The assistant and its limits

Turning it on

The assistant sends data to Anthropic (Claude), so it stays off until the owner allows it on AI help. That page lists what is sent and what never is: item, vendor, order and cost data that a feature needs, and documents you choose to upload, but never your sign-in details or another workspace. Everything else in Lockstock works with AI help off.

Only the owner can turn it on. The privacy page says what is stored.

Asking

Open Assistant and ask in plain words. Examples: What should I reorder this week? Which items will run out first, and why? Which purchase orders are late?

• It reads your workspace live at the moment you ask, limited to what your role may see. A warehouse or production member gets no costs, vendor prices or forecasts in answers.
• Each claim points to the record it came from with a numbered source that opens that item, purchase order, work order or sales order.
• It shows the math it used, one short line per calculation, with the inputs and units.
• Every answer ends with a reminder to verify before you act. It can be wrong. Check the linked records first.

Drafts

Owners and purchasers can ask it to draft purchase orders and a supplier email per vendor. A draft is a proposal that waits in Approvals.

• It can only pick vendors and items that were in front of it, and only items that belong to that vendor's reorder list.
• Prices and totals are filled in by Lockstock from your records, never from the model. A quantity far above what the forecast suggested (more than three times) is dropped.
• Supplier emails are text only. Lockstock sends no email.
• Nothing is ordered until a person approves the proposal. When it is approved, a claim check compares what the proposal says with what the change would really do. A mismatch is blocked with Blocked: records disagree.

What it cannot do

• It cannot write to your records, QuickBooks or any vendor. It has no tools to call.
• It cannot approve its own proposals. Only a person approves, within their role and dollar limit.
• It cannot act while all-stop is on. All-stop pauses every agent write (the assistant, MCP clients and importers). They can still read.
• It cannot use another workspace's data.

Limits and failures

• A question can be up to 1,000 characters. A thread holds up to 40 messages.
• Each workspace gets 40 questions in any rolling 24 hours. When it is used up, the screen says so, and earlier questions free up as they pass a day.
• If Claude is unavailable, or AI help is off, the screen says The assistant is unavailable. Your data is unchanged. It does not fall back to another provider or make up an answer.
• A purchase order to an approved vendor can apply itself, but only if the owner sets an auto-apply limit above $0. The limit starts at $0, so every write waits. Such an order is logged as Auto-applied. Set it under Approvals, Limits.