Discourse AI - Helper

[Discourse]

This guide explains how to set up and use the Helper feature of the Discourse AI plugin, including its capabilities and configuration options.

Required user level: Administrator

Helper assists users in community interaction, such as creating topics, writing posts, and reading content. It’s designed to enhance user productivity and improve the overall quality of contributions.

Features

Within composer

Note: In this demonstration, there was already written content in the composer.

Helper offers several features when creating new topics or replies:

• Generating topic titles, tags, and categories based on the content
• Proofreading text - including grammar and spelling checks
  • Windows keyboard shortcut: CTRLALTP
  • MacOS keyboard shortcut: ⌘⌥ P
• Translating selected text to the forum’s default language
• Creating Markdown tables
• Custom prompts for various text transformations
• Viewing and managing AI-suggested changes
• AI-powered captions for any uploaded images
• Turn any written dates to markdown-friendly Smart dates

While reading topics and posts

When browsing the forum, Helper can:

• Translate selected text to the user’s interface language
• Explain the meaning of the selected text within the context of the topic
• Proofreading text - including grammar and spelling checks
• Custom prompts for various text transformations
• Helper - Automatic chat threads titles

Enabling Helper

If your site is hosted by us on the Free, Standard, Business, or Enterprise plan, you can enable the Helper with just one click—no need to set up a third-party LLM provider. Learn more in this topic.

Prerequisites

You must configure at least one Large Language Model (LLM) from a provider.

To get started you can configure them through the Discourse AI - Large Language Model (LLM) settings page.

• OpenAI
• Anthropic
• Azure OpenAI
• AWS Bedrock with Anthropic access
• HuggingFace Endpoints with Llama2-like model
• Self-Hosting an OpenSource LLM
• Google Gemini
• Cohere

Configuration

1. Navigate to Admin → Settings → Discourse AI
2. Ensure the discourse ai enabled setting is checked
3. Click on the “Features” tab in the AI admin panel
4. Select “Unconfigured” features filter and find the section for Helper
5. Click Edit on the Helper section
6. Enable the Helper feature by checking ai helper enabled
7. Configure any other Helper related settings while you’re here ^[1]

The Helper feature is composed of several subsets, including proofreading, title suggestions, explain, post illustrator, and more. In the Helper settings, you can use the default personas assigned to each feature or configure alternative personas.

To manage personas and the LLM models attached to them, go to Admin → Settings → Discourse AI → Personas.

Customizing Helper features

You can selectively enable or disable specific Helper features using the ai helper enabled features setting found in the Helper features page. Available options include:

• suggestions: Controls suggestion buttons for titles, categories, and tags
• context_menu: Manages the menu for custom prompts, translation, and proofreading
• image_caption: Turns on AI-powered image captions through auto caption or “Caption with AI” button

Technical FAQ

Unable to see the AI button next to the title, tag, or category?

• AI Helper within composer requires a minimum of 10 words in the composer to appear and function.

How does the “Explain” feature work?

• Explain uses the topic title, post content, and selected text as context for the LLM to generate output.

What are some uses of custom prompts?

• Custom prompts can be used for various purposes, such as changing tone or translating to specific languages.

How accurate are Helper’s translations?

• While generally reliable, translations may be less accurate for uncommon languages.

Caveats

• We recommend limiting Helper access to specific user groups to help control costs associated with third-party LLM providers.

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1. For example:

   • Restrict Composer Helper usage with composer ai helper allowed groups

   • Limit Post Helper feature access with post ai helper allowed groups

   ↩︎

Last edited by @keegan 2025-06-13T16:35:43Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-08-06T02:33:06Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[EricGT]

Sorry I can’t give this topic a like at present. Don’t take that to mean I don’t like what the AI is doing, I think that part is great.

The video started from a Draft and most users will start from New Topic so it was a bit confusing for me when I tried this on the OpenAI forum where this is active thinking it should work.

When I started with New Topic I had to enter the title, select a category, skipped adding tags and add two lines in the post before the magic AI options appeared.

Then after adding more text the AI buttons appeared.

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I do find the post quite useful and you did a nice job, just needs some clarification for users not use to this technology.

