An AI helper that answers community members for you

Answering the same questions every day is the quiet cost of running a community. The Space helper is an AI helper that answers community members for you in Barside Spaces. When a member asks something your Space already answers, like when office hours are or where last week's recording is, the helper replies from your own shared notes, links and files. When it cannot find the answer, it sends the question to you instead of guessing.

It uses the AI you already connected to Barside (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter), runs in your own copy of Barside, and marks every reply as an Auto-reply.

What the Space helper does

• Watches for questions in your Space's chat, about every 20 seconds while your Barside runs.
• Looks for the answer in what the Space has shared, plus one of your workspaces if you choose.
• Asks your AI for a short answer written only from those excerpts.
• Posts the answer, or drafts it for you, under your name with the Auto-reply label.
• Sends you the rest: questions it cannot answer arrive in your approval Inbox, with the reason.

The owner of a Space sets it up in Manage Space, one Space at a time. Members need nothing: they ask in the chat as usual.

How the helper decides to answer

1. It spots a question. A new member message counts when it has a question mark, mentions @helper, or starts the way questions do ("how", "what", "when", "where", "does anyone", "can someone", "any tips").
2. It skips what it should leave alone: your own posts, auto-replies, polls, anything posted before you turned it on, questions longer than 1,000 characters or older than two days, and questions you already answered with Reply.
3. It picks knowledge by matching words. Before any AI request, it looks for the parts of your knowledge that share words with the question. If nothing matches well enough, it does not ask the AI at all, and the question goes to you.
4. It asks your AI, with strict rules. The question and up to eight matching excerpts go to your AI, which must answer only from them, in under 120 words and in the language of the question, and must decline questions that ask for private, harmful or personal information.
5. It checks the draft. A reply can post only if it cites your knowledge and adds no link or email address that is not in that knowledge. Otherwise the question goes to you, with the reason.
6. It replies or asks you. In Ask me first, the draft waits for your approval. In Post automatically, it posts right away.

Set up the AI helper that answers community members

1. Connect an AI in Settings → AI, with one button each for Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and OpenRouter. The AI assistant guide explains the choices.
2. Open your Space, choose Manage Space, and find the Space helper card. Only the Space's owner sees it.
3. Tick Space helper, which answers member questions with the AI you connected while Barside runs on your computer.
4. Under Replies, keep Ask me first (the default) or choose Post automatically.
5. Under Knowledge, keep This Space's shared notes, files and resources, or add one of your workspaces with Also:. Workspaces excluded from AI cannot be chosen.
6. Choose Save helper settings. Recent activity on the card shows that it started.
7. Test it. Ask a moderator, or a second account, to post a question your shared notes answer. The helper skips your own posts, so asking it yourself does nothing.

Ask me first or Post automatically

In Ask me first, each draft waits in the Inbox of Agents & approvals, which you open from the sidebar, the tray or a notification. Choose Approve to post it, Edit to change the words first, or Refuse. A question the helper could not answer arrives there too, so you can write the reply yourself.

Answers you approve or write this way post under your name with the Auto-reply label. To answer without the label, use Reply in the chat yourself; the helper then counts that question as answered. If the Inbox is ever unavailable, drafts and questions wait on the helper card under Waiting for you, with Post reply and Dismiss, and a desktop notification tells you.

Give the helper good knowledge

The helper can only be as good as what your Space has shared. It reads:

• Notes shared in the Space, with their titles and text.
• Resources: each link's title and address.
• Files: the names of shared files, and the text inside up to 10 of them when they are plain-text files of up to 256 KB, such as .txt, .md, .csv, .json or .html.
• Recent chat from you and your moderators, but not from other members.
• One of your workspaces, if you choose it: its notes and bookmarks, minus anything you excluded from AI in Library's sources.

