Twelfth AI and chats

Working in Twelfth
Twelfth AI & chats

Twelfth includes an assistant you can ask about your commercial work. It can explain a recommendation, pull together context, or draft a piece of work for you to review. Conversations you start are saved as chats so you can return to them. Standalone chats are private unless their creator shares them in a way the workspace allows.

Starting a chat

Use New chat in the left rail (the primary create action) to open a blank conversation.
Ask a question or describe something you want to get done. Twelfth answers from your workspace context.
Open the work assistant drawer from the header to chat alongside whatever page you are on, without leaving it.

Attaching a spreadsheet or a screenshot

Any chat composer takes a file with your question: click the paperclip, drag the file onto the page, or paste a screenshot into the message box (Cmd+V on a Mac, Ctrl+V on Windows).

Spreadsheets (.xlsx, .xls, .csv) are read in your browser and the rows go with the message.
Screenshots (PNG, JPEG or WebP) are shown to the assistant as a picture, so you can ask about a screen from a system Twelfth is not connected to. Before it is sent the image is resized and stripped of its metadata, including any location a phone added.

Figures the assistant reads off a screenshot are yours, not Twelfth’s: the answer marks them “(read from your screenshot)”, and the note under the answer says they have not been checked against your data. Follow-up questions in the same chat still see the most recent screenshot. The picture is kept in Twelfth’s file storage with the chat, visible to you and to anyone the chat is shared with, and listed on Artefacts as a screenshot.

Charts from Excel arrive from Twelfth for Excel: the figures the chart plots and Excel’s picture of it. The chat draws the chart live from the figures, with Excel’s picture one click away, and the assistant reads the figures rather than the picture. It is listed on Artefacts as an Excel chart, linked to the turn.

When Twelfth asks first

If your request leaves open something that would change the answer, such as which product, which period, which retailers or how wide a scope, Twelfth asks before it assumes. The questions arrive together in one card under its message:

Pick a choice for each question. Some questions take more than one choice, marked Pick any.
Type your own answer in the box under any question if none of the choices fits.
Press Send answers (or Cmd+Enter). Your answers go back as one message, and Twelfth carries on from there.
Press Skip, use your judgement to let Twelfth decide. It says what it assumed, so you can correct it.

When there is one obvious choice, Twelfth uses it and says so in a line rather than asking. A chat waiting on your answer shows Your turn in the chat list, and the Chats item in the left rail shows how many are waiting. In Slack, Teams or Google Chat the same questions arrive as a message; reply in the thread with your answers.

Choosing the model

The pill in the composer toolbar shows the model and thinking strength your next message uses, for example Gemini 3.8 Flash Auto. Click it to search for a different model, set Thinking (Auto, Instant, Balanced or Thorough), or turn Plan first on or off. In a chat it also sets Show working, which is how much of its working Twelfth shows while it answers. Your model and thinking choices are remembered in this browser.

Dictating a message

Click the microphone beside the send button and speak. Your words are typed into the message box at the cursor, and you can edit them before you send. While Twelfth is listening, the phrase it is still hearing shows in grey beside the microphone. Click the microphone again, press Esc or send the message to stop. The first time, your browser asks for permission to use the microphone.

Dictation uses your browser’s own speech service, so it works in Chrome, Edge and Safari but not Firefox. In Chrome and Edge the audio is sent to the browser maker’s speech service to be turned into text. You can still use your computer’s own dictation (on a Mac, press the Fn key twice) in any chat box.

Plan first

Press Shift+Tab in the message box, or click the checklist icon beside the paperclip, when you want to agree the approach before Twelfth does the work. The composer shows that plan mode is on: a striped band along its top edge, a tinted border, and a Plan badge. Press Shift+Tab again, or click the badge, to turn it off. Instead of answering, Twelfth replies with the steps it would take (what it will look up, over which period and scope, and what it will hand back) and any questions it still has. Press Go ahead to run the plan. Plan first switches itself off once you agree a plan. To change the plan, type what you want different instead and Twelfth revises it.

Tables and charts

Expand a product row to see its Product IDs: SKU, source-system ID or PLU, supplier IDs and product codes, manufacturer codes and barcodes, where available. Right-click a product row, name or SKU for actions such as Copy SKU, Copy PLU and Copy Supplier ID. Chat tables keep identifiers carried in hidden row fields available in these expanded details and copy actions. Catalogue, supplier, remit, task and pre-order tables follow the same pattern. Saved reports and Excel answers also keep identifiers in expanded rows.

When Twelfth draws a data table, quantities and monetary totals use whole numbers, unit prices keep two decimal places, and percentages use up to one. Other numeric measures use no more than two decimal places. Product codes and barcodes stay as written. Sorting, Copy for spreadsheet and Download CSV use the original values.