[EricGT]

Side note:

In the early days of the Discourse AI there was the ability to have the AI generate a new title for the topic based on the existing text. I used this often as a category moderator when they titles ran long, think wrapped around when viewing in a list. Then the way to do this vanished; I may have missed how it was supposed to be done but now it is back with this.

As a category moderator one can not edit a post and the AI option is next to the title for changing.

Was looking for that in the announcement, might be worth a mention.

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The following post contains some screenshots.

Suggestion to add for Chat GPT

[Saif (Saif Murtaza)]

@EricGT

The video started from a Draft and most users will start from New Topic so it was a bit confusing for me when I tried this on the OpenAI forum where this is active thinking it should work.

When I started with New Topic I had to enter the title, select a category, skipped adding tags and add two lines in the post before the magic AI options appeared.

Hey @EricGT so the video I put in a note that says that the content is already there. It was trying to make the demo video as short and succinct as possible.

@EricGT

Then after adding more text the AI buttons appeared.

I have the following documented for that reason!

@Saif

Technical FAQ

• How does AI Helper work within Composer? Why am I not seeing the icon?
  • AI Helper uses text content (min 10 words) within Composer and passes that context to a Large Language Model (LLM) to generate topic titles/tags/categories/etc

[JammyDodger]

Little update on this one…

You can now select/deselect AI helper features using the setting ai_helper_enabled_features:

DEV: Add granular control for AI composer helper features

[bekircem]

 ai_helper_model: We couldn't get a response from this model. Check your settings first.

What could be the problem? I’ve identified the Open AI key.

[Falco]

@bekircem

What could be the problem? I’ve identified the Open AI key.

Is your OpenAI API key working? Can you issue a request for that same model from your PC?

[bekircem]

It seems like it’s showing as unused in the OpenAI dashboard. But could it be because the configuration wasn’t completed? How can I verify this on my local machine?

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

@JammyDodger

You can now select/deselect AI helper features using the setting ai_helper_enabled_features:

What features are available, and what does each one do?

[Saif (Saif Murtaza)]

@mattdm

What features are available, and what does each one do?

The AI helper in the composer encompasses three main features including suggestions, context_menu, and image_caption

The setting allows us to have granular control of the AI helper by being able to enable/disable those main features.

1. suggestions refers to the the suggestion buttons that appear in the composer next to the title/category/tags. Clicking the suggestion button can suggest topic titles, category, tags, etc.
2. context_menu refers the the menu that appears when you select a portion of text in the composer, i.e. the menu that pops up with the custom prompt/translate/proofread/etc
3. image_caption refers to the “Caption with AI” button that appears when you hover over an uploaded image in the composer preview. This allows you to generate a caption based on the contents of the image.

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Instead of a setting for which features are enabled, how about a setting for each, for which groups each is enabled for (if any)?

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

And actually, also… could the context menu items be separated? Ideally the same suggestion — list of groups for each.

[Saif (Saif Murtaza)]

@mattdm

And actually, also… could the context menu items be separated? Ideally the same suggestion — list of groups for each.

I think eventually we would like to move to a system to provide more granular control of features within AI Helper and in other AI features, something in the radar for the future

[Moin]

@Discourse

While writing, you can select text anywhere and ask the AI Helper to proofread, generate a markdown table, or translate into English.

I think “translate to English” is outdated.

@Discourse

While reading topics/posts

• Only for logged-in users
• Translate selected text to English

Now it’s translate to user’s interface language

@Discourse

Within Composer

• Only for logged-in users, can be used when creating a new topic or replying
• Generate topic titles/tags/categories, based on text context content within Composer
• Proofread selected text
• Translate selected text to English

Now it’s translate to forum’s default language

[jrgong]

Is there any way do add additional prompt or instructions to the translation prompt?

In our case we want to offer translations EN->DE and add the instruction to use the informal you (Du) instead of the formal (Sie) you by default.

[EricGT]

@EricGT

Sorry I can’t give this topic a like at present. Don’t take that to mean I don’t like what the AI is doing, I think that part is great.

Really wanted to use strike-through with the text but can’t edit the post.

The first post is really nice and quite useful, so I gave it a thumbs up. I really do appreciate the extra effort put into your post and look forward to reading more.