Ask a question, or ask for the change
Ask answers questions about every section of RepoOps in plain words, and drafts the change you ask for as a card that changes nothing until you press Confirm. It runs on your own model key, the same way in the desktop app and on repoops.ai.
Watch it
Transcript
The walkthrough is silent. These are its captions, in order. Every value it shows is illustrative.
- 0:00Ask on Today, or press Ctrl J on any page
- 0:06Each page Ask read is a chip. What it cites opens in one click.
- 0:12A draft changes nothing until you press Confirm
- 0:18Undo drafts the way back and confirms it in the same click
- 0:24On repoops.ai a high-risk change needs a code from your authenticator app
The cases, names, codes and amounts in this video are illustrative.
How to
A model key of your own from Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenRouter. In the desktop app add it in Settings, Set or test a key; on repoops.ai add it on My Brain. Ask never answers on a RepoOps key.
On repoops.ai, a paid plan. In the desktop app Ask is free, with or without a repoops.ai account.
For a high-risk change on repoops.ai, an authenticator app on your account.
- Open Ask.
Press the Ask button in the top bar, or Ctrl J (Cmd J on a Mac), on any page. The drawer opens beside the page and says what it is looking at: the section, the site in scope and the workspace. Today also has an Ask box with suggested questions, the command palette lists Ask RepoOps a question, and text you type in the palette that matches nothing becomes a last Ask row, so Enter asks it. Memory's Ask tab lists the same threads.
- Ask in plain words.
Type a question and press Send. While it works, a chip appears for each page it reads, such as
remediation.cases. The answer cites what it found as cards that open the finding, change, agent or session. Under each answer, What I used says how many reads it made and what the answer cost on your key. If a number in the answer does not match any number Ask read, a line under the answer says Check these figures and names it. Tick Deep question for a why question or one that crosses sections. - Ask for the change, then read the card.
Ask for a change the way you would ask a teammate: close these cases, set this budget, accept that lesson. Ask answers with a draft card: the section, what it will do, a low risk or high risk tag, and a table of each field now and after. A draft changes nothing. A low-risk draft stays open for 15 minutes and a high-risk one for 5. One card can hold up to 25 rows, such as 25 cases, and each row shows its own before and after.
- Confirm, or Cancel.
Press Confirm (Confirm all on a card with several rows). Ask then makes the change through the page's own route, signed in as you, so the page's role, plan and scope checks run exactly as if you had pressed its button. If someone changed the same thing after the draft was made, the change is refused and the card says what moved. Cancel closes the draft with nothing changed. On repoops.ai a high-risk card has a Code from your authenticator app field: type the current 6-digit code, then Confirm.
- Undo, and find the change later.
An applied card shows Undo when the change has a way back. Undo drafts the opposite change and confirms it in the same click; when the old state cannot come back exactly, the card says so. A high-risk Undo asks for its own code. Every change made through Ask is recorded in the audit trail as made through Ask, and Settings lists them under Changes made through Ask, with a link to the thread that asked for it. Today's Changed through Ask tile counts this week's.
Use cases
Close what the last deploy fixed
- Situation
- On Monday morning you want to know which open cases the weekend's deploy fixed, and to close them without opening each one.
- You do
- Open Ask on Today and ask: which cases did the last deploy fix? Close them. Read the card, which lists each case with its status now and after, and press Confirm all.
- You see
- Each case is resolved through the case page's own route, each row says whether it applied, and every one is in Changes made through Ask. If a teammate moved one of the cases in the meantime, that row is refused and says who moved it.
Lower a budget
- Situation
- An admin on repoops.ai wants the team's monthly budget lowered to $3,000 after a spike.
- You do
- Ask: lower our monthly budget to $3,000. The card shows the budget now and after with a high risk tag. Type the current code from your authenticator app and press Confirm.
- You see
- The budget changes through the Cost page's own route, as you, and the audit trail records it as made through Ask. A recovery code would have been refused, and without the code nothing changes.
Expected outcome
Next step: Follow Add a key in Settings. The key is entered on the Settings page (My Brain on repoops.ai), never in the chat.
Next step: Ask on repoops.ai stores your threads, so it needs a paid plan. Ask runs free in the RepoOps desktop app on your key.
Next step: The error links Change the cap. Raise it in Settings, Ask in the desktop app or in Team settings, Your Ask on repoops.ai, or wait for the next day.
Next step: An owner or admin turns it back on in Settings, Ask, What Ask may do for this team.
Next step: Follow Set it up, add an authenticator app, then ask for the change again. Confirm stays off until you do.
Next step: The thread read a transcript, a log or other text RepoOps did not write. Ask for the change again in a new thread, or make it on its page.
Next step: Read what the card says moved, then ask again for a fresh draft.
