s note.

Built-in Documentation

The assistant can answer questions about documented Ed behavior, such as BPMN authoring, forms, running and debugging diagrams, workspaces and files, Filestore, GitHub sync, and how Ed relates to Spiff Arena. When its answer depends on documented behavior, it cites the relevant docs.

Jira Drafts

The assistant can draft Jira tickets from journal entries or directly from the current conversation. Drafts are local files for human review — nothing is created or updated in Jira itself until a reviewer approves it through the normal connector flow. Credentials are runtime-only and must never be written to project files.