Ask 1barn

Where to ask

At the top of the sidebar, the box that used to say Search now says Ask, with the Ask 1barn mark and ⌘K. Click it, or press ⌘K (Ctrl-K on Windows), / or ?from any page. It's one box for finding things and for asking:

1. Type a name or a page(“jun”, “payroll”) and matches come first: horses, people, pages, documents, events. Horses and people show their picture and a line about them (“Gelding · Stall 5 · Jordan Ellis”, “Boarder · owns Maple”). Ask 1barn · “what you typed” sits below them.
2. Type a question or an errand(“blaze threw a shoe, get him on Thursday's farrier day and let his owner know”) and Ask 1barn comes first; press Enter to ask. It counts as a question when it ends with ?, starts with a question word (who, what, when, where, which, why, how, is, are, does, can, should…), or runs four words or more. Matches still show below.

The g-then-a-letter and n-then-a-letter shortcuts work as before; see Search and keyboard shortcuts.

Ask 1barn is for the barn's owner, managers and staff. Boarders, riders, families and vendors don't see it; for them the box still says Search and works as it always has.

The quick answer, in place

Asking grows the box into the answer. First come the steps 1barn takes as it works, one line per lookup (“Found Blaze”, “Thursday's farrier day has room”), then the answer, then any changes as cards. A reply field underneath takes a follow-up.

The answer is worked out on 1barn's servers, so you can close the box with Esc and keep using the page; press ⌘K again and the conversation is there. ‹ in the box goes back to searching. A question stops itself after 3 minutes, and Stop ends one sooner.

Full screen

⤢ in the box takes the same conversation full screen, with room for longer work like pasting an email or planning next week. ‹on the full screen goes back to the page you were on. The full screen isn't in the menu; besides ⤢, you can reach it from ⌘K's Go to list (Ask 1barn, full screen), and the help center's Try in 1barn links open it with the question typed in for you.

With nothing asked yet, the full screen opens on up to four starting points picked from what's waiting at your barn right now: requests waiting for you, records overdue or due within 7 days, the care round underway and how many horses it has left, unread messages, and your shifts today. Each card says why it's there first (“2 waiting for you”). Owners and managers see what's on at the barn; staff see their own day. On a quiet day you get everyday ones instead, like a morning brief. Picking them reads what 1barn already shows on your dashboard, so it doesn't use a question.

Tap a card to put its question in the box, where you can change it before you send it. The ↑ on an Ask card asks it straight away. A Do card has no ↑, since what it changes comes back to you as a card to review anyway. Start typing instead and up to three Go tomatches (the horses, people, events, documents and pages ⌘K would find) join the skills that match in the cards' place, with your own words to ask as they are: a name or a page leads with Go to, and Enter opens it without asking anything, while a question puts Ask first, by the same rule as ⌘K. Horses and people wear their picture and the same line as in ⌘K.

Browse skills (or / in an empty box) opens the whole library of things to ask, filled in with your own horses and people. It opens on the ones for you, then every category with how many it has; search covers all of them, and Ask and Do narrow it to questions or to changes. On a wide screen it sits beside the conversation; on a phone it comes up from the bottom. A tap puts one in the box to edit before you send it. In the quick answer, Skills opens the same library.

Links in answers

Every horse, person, event, service day, lesson and shift 1barn mentions links to its page, styled like any name link in the app, and the change cards name the horse or person with a link too. Tap one to open it; the conversation stays, and ⌘K (or the Ask tab on a phone) brings it back. Reading runs with your own permissions: Ask sees what you can see in 1barn, nothing more.

Questions about 1barn itself

Ask how something in 1barn works (“how do I add a farrier to a service day?”, “what does Needs you mean?”) and Ask 1barn looks in this help center first, a step that reads Search the help center, then answers from the article, with a link to it.

When the help center doesn't cover it, or it's about billing, your plan or something that looks broken, or it's something Ask can't do, the answer ends with one line: Write to 1barn Support, people at 1barn, about how 1barn works. Tap it and 1barn Support opens with your question and a short note of what Ask already tried in the box, so whoever answers starts from there. Nothing is sent until you press Send. An answer about your barn's own horses, people, care or schedule never carries it.

