Using OpenIntern

Control and safety

You decide how much OpenIntern does on its own, you see every change it makes, and you can undo a task. This page explains each control and, just as important, the limits of undo and recovery.

Permission modes

The mode picker in the composer sets how much OpenIntern may do without asking. It applies to new tasks.

Chat only

Reads and answers. Changes nothing.

Ask before edits

Before each batch of changes, an approval card lists the operations (for example "Write", "Format", "Delete") and their cells. Choose Allow, Always allow for the rest of the task, or Skip. A good mode to start in.

Act

Works on its own, but stops to confirm anything destructive, overwrites of content it did not write, and requests that are genuinely ambiguous.

Plan first

Reads, then shows its plan as a list of steps. Approve starts the work, Edit sends the plan back with your changes, Cancel stops. Nothing changes before you approve.

Bypass permissions Local software only

No approval cards, confirmations or clarifying questions. It appears only after you turn on Allow bypass permissions under Instructions > Permissions. Every change is still recorded and can be undone. The store add-in never offers it.

In Act mode, Show the plan first for large tasks (under Instructions > Permissions, off by default) makes a task whose plan has five or more steps wait for your approval before it changes anything.

Questions

When a request is genuinely ambiguous, OpenIntern asks one clarifying question, with a proposed default you can accept. It does not ask when it can reasonably decide.

Watching and stopping a task

While a task runs, the pane shows its plan and each step as it happens. To stop, choose the stop button where the send button was. Changes made before you stopped stay in the document and can be undone.

Reviewing changes

Under each answer, What changed lists every change the task made, grouped by document. Choose a row to go to the range, slide, paragraph or table it changed. A row that did not go as planned is marked: "not applied", "conflict", "partly applied" or "needs recovery".

The answer also lists the checks that passed, the sources it used and anything it could not do.

Undo

Undo changes under an answer puts back every change that task made. Where possible, a single row in What changed also has its own Undo, for example the latest change in a document, or a cell edit that no later change overlaps.

How it works

Every change is recorded with what was there before and what OpenIntern wrote. Undo restores the recorded state of the cells, slides and paragraphs the task changed, and removes the slides, shapes, paragraphs and tables it added.

What undo does not do

• It is not a file restore. Undo puts back what the task changed. It does not return the file byte for byte to an earlier version.
• It never overwrites your later edits. If you or a co-author changed the same cells or text after the task, undo stops for that change and tells you, rather than overwrite your work.
• Some changes cannot be undone. Deleted sheets, slides, shapes and paragraphs, inserted pictures and breaks, comments, and rows added to Word tables are recorded but cannot be put back. The answer says when a change could not be undone.
• It is separate from Office's Undo. Use Undo changes in the pane to reverse a task.
• In the store add-in it lasts as long as the session. The record of changes lives in your session, which ends after 30 minutes without activity or when the service is updated.

Keep your own backups of files that matter.

Interrupted tasks and recovery

Office applies an add-in's changes in steps, and a step can be cut off part-way, for example if the connection drops. When OpenIntern cannot tell whether a change landed, it does not guess: the change is marked "needs recovery" and its row says Check this, so you can look at the document before anything else happens.

• Local software: if the server restarts, a task that was running is marked as stopped with its record of changes intact, so Undo changes still works. Records are kept in ~/.openintern, unless you start the server with OPENINTERN_PERSIST_TASKS=0.
• Store add-in: sessions end after 30 minutes without activity and when the service is updated, which stops any task running at that moment. The pane opens a new session by itself, but the record of a task from the old session goes with it, so look over the document yourself before you run the task again.

Checkpoints Local software only

With Checkpoint before changes on (under Instructions > Permissions, on by default), OpenIntern saves a full copy of the workbook, deck or document to your computer right before a task's first change, so you can always open the file as it was. Copies are kept under ~/.openintern/checkpoints, at most ten per document. If a checkpoint cannot be saved, the task carries on and the answer says so.

The Thinking switch

Thinking in the composer is on by default: the model thinks longer on planning and formulas, which is more accurate and slower. Off answers faster with lighter reasoning, which suits quick questions and small edits. The setting applies to new tasks, and the usage line under an answer says when a task ran with Thinking off.

Instructions and conventions

More (⋯) > Instructions holds standing guidance sent with every task, for example "Always show figures in thousands." Below it, Conventions holds your house formatting for workbooks, decks and documents, and Permissions holds the settings described above. Choose Save to keep changes.

Memory

OpenIntern can remember facts and preferences for later tasks. When it thinks something is worth keeping, it shows a Remember this? card, and nothing is saved until you approve it. More (⋯) > Memory lists what is saved, for This document or Everywhere, and lets you add, edit and delete memories. A suggestion that came from a document's content rather than from you is labelled as such, and waits for your approval.

Skills

Skills are written procedures for common jobs. OpenIntern ships with skills for financial models (three-statement, DCF, LBO, variance analysis, peer comparison, earnings analysis, model audits, monthly summaries), data cleaning and formatting, decks (storyline, deck review, updating a deck), and documents (memo, report, letter, one-pager, working through comments, summarising redlines). It picks the right one for a request, or you can type / in the composer to choose one.

To add your own, choose More (⋯) > Skills > Import a skill and pick a folder with a SKILL.md file, in the Agent Skills format other assistants use, or a .zip of one. A skill is guidance, not permission: modes, approvals and confirmations apply whatever a skill says, and scripts inside a skill are never run.

In the local software, instructions, memories and imported skills are kept on your computer. In the store add-in they are kept in your session, so they are cleared when the session ends.

Your files can't give it orders

Text inside a cell, slide, document, attachment, web page or connector result is treated as information, never as instructions. It cannot grant permissions, change settings, change where data is sent, or install a skill. Each task also has limits on how many model calls, operations, cells and external requests it can use, and on how long it can run.