Session Helpers

These five bundled plugins add small conveniences to Elowen sessions. Administrators manage them in Settings → Plugins; select a plugin to open its detail view and settings. Only an administrator can enable or disable plugins, and these five do not need an individual user grant. Each can be disabled independently. Enabling or disabling a plugin takes effect after Elowen restarts.

For installing plugins and managing their permissions, see Plugins.

Bundled versions: askuser 0.2.1, elowen-docs 0.1.0, changelog 0.1.0, runtime-context 0.2.0 and statusline 0.1.1.

AskUserQuestion

The askuser plugin gives Elowen the AskUserQuestion tool. It can ask one to four questions in a turn, each with two to four choices. A choice has a short label, usually one to five words, and a description. Elowen can allow multiple choices or a typed answer, and can recommend an option by placing it first. Typed answers are allowed by default.

In the Web UI and CLI, choices appear as interactive controls; other surfaces may ask you to reply with a number. The short header appears as a chip, up to about 12 characters before it is clipped. A choice can include a Markdown preview for comparing a mockup, code sample or configuration. It appears in a monospace panel beside the choices and works only when choosing one option at a time, not with multiple selection. Elowen may turn off the free-text option with custom: false when a typed response would be invalid.

The plugin has no settings. Question text must be unique in one request, and choice labels must be unique within each question. Your answer is returned to Elowen as one short line per question, including the selected option's preview when there is one. Elowen waits for your answer before continuing, so the turn stays paused until you respond.

Search this manual

The elowen-docs plugin adds DocsSearch, which searches Elowen's shipped user manual and returns relevant sections with their page and heading. Use it for questions about Elowen's features, settings or where to find something. It searches the product manual, not your own code; use the code search tools for that.

When an embedding model is configured in Settings → Memory, search ranks sections by meaning. Otherwise, it uses keyword matching and says so in its results. It returns six sections by default; the k result limit can be set from 1 to 20. Each result includes the page, heading, text and a score. Results are ranked without a minimum-score cutoff; scores are relative to the current search, not a confidence rating. If keyword search finds no matching section, it reports that rather than failing.

The manual is read-only and updates when Elowen is upgraded. The index is built on first use and rebuilt when the manual or embedding model changes, so the first search after an upgrade may take a few seconds. Search results are grouped by heading, and sections longer than about 1,500 characters are split at paragraph breaks. The plugin has no settings.

What's new

The changelog plugin adds a What's new page to the Web UI navigation, also available at /p/changelog. It lists the release notes included with the installed Elowen version, newest first, with pinned notes at the top. Notes arrive with an Elowen upgrade; you cannot edit them from the instance.

The page uses your interface language when a translation is available and otherwise shows English; the shipped translations include Czech and Slovak. Its navigation badge and unread count are per account. Opening the page marks the available notes as read for your account; newer notes are marked as new since your last visit. The page also shows release and unread totals. An operator can mark a release unread for everyone, including later releases. In open mode, where there are no accounts, unread tracking is not shown.

Each note has a version, release date, title, optional tags and a pinned status. The version identifies the release, the date records when it shipped, and the title appears in the release list. Pinned notes appear ahead of the rest, newest first. Notes are read-only and arrive with upgrades. Images support common raster formats; SVG images are not served. The plugin has no settings.

Date, time and conversation context

The runtime-context plugin adds the current weekday, date, time and timezone to each turn. It also tells Elowen who is speaking and what kind of conversation it is: your own Elowen chat, a private one-to-one chat, a shared room or a delegated run. In shared rooms, the sender can change between messages. A sender without a linked Elowen account is identified as unverified. This helps Elowen use the right context when it acts or creates something for you. The context is provided to Elowen but is not displayed in the conversation.

Set Timezone (timezone) in the plugin's detail view. Use an IANA timezone such as Europe/Prague; when it is empty, Elowen uses the server's timezone. The setting applies to the whole instance and controls both the date and time Elowen sees and the timezone used by scheduled jobs. For example, a daily 07:30 job runs at 07:30 in this zone. Changes apply from the next turn. Elowen also receives a time-of-day label in that timezone: early morning, morning, midday, afternoon, evening or night, and whether the sender has a linked account. Conversation type helps it distinguish private work from shared-room activity; a delegated run has no chat of its own. See Scheduling.

Status line

The statusline plugin adds optional details below conversations in the Web UI and in elowen chat. An administrator can choose what to show in the plugin's detail view or with /statusline in the CLI. Changes apply immediately, and all options are off by default.

In the CLI, use /statusline to choose the same display options. Settings apply across the instance. With every option off, no status line appears.

Next: Chat Platform Plugins