Typing help, support, contact, question, bug or problem in the Ask box or on the full screen finds Help and support under Go to, which opens 1barn Support in place.

Ask buttons on pages

A horse's page, a person's page, Facility, Schedule and Program have an Askbutton with the Ask 1barn mark, first among the buttons at the top. It opens the questions and errands that fit that page, already filled in with what's on it (“Move Maple to Stall 7”). Anything waiting about the page comes first, as a card (“Coggins expires in 9 days”), then a short list picked for the page, then Browse all for the whole library. Type to search the page's skills; if nothing fits, Ask “what you typed” takes your own words.

On a wide screen the horse page's Care, Due and Owners cards also carry the mark, for just that card's skills. On a phone the mark sits at the top of the page, and the sheet it opens has chips for the horse, its care, its records and its people. On Schedule, owners and managers see coverage, availability and publishing; staff see their own week, offering up, trades and time off.

Picking one types it into the Ask box and sends nothing, so you can change it first. Where it has an amount or a date to fill in (“1 scoop of biotin”, “Monday”), that part is selected, so typing replaces it, and Tab moves to the next. The ↑on an Ask card asks it straight away. With the Ask box open on one of these pages and nothing typed, the page's top three show first, under “For Maple”. The buttons are for the barn's owner, managers and staff, and only while the barn has Ask 1barn on.

On a phone

For staff, Ask is the fourth tab, beside More, which is always last. Tapping it opens Ask full screen, with search results and asking together. The places not on the tab bar are in More. You can move Ask into More under My profile → Menu order; it's a tile there. Boarders don't have Ask; their Search is at the top of More.

Changes come back as cards

Anything that would change something, like adding a horse to a service day, logging care or messaging an owner, comes back as a card with a line for each change. Nothing has happened yet. Untick what you don't want, Edit a note or a message first if you like, then Apply: the changes run in order, as you, with your own permissions. Not now leaves them be.

A message shows exactly what will be sent and to whom, and anything that notifies people (a message, publishing the schedule, voiding a document) is always a card, never done on its own. After you apply, the card says what happened, and a follow-up (“same for Maple”) knows what you did.

Conversations

A conversation keeps going while you use it, so follow-ups work, in the box or full screen. It clears 2 hours after its last message, or when you choose Newto start over. There's no history list. Staff don't see each other's conversations; the barn's owner, and managers the owner allows, see how many questions each person asked, never what was asked.

Write with Ask 1barn

Ask 1barn also drafts. Wherever staff write in 1barn's text editor (a message or a reply, a post to a board or on the dashboard, a horse or person note, a record's notes, a care instruction, an event, event type or add-on description, lesson and Service day notes, rider notes), the end of the toolbar has Draft with the Ask 1barn mark. Press it, or ⌘J (Ctrl-J on Windows) inside the editor. In Messages' Write, Draft appears once To is a board or people you already have a conversation with; for someone new, send the first message yourself.

1. Say what it should say, in your own shorthand: “blaze lost left front shoe, farrier thursday, no turnout till then”. Pick a tone (Friendly, Brief or Formal; it remembers your last choice for each kind of place) and press Enter. Shift-Enter is a new line; on a phone, tap Draft.
2. The draft writes itself in, in a box above your text. It knows where it is: who a message is to and the last few messages, which horse a note is about, who a post reaches. It uses names as written, never guesses anyone's pronouns, and adds no times, prices or promises you didn't give it. When it works out a date from “tomorrow”, it says so: check the dates.
3. Put it in. In an empty editor, Insert. If you'd already written something, Replace swaps it for the draft and Insert belowadds the draft after it. A post's empty title is filled in too. The draft goes in as ordinary text (bold, lists and links included) for you to edit, and ⌘Z takes it back out in one step. Try again, Shorter, Longer or another tone redraft it; Discard leaves your text as it was.

