The built-in assistant

Manage has an assistant built in: a side panel on every page that can look things up, open pages, ask you what it needs to know and do the work, such as building a dashboard, adding a DNS record or reading a site's logs. It runs on your own account with an AI provider (bring your own key). veldhost charges nothing for it; your provider bills your key for what you use.

Prefer to work from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or another app you already use? Connect your AI assistant instead. Both reach the same tools.

Connect your key

Open the panel: press Assistant in the top bar, or ⌘J on a Mac and Alt+J elsewhere. The same shortcut closes it.
Under Provider, pick one. The list shows the providers you can connect.
Create an API key on the provider's site (the Create a key at … link takes you there) and add some credit there.
Paste it into API key. Pasting checks it straight away; otherwise press Check key and load models.
Pick a Model. The ones marked recommended work the portal well. Larger models think longer and cost more per question.
Under Use this model for, keep Plan and Build, or choose Build only or Plan only (see below), then press Save.

You can connect one key per provider. The settings (the gear icon in the panel) show which provider and model run each mode, and the keys you connected, each with a Disconnect button.

Where your key is kept, and who sees it

The key is stored encrypted, in a separate secrets store, and is never shown again: the panel shows only its last few characters.
It belongs to your login, not to the account. Nobody else on your team can see or use it, and each person who wants the assistant connects their own.
It is used only for your own requests to the assistant.

Note: What the assistant reads to help you (names and settings of your sites and domains, logs, and any data it queries) is sent to the provider you chose, under your agreement with them.

Plan and Build

Every conversation is in one of two modes. Switch with the Plan / Build switch under the message box, or Shift+Tab in the box (you can turn that shortcut off in the settings).

Plan only looks things up, analyses and proposes. It has no tools that change anything. It ends with a numbered plan that says which steps will need your approval. Press Build this plan to switch to Build and carry it out.
Build does the work: it opens the right page, asks what it needs to know, and asks before changing anything that matters.

A new conversation starts in Plan. Each mode can run on its own provider and model, for example a cheaper model to plan and a stronger one to build.

Approving what it does

Before a change that matters, the assistant stops and shows a card headed Needs your OK, with one line saying what it will do and on what. Exact details lists every value it will send. Press Approve to go ahead, or Don't do it. When the action deletes or overwrites something, the card says so, opens the details for you, and the button carries the action's own name instead of Approve.

It asks first for anything on live sites, DNS, email, schedules, webhooks or orders, for changing data in a database, for editing an existing dashboard, panel or pipeline, and for anything that deletes. Most look-ups (those that reach outside, such as probing a domain's DNS, ask first), creating a new dashboard, panel or pipeline, and a few harmless actions such as starting a backup or cancelling a job run happen without a card.

Orders are only proposals: an owner or billing member approves them in the portal, and nothing is charged before that (Ordering with an AI assistant).

Database queries

Read-only queries on your databases (for example to build a dashboard) send the rows they return to your provider, so you choose under Database queries in the settings: Run them without asking, Ask once per conversation or Ask before every query. Changes to data always ask first.

What it may do

The assistant acts as you, with exactly your permissions in the account you are signed in to. It gets the same tools as an external assistant, limited by your role:

Changing DNS needs the owner, admin or developer role on the account.
Proposing orders needs the owner or billing role.
A viewer gets an assistant that can only look.

Scopes and permissions has the full table. Some things it never does itself: passwords, payments, inviting people and deleting a site. For those it opens the right page and tells you what to do there.

Everything it changes is in your audit log, marked Manage assistant (for you).

Note: Text the assistant reads (a log line, a DNS record, a row in a table) is treated as data, never as instructions. That is also why actions that touch your live services wait for your click.

Conversations, tabs and history

+ starts a new conversation in a new tab. × closes a tab; the conversation stays in the History (the clock icon). Double-click a tab to rename it.
In History you can open a conversation again, rename it or delete it. Conversations are deleted automatically a while after their last message; the History view says when.
Conversations belong to the account you are signed in to. Switch account and you see that account's conversations.
Several conversations can run at once, one per tab. A dot on a tab shows it is working or waiting for you.

While a step runs you can keep typing: your message is queued until the step is done, or press Send now. The stop button ends the run at the next safe point. Some models can run slow read-only work, such as a large query, in the background while they carry on; the result comes back to the conversation when it is ready.

Disconnect

Caution: disconnecting your last key deletes all your conversations.

Open the settings and press Disconnect next to a key (or Disconnect all). If another key is left, it takes over. When you disconnect the last key, the assistant stops and all your conversations are deleted with it. Revoking the key at your provider stops it working too.