Prose is the assistant’s default. When the rows are the answer it draws a table; when the shape of the data is the answer it draws a chart, and it says when a set shown is partial. Four kinds:

Line: change over time, such as weekly units or price history, with one line per retailer or supplier where that helps.
Bar: a ranking or a comparison of a few items on one measure.
Scatter: how two measures relate across one set of items, when the question is about the relationship or the outliers: price against units sold, margin against velocity, cover against sales rate. Points are named, and sized where a third measure matters.
Matrix: a portfolio read, when you are deciding what to do with a set of categories, suppliers or lines: invest, milk or harvest; protect or prune; “where is the money”; “which of these are my cash cows”. Each item is placed by two measures in four named quadrants. The default is the performance grid from the methodology, gross margin against sales volume, with Flagship (high margin, high volume), Core traffic (low margin, high volume), Maintain (high margin, low volume) and Rehab (low margin, low volume). Ask in growth-and-share terms and it uses Stars, Cash cows, Question marks and Dogs instead, or name your own four. The splits fall at the medians of the items shown unless you give cutoffs, so the bands are relative to your own portfolio, not absolute, and a category’s role can override its cell.

Every chart has a Table toggle to see the rows behind it, and Keep on a chart or table in a project conversation writes it into the project’s record. In Twelfth for Excel a chart in an answer is placed in the workbook as an Excel chart rather than drawn in the pane.

Checking a source

A numbered, underlined phrase in an answer opens its source card. Click it, or
focus it and press Enter, to see the supporting figure, product and provenance.
Press Escape to close the card and return to the phrase. These source values
are recorded with the answer; they do not update when today’s stock changes.
An answer can still include a Figures cited disclosure when its evidence is
grouped by product. A phrase without a source control has no inline citation.

From conversation to action

Twelfth can help organise and explain the work, and it can propose a task or a decision. What it proposes is not committed. It becomes a task for you to review, adjust and act on, with a link back to the conversation that produced it.

Recommendations remain yours

The assistant helps you think and draft. Anything that changes price, stock, or orders still waits on a person: you raise the order or record the decision on its task. See how work flows.

Taking an answer somewhere else

Every turn carries an options menu beside its You / Twelfth byline:

Copy link to this message: a link that opens the conversation and scrolls to that exact turn. Copying a link does not grant access: a colleague can follow it only if the conversation has been shared with them or their remit, or the workspace allows link sharing. Arriving on one flashes the message it points at.
Copy message text: the answer on its own, without the surrounding chrome.
Open this message: jumps to the full-page conversation at that turn. Shown when you are reading the chat somewhere else, such as the drawer.

Tables inside an answer have their own menu in the top-right corner:

Copy for spreadsheet: tab-separated text, which Excel and Google Sheets split into columns when you paste.
Download CSV: the same table as a .csv file.

Figures leave as data

A cell a spreadsheet would run as a formula is exported as text, so a table built from an uploaded supplier sheet or a scraped page cannot execute when you open it.

The person who started a standalone chat can choose Share from the conversation header. What they can choose depends on the workspace’s chat-sharing policy:

Private: only the person who started the chat can open it.
Workspace link: any active member of the same workspace who has the link can read it. The chat is unlisted, so it does not appear in other people’s chat history.
Specific people or remits: selected people and everyone currently assigned to a selected remit can read it. These recipients see the conversation in chat history with a Shared badge and can use the Shared with me filter.

A shared chat is read-only for recipients. They can see the whole live conversation, including past and future messages, attachments, and working traces, but only the creator can continue it or change a proposal. A category, product, supplier, or other badge records what the conversation is about; it never grants access. Remit sharing follows current remit assignments, so access changes when the workspace changes who owns that remit.

Changing the workspace policy revokes existing shares

When an owner or admin changes the workspace’s chat-sharing policy, every shared standalone chat becomes private and its previous recipients are removed. Chat creators can share again under the new policy.

Finding past chats

Chats in the left rail lists every conversation you have started, including drafts, plus conversations explicitly shared with you or one of your remits. Open one to pick up where you left off; a shared conversation opens read-only. Link-shared conversations stay out of the list and open only from their link.

Use the three-dot menu at the top right of a chat, or hover over its row in the inner sidebar and open the three-dot menu, to Archive chat. Archiving hides it from your history and keeps its messages and sharing intact; it only affects your own list. Choose Archived above the history to find archived chats, then open a chat’s three-dot menu and choose Restore chat.

The work assistant drawer

The right-hand drawer follows you across the app with three tabs:

AI chat: ask about the current page or your work.
Docs: the documentation that maps to the page you are on.
Support: send feedback, optionally with the current page and a screenshot.

On a full-page chat the conversation on screen is the chat, so the drawer drops its AI chat tab there and keeps Docs and Support. The AI button in the header takes you to the conversation you are already reading rather than opening a second one beside it.

Connecting an external assistant

Owners and admins can also connect a compatible external assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, and others) to the workspace over a read-only connection. See AI and agents.