Rewrite a selection. Select some text first and the button reads Rewrite this: pick Shorter, Friendlier, More formal or Fix grammar, or type how you want it changed. The old text shows struck through above the new, and Replace selection changes only that part.

Nothing is sent for you.A draft is only text in your editor until you press Send, Post or Save yourself, and a sent message doesn't say it was drafted: it's yours. Check it before you send.

How drafts count.On 1barn's AI a draft is half a question from the barn's monthly allowance. Redrafting the same words (Try again, Shorter, Longer, another tone) is free, up to 5 times within 30 minutes, and a draft that fails doesn't count. At the limit, drafting stops with the questions and the editor works as usual. On your own key nothing is counted.

Write is for the barn's owner, managers and staff, like the rest of Ask 1barn; boarders and families don't see the button. If Ask 1barn isn't on for the barn, the owner sees a quiet Set up there instead.

Turning it on: 1barn's AI or your own key

The owner (or a manager with the settings permission) chooses under Barn settings → Assistant:

1. 1barn's AI. Anthropic's Claude under 1barn's account. Every plan includes Light, 100 questions a month. For more, move up on the same page: Plus, $19 a month more for 400; Pro, $39 for 1,000; Max, $69 for 2,000. Moving up takes effect at once (you pay the difference for the rest of the period); moving down takes effect when the period ends.
2. Your own key. Paste an Anthropic or OpenAI key. No tier and no allowance: your provider bills you directly. The key is sealed and never shown again.

The monthly allowance

On 1barn's AI, questions are shared by the whole barn and reset on the 1st of each month, in your barn's time zone. A question counts once however many lookups it takes; a follow-up is a question too. A question that fails or that you stop doesn't count.

At 80% the meter turns amber and the owner gets one notice. At the limit, the box still searches and switches pages, horses and people; the Ask 1barn row says Ask 1barn is out of questions until the date they come back. The owner, and anyone with the settings permission, sees Move up there; everyone else sees Ask the barn's owner. A bigger tier's allowance starts at once. Changes already proposed can still be applied, and everything else in 1barn keeps working. Write to 1barn Support sits under it too, for a question about your plan.

If 1barn has turned Ask 1barn off for the barn, it says so (“1barn's AI is turned off for this barn. 1barn Support can turn it back on.”), with the same Write to 1barn Support line.

If Ask 1barn isn't turned on for the barn, staff don't see the Ask row at all, and the box only searches. The owner sees Set up Ask 1barn there instead.

How much the barn asks

Reports › Ask 1barn usage shows the month against your plan: how many questions are used (a Write draft is half), what the month is on pace for, who asks, what they ask about, and the change cards proposed and applied. Switch to Year for month by month; Displaycompares with the period before and downloads questions by person and day. It's for the owner and managers with the settings permission.

On pace is used so far ÷ days gone × days in the month. What people ask about comes from what each question looked up or proposed; the question itself is never kept. Worth a lookflags a month on pace to run out, change cards nobody applied, and answers that didn't finish. Moving up a tier is offered there only once a month's questions are all used.

When an answer doesn't finish

Now and then a question stops without an answer: it ran past 3 minutes, 1barn's AI couldn't be reached, or the person stopped it. It says so in the conversation, and it isn't counted against the plan. Ask again, or ask something narrower (one horse, one week). A Write draft that fails before any text isn't counted either.

What's sent

On 1barn's AI, each question and each draft, and the barn records needed to answer it, go to Anthropic to be read by AI. Anthropic doesn't train on them and deletes them within 30 days. On your own key they go to your provider under your account. 1barn deletes a conversation 2 hours after its last message and keeps only usage counts (who asked, when, how many lookups and changes), never the question or the answer, and never the words you gave Write or its draft. What you applied stays in the barn's records as usual. See the privacy policy.

To use 1barn from your own Claude or ChatGPT instead, see 1barn in Claude and ChatGPT; to ask your barn out loud from the Claude app, see Talk to 1barn.