What else to consider
What Ask can read
Ask reads Today, Production, Attribution, AI Security, Remediation, Cost, Memory and Settings. Each read is the same request the page makes, as you, so Ask sees only what the page would show you: your role, your plan and your sites apply. In the desktop app it reads this machine's data; on repoops.ai it reads your team's. A team can stop Ask from reading prompt text and transcripts, and each transcript Ask opens on repoops.ai is audited the same as opening it on Attribution.
What Ask can change, and the risk tiers
Reading is the first tier: Ask answers and changes nothing. The second is a low-risk change, such as a case status or owner, a run label, a saved query, a cost entry or a lesson review: one Confirm applies it. The third is a high-risk change, such as a member's role, removing a member, revoking a device, a budget, the redaction policy, repository controls, retention holds, approving a fix or a decision on a held call. On repoops.ai each of these needs a current code from your authenticator app, a recovery code is not accepted, and the code is checked once. A fix approval that needs two people says so on the card: your Confirm is one approval, and a second person gives the other.
In the desktop app, which runs for one person with no roles or authenticator, a high-risk card says so and applies in one click. Ask never drafts a high-risk change in a thread that read text RepoOps did not write, such as a transcript or a log, so text inside that data cannot steer a risky change. Ask drafts only what you could do on the page yourself; a change it cannot draft gets a reason and a link to the page.
What Ask never does
Some changes never run in chat, not even as a draft: billing and plans, your model key, a secret's value, single sign-on, install keys, fleet secrets and the fleet kill switch, connecting an account or a production source, the invoice mailbox, and deleting or exporting your account. Ask answers with a button that opens the page that does it.
Your key and the daily cap
Every answer runs on your own Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenRouter key and is billed to you by that provider. Ask stops at a daily cap: $5 unless you change it, anywhere from $0 to $200. In the desktop app, Settings, Ask sets the cap and the models for quick and deep answers; on repoops.ai, Team settings, Your Ask does, and deletes your threads too. Before each model call Ask sets aside the most that call could cost, so two tabs cannot pass the cap together. Ask answers up to 20 questions per 10 minutes and 2 at once.
The team policy
On repoops.ai, Settings, Ask, What Ask may do for this team has a row for each section with Draft changes and High-risk changes switches, plus Read prompt text and transcripts through Ask and Members may use Ask. Owners and admins change it. Every switch starts on, and a switch can only take rights away: with all of them on, Ask still has no more rights than the person's role gives. Reads stay on. A read-only member can ask questions but never gets a draft. A switch turned off refuses the next draft and any Confirm still open, with the reason.
The desktop app and repoops.ai
It is one Ask: both apps run the same engine, the same drawer and the same rules. The desktop app reads this machine's data on the key on this machine, and a free user who never connects to repoops.ai gets the same Ask. On repoops.ai Ask reads your team's data on the key you added there, and it needs a paid plan. When the desktop app is connected to your team and the CLI is signed in on that machine, its Ask can also read your team's views on repoops.ai, as you, and draft a change to them; that card says Confirm on repoops.ai and opens it there. Answers built on team data count as text RepoOps did not write, so a high-risk change on the machine is not drafted in the same thread.
From your agent, over MCP
An agent such as Claude Code can use the same catalog over MCP, with three tools: ask_read runs one view as you (with no view it lists them), ask_search finds cases and team memory, and ask_draft drafts one change. On repoops.ai, make an Ask over MCP token in Team settings, Security: name it, enter a current code from your authenticator app, and copy it, since RepoOps shows it once. Add https://repoops.ai/api/ask/mcp to the agent as an HTTP MCP server and send the token as a Bearer token. It works for Ask over MCP and nothing else, lasts 30 days, and is listed under your tokens with Revoke. Put this one in an agent's config rather than the CLI token in ~/.repoops/auth.json, which can do everything you can for 90 days; that one still works here for now. A token stops working when you revoke it, sign out everywhere, or replace or reset your authenticator. Each read runs as you through the page's own route, so your role, plan and scope apply. Add ?team= and a team id to pick one of your other teams. In the desktop app, the RepoOps MCP server that repoops connect --local sets up has the same three tools and reads this machine.
A draft from an agent changes nothing. The answer has a link that opens the card in the Ask drawer, where you read it and press Confirm; no MCP tool confirms. Ask treats an agent's request as text you did not write, so the card lists it as an outside source, and Ask never drafts a high-risk change over MCP: open Ask and ask for it in your own words. The tools call no model, so they cost nothing on your key and do not count against your cap. They take 60 calls in 10 minutes, and on repoops.ai each call is recorded in the audit trail. The desktop app runs for one person, so any program on the machine that can reach RepoOps can confirm a draft there, as it can make any other change.
Privacy
Before a question is stored or sent to the model, Ask removes any key, token or other secret pasted into it; email addresses stay, since a question may name a member. On repoops.ai the answer is redacted the same way before it is stored, the server logs record which pages a turn read and never the question, and threads are kept for your plan's history window, then deleted. In the desktop app threads stay on the machine until you press Delete my threads in Settings, Ask.