Two AI surfaces: chat and toolbox

AVS exposes AI-assisted editing through two distinct interfaces:

Chat for conversational editing and planning
Toolbox for direct manual invocation of structured tools

Use chat when you want the system to decide how to accomplish the task. Use toolbox when you want explicit control over the tool inputs.

Chat modes

The chat panel currently supports three modes:

Ask for direct answers without tool use
Agent for full tool access
Plan for task-planning oriented responses

This is an important distinction because not every editing task needs autonomous mutation.

Chat capabilities

The current chat panel includes:

message history
model picker
attachment upload
saved sessions
recommended actions
microphone recording
text-to-speech playback for messages
tool-call rendering inline in the conversation
task list display for planning flows

There is also cloud-oriented handling for longer-running or remote agent processing paths.

Model selection

The beta app supports configurable model availability and remembers the selected chat model in local storage.

Depending on configuration, the model roster can include:

Google/Gemini-family models
OpenAI models
Anthropic models

Provider credentials can be supplied through BYOK settings.

Attachments and context

Chat supports attachments so prompts can reference files and project state directly.

The panel also understands project context such as:

current project and project ID
assets store data
branches
video effect jobs
notification preferences

That context is what makes the assistant operational instead of purely conversational.

Saved chat sessions

The beta stores named chat sessions and can:

save a session
load a session
list existing sessions
generate a session name automatically

This is useful when a project has multiple long-running agent conversations.

Toolbox overview

The toolbox is a structured tool runner. It includes:

tool picker
generated forms from tool definitions
last-run error display
per-run history
output inspection

Tool categories

The current tool manifest covers these broad groups.

Asset tools

Capture Asset
Capture Faces
Get Asset Metadata
List Assets
Inspect Asset
Search Assets
Set Asset Notes

Generation tools

Generate Image
Generate Music
Generate Speech
Generate Veo Video
Check Veo Job Status

Timeline tools

Add Timeline Layer
Add Timeline Clip
Split Timeline Clip
Update Timeline Clip
Delete Timeline Clip
Delete Timeline Layer
Get Timeline State
Add Timeline Transition
Remove Timeline Transition
Reorder Timeline Layers

Scene and preview tools

Set Scene Config
Preview Timeline
Preview Capture Frame

Effect and media-processing tools

List Video Effects
Start Video Effect
Check Video Effect Job
Apply Video Effect to Clip
Apply Chroma Key to Clip
Remove Background from Image

Component tools

Create Component
Create Component from Template
Edit Component

Branch and project operations

Project History
Merge Branch to Main
Render Video

Specialized Vidova tools

Add Zoom to Vidova Clip

How to use the assistant effectively

Good requests in AVS are concrete and editor-aware. Examples:

“Inspect asset asset_123 and tell me whether it contains usable face closeups.”
“Generate a 20-second ambient synth bed and add it to the project.”
“Split the current clip at the playhead and add a fade transition into the next shot.”
“Create a lower-third component from a template and style it with brand colors.”

Weak requests are vague and underspecified, especially when they require choosing among multiple similar assets without first inspecting them.

When to prefer toolbox over chat

Use toolbox when you need:

deterministic inputs
repeatable results
a visible execution history
manual control over exact values like timecodes, clip IDs, and prompts

Use chat when the task is multi-step and exploratory.