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What to Ask Pia

Pia is a chat box, so the honest answer to “how do I use it?” is ask it something. This page is a starting list: a handful of real prompts for each thing Pia can do, and a link to the guide that explains what happens next.

An empty chat already shows a few suggestion chips — “Remind me to pick up the package on Friday”, “Add ‘buy groceries’ to my todo list”, “Update my preferred language to French”. Everything below is the next step up from those.

Getting oriented

Section titled “Getting oriented”

Ask Pia about itself before you ask it for anything.

  • “What can you actually do for me?”
  • “What tools do you have access to right now?”
  • “Which of my folders can you read and write?”
  • “What do you already know about me?”
  • “Are you allowed to change things without asking me first?”

Remembering things about you

Section titled “Remembering things about you”

Pia builds up memory as you talk — preferences, people, projects, dates — and draws on it in later chats. You can tell it what to keep and what to drop.

  • “Remember that I prefer short, direct answers with no preamble.”
  • “Remember my partner’s name is Alex and their birthday is 12 March.”
  • “What do you remember about my work preferences?”
  • “Forget everything you stored about my old job.”
  • “Show me everything you’ve saved about people.”
  • “Update my personal profile — I moved to Berlin.”

Your own documents

Section titled “Your own documents”

Drop files into the vault’s sources folder and Pia compiles them into knowledge pages it can search later. See Documents and Auto-Ingest.

  • “What documents do you have in my vault?”
  • “Give me an index of the topics you know about.”
  • “Summarise the business plan I gave you.”
  • “What does my vault say about pricing?”
  • “Ingest the new file I put in the sources folder.”
  • “Which of my notes mention the Q3 launch?”

Todos

Section titled “Todos”

A Kanban board with columns, priorities and due dates. See Todos and Kanban.

  • “Add ‘call the dentist’ to my todo list.”
  • “What’s overdue?”
  • “What’s on my list for this week?”
  • “Mark ‘buy groceries’ as done.”
  • “Move ‘review the draft’ to the next column.”
  • “Set the ‘call mum’ todo to high priority and due Friday.”
  • “Create a column called ‘Waiting on others’.”

Reminders

Section titled “Reminders”

Time-based nudges that fire as a Windows notification. The Reminders screen is read-only — this is the only way to make one.

  • “Remind me to send the invoice tomorrow at 9.”
  • “Remind me every Monday morning to review my week.”
  • “What reminders do I have coming up?”
  • “Snooze the invoice reminder until Thursday.”
  • “Cancel the reminder about the package.”

Files in your assistant folder

Section titled “Files in your assistant folder”

Pia can read and write inside one folder and nowhere else — by default Documents\Pia Assistant. See Coding Tools and @Files.

  • “What files do I have in my Playground folder?”
  • “Read my meeting notes from last week and pull out the decisions.”
  • “Write a draft project brief to brief.md.”
  • “Search my files for anything mentioning ‘Q3 budget’.”
  • “Turn these bullet points into a proper document and save it.”

Git

Section titled “Git”

The same folder, with read and write git commands. No network operations — nothing is pushed or pulled. See Coding Tools and @Files.

  • “Is there a git repo in this folder? What’s the status?”
  • “Show me what changed since yesterday.”
  • “Initialise a repo here and commit what I’ve got.”
  • “Commit these notes with a sensible message.”
  • “What did I change in the last three commits?”

Meetings and transcription

Section titled “Meetings and transcription”

Pia can join a Teams meeting as a silent attendee, or transcribe the room around you with Live Transcription. Both run on your machine.

  • “Join this Teams meeting and take notes.” (paste the link)
  • “Start transcribing this conversation.”
  • “Summarise the meeting you just transcribed.”
  • “Who said what about the deadline?”
  • “Pull the action items out of that transcript and add them to my todos.”
  • “Save that meeting summary to my vault.”

Giving Pia a goal instead of a message

Section titled “Giving Pia a goal instead of a message”

Flip the Chat | Agent lever under the message box and what you type becomes a goal: Pia writes a plan, you approve it, and it works through the steps in view. See Agent Runs.

  • “Research our three biggest competitors and write me a one-page comparison.”
  • “Go through my vault, find everything about the product launch, and draft a status update.”
  • “Run that in the background and tell me when it’s done.”

Work on a schedule

Section titled “Work on a schedule”

A routine runs a question or a full agent run on a timer and delivers the result as its own chat.

  • “Every Monday at 8, check for news about our industry and write me a summary.”
  • “What routines do I have?”
  • “Stop the run that’s going.”

Writing and rewriting

Section titled “Writing and rewriting”

Personas change the voice and expertise Pia answers with — pick one from the composer before you send. For rewriting text you’ve selected in any other app, use Optimize instead.

  • “Explain this like I’m not technical.” (Explain It Simply)
  • “Rewrite this email so it sounds professional.”
  • “Give me the risk-aware read on these numbers.” (Financial Expert)
  • “Write launch copy for this in our brand voice.” (Marketing Writer)
  • “Review this C# and tell me what’s wrong with it.” (Experienced Coder)

Pointing at one specific item

Section titled “Pointing at one specific item”

Type @ in the message box to tag a single item into the turn — and to narrow that turn to just the tools for it. See @ commands.

  • @Todo:"Call mum" — push it to next week.
  • @Files:notes.md — what’s in here?
  • @Memory — cross-check this against what I just told you.

Titles with spaces go in double quotes, as above.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”