Tips that make a real difference:

• Write an FAQ note in the words members use. The helper matches words first, so a note titled "Office hours" that says "Office hours are on Thursdays at 5 PM" matches "When are office hours?". Words in a title count a little extra.
• Put the facts in notes, not only in PDFs. A PDF or Word file counts only by its name.
• Keep links in Resources or in notes. The helper never adds a link that is not in your knowledge, so a missing link sends the question to you.
• Update notes when things change. An old date in a note becomes an old answer. The helper refreshes what it knows about every five minutes.
• Choose the extra workspace with care. Anything in it can appear in replies that members read, and the card warns you: "Answers may quote this workspace."

For more on shared notes and files, see file sharing for teams and communities.

Examples

• A design club keeps a note that says "Office hours: Thursdays at 5 PM, the call link is in Resources." When Priya asks "When are office hours this week?", the helper answers from that note, marked Auto-reply.
• A course cohort keeps a "Course FAQ" note with deadlines and where each recording is. The helper answers "Where is the week 3 recording?" and sends "Can I get an extension?" to the teacher.
• A software team shares a setup note. "How do I get access to staging?" gets the steps, and anything not written down goes to the team lead.
• A paid community keeps Ask me first on. The owner approves most drafts from the Inbox with one click, and edits the ones that need a personal touch.

Limits and details

• It runs on your computer. The helper works only while Barside runs on the owner's computer, signed in to Spaces. It is not one of the cloud agents that Barside Plus runs while your computer is off.
• Owner only, turned on for each Space separately. Each computer keeps its own helper settings.
• Limits. One reply per question, up to 20 replies per Space per hour, and up to 40 questions checked per Space per hour.
• Short answers, under 120 words, in the language of the question.
• No hold-ups. Replies post as the owner, so slow mode and the flood guard do not delay them, and they are left out of member numbers.
• Private settings. The helper's settings, history and waiting items are stored encrypted on your computer, outside your library and its backups.
• Systems. Windows 10 and 11, Linux and Mac.
• Cost. Barside charges nothing for the helper. Your AI company bills your own account for its requests, and questions that match nothing in your knowledge never reach the AI.

Privacy: what reaches your AI

The helper runs in your Barside, not on Barside's servers. For each question it tries to answer, the question, the asker's display name, the Space's name and the matching excerpts go to the AI company you connected, and that company's data policy applies. Nothing else from your library is sent. If you add a workspace, anything in it can end up in a reply that members read, so pick one you are happy to share.

Other members' messages are never used as knowledge, and the helper never follows instructions written inside them. Read how the Space helper uses your data and the AI you connect and your data.

Pair it with AI moderation

The Space helper answers questions. AI moderation, added in Barside 1.39, keeps the chat clean with the same AI. The owner turns it on in Manage Space → AI moderation, and the AI connected in Settings → AI then checks new messages from members for spam and scams, harassment and hate, sexual content, threats and violence, sharing someone's private information, and rules you write yourself, up to 2,000 characters.

• You choose what happens. Report to moderators, the default, sends each problem to Reports to review with the AI's reason and removes nothing. Remove clear violations and report the rest also removes the clear cases, and a removed message is cleared for everyone.
• It leaves your team alone. Messages from you, your moderators and the Space helper are never checked, and neither are messages sent before you turned it on.
• It runs where the helper runs. On your computer, only while your Barside runs, in small batches to keep your AI costs low. Your AI company bills each check.
• Members know. While it is on, everyone in the Space sees "Messages here are checked by the owner's AI for rule-breaking."

The text of new member messages, the Space's name and your rules go to your AI company, without the authors' names or user IDs. Read how AI moderation uses your data.

The AI moderation guide covers what it checks, what it costs and what members see.

Where it fits

The Space helper is not a chatbot that knows everything. It works like a careful assistant who has read your FAQ: it answers when your Space already has the answer, and passes everything else to you. It pairs best with a Space that has good shared notes, and it lives inside Barside Spaces, next to the notes, links and files it reads.

If you are still choosing where to host a community, the Skool alternative and the best community platforms compare the options, fees included. Inside Barside, the same AI also runs the assistant, AI search over your library and agents that ask before they act.

Works well with