Overview

The in-app AI chat assistant is a slide-out sidebar available throughout the Truestamp web app. You open it from the sparkles button in the navigation and ask questions in plain language: how Truestamp works, what a proof proves, how to verify one, or (when you are signed in) about your own items and their status. It is a read-only assistant. It can look things up and explain them, but it never creates, changes, deletes, or submits anything on your behalf. The panel is a persistent chat: your conversation history is saved, so it survives navigation, page reloads, and signing in from a different device.

The assistant is scoped to what you are allowed to see. Every lookup it runs happens under your identity, so a signed-in user only ever sees their own teams’ data, and an anonymous visitor can only reach public information. The assistant can also answer questions about the Truestamp MCP server and the wider product, drawing on the same knowledge base that backs this documentation.

What you can ask it

The assistant is built around a fixed, read-only set of capabilities. It can:

• Explain how Truestamp works and what it does (and does not) prove.
• Search and list your items, look up a single item by id, and report an item’s lifecycle status (created, processing, committed).
• Generate a cryptographic proof for a committed subject and verify a proof, returning the authoritative verification result. These are pure computations that read and check data without changing anything.
• Run pure utility computes: hash UTF-8 text, verify that text hashes to an expected value, extract the embedded timestamp from a UUIDv7 or a ULID, canonicalize a JSON object (RFC 8785 / JCS), and identify what a bare id refers to.
• Read public entropy beacons and finalized Truestamp blocks.
• Search the Truestamp knowledge base, read a concept, and follow the links between related concepts to answer “how does X work” questions.

Because the toolset is a read-only allowlist, the assistant cannot create, update, delete, redact, or submit items, and it cannot run arbitrary code. Every question you ask that touches your data is answered by looking it up as you, under the normal access rules, so it can never surface another user’s or another team’s data.

The assistant is also kept on topic. It is designed to answer questions about Truestamp and your Truestamp data, and it will decline general-purpose requests (coding help, weather, trivia, and the like) regardless of how they are framed.

Signed-in users and anonymous guests

The sidebar works both for signed-in users and, when enabled, for anonymous visitors who are not logged in.

• Signed-in users get the full read-only toolset above, scoped to their own account and teams. They can ask about their items, generate and verify proofs, and get answers grounded in their data.
• Anonymous guests get an advisor-flavored experience with a deliberately smaller toolset: the knowledge base, the pure utility computes, and public reads (entropy beacons and finalized blocks) only. A guest has no item, proof, or identity tools, so an anonymous visitor can never reach any account or team data. Guest conversations are kept isolated per browser session, so one visitor never sees another’s chat.

Anonymous chat is also subject to tighter usage limits than signed-in chat, because anonymous access is a heavier cost and abuse surface. In both cases each message is length-limited and the assistant enforces per-user (or per-guest) rate limits, so the exact caps are managed by the product rather than something you configure.

Starting a chat about a specific item

From an item’s page you can start a chat about that item with one click. The launcher seeds the conversation with a question about that specific item (“its current status and what has been proven about it”), so you land directly in a focused conversation instead of retyping the item id. This works the same way for the home page and other entry points, which can each open the panel pre-seeded with a relevant starter question. Signed-in users and anonymous visitors both get these launchers; the assistant simply answers within whatever you are allowed to see.

History and persistence

Your chat history is saved, so the assistant is a durable place to come back to rather than a throwaway box:

• Moving between pages within the app keeps the open panel, its messages, and any reply that is still streaming, with no interruption.
• Reloading the page, or signing in from a new device, reloads your most recent conversation from saved history.
• A reply that is still being written continues even if your connection drops, and is picked up again when you reconnect.

The panel itself always starts closed on a fresh page load; it does not silently reopen from a previous visit. From the history view you can rename or delete a past conversation, or start a new one.

Availability

The assistant is gated by feature flags, so it can be turned on or off without a code change. A master switch controls the chat sidebar for everyone, and a separate switch controls anonymous (logged-out) chat specifically. Turning off the master switch removes the sidebar entirely; turning off the anonymous switch removes it for logged-out visitors while keeping it for signed-in users. Both are enabled by default. If you do not see the sparkles button, chat may be turned off for your context.

Limitations

• The assistant is read-only. It answers questions and runs verifications, but it never creates, changes, deletes, or submits anything. To act on your data, use the normal app, API, or MCP surfaces.
• It only sees what you may see. A signed-in user’s answers are scoped to their own teams, and an anonymous guest is limited to public information.
• It answers Truestamp questions only and declines off-topic, general-purpose requests.
• Each message has a maximum length and usage is rate-limited (more strictly for anonymous guests), so very long inputs or rapid bursts are rejected.
• Anonymous conversations are tied to your browser session and are not carried onto your account if you later sign in.

Citations

1. RFC 8785: JSON Canonicalization Scheme (JCS). Backs the JSON canonicalization the assistant can run for you.