Compass AI is a conversational assistant built into CompassHQ. You ask questions about your engineering data in plain English, and it answers using your organization’s real metrics — not estimates or industry averages.
Getting Started
Compass AI is available from two places:
- AI Dashboard — Click “Compass AI” in the navigation. This is the full-page experience with conversation history.
- Chat widget — A floating button appears on every other page. Click it to open a side panel and ask questions without leaving your current view.
Type a question and press Enter. Responses stream in real-time, and you’ll see which data sources were used for each answer.
What You Can Ask
Compass AI has access to the same data as your dashboards. Some examples:
- “How are we doing on DORA metrics this quarter?”
- “Which services have the highest change failure rate?”
- “Show me deployment frequency trends for the past 3 months”
- “Summarize how Team Platform is doing across all metrics”
- “What’s our release schedule adherence?”
- “Which teams have the highest review cycle time?”
- “Are there any open incidents right now?”
When a chart would help explain the answer, Compass AI generates one inline — line charts, bar charts, area charts, or pie charts.
Screen Context
When you open the chat widget from a specific page (e.g., the DORA dashboard or a team’s detail view), Compass AI knows what you’re looking at. You can ask “why is this number low?” and it understands which metric you mean.
Conversation History
Your conversations are saved automatically. You can:
- View previous conversations in the history panel
- Click a conversation to reload it
- Start a new chat at any time with “New Chat”
- Delete conversations you no longer need
Conversations are private to you — other members of your organization cannot see them.
Data Sources
Every factual claim Compass AI makes cites its source. You’ll see source badges (e.g., “get_dora_metrics”, “list_incidents”) that tell you exactly which data was queried. If no data is available for a question, Compass AI says so rather than guessing.
What Compass AI Won’t Do
- Fabricate data — If a tool returns no results, it tells you. Every number comes from a real query.
- Make decisions — It surfaces data and trends but doesn’t tell you to reorganize teams or fire anyone.
- Access other organizations — Data access is enforced server-side. The AI can only query your organization’s data.
- Execute changes — Read access is the default. Write operations (like creating releases) are only available to Admins.
Role-Based Access
The tools available to Compass AI depend on your role:
| Role | Access |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Read-only access to metrics, services, deployments, incidents, teams, releases, and projects |
| Manager | Everything above, plus survey results and PR hygiene data |
| Admin | Everything above, plus the ability to create and modify resources |
Usage Limits
Compass AI usage varies by plan:
| Plan | Access | Requests per user/hour | Requests per org/day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Not available | — | — |
| Pro | Full access | 100 | 5,000 |
| Enterprise | Full access | Unlimited | Unlimited |
If you hit a rate limit, wait a few minutes and try again. Rate limits reset on a rolling window.
Feedback
After certain conversations, you may be asked to rate the response on a 1–5 scale. This feedback helps us improve Compass AI’s accuracy and usefulness. Leaving a comment is optional.
Tips for Better Results
- Be specific — “What’s our deployment frequency for the payments service this month?” works better than “how are things going?”
- Ask for charts — “Show me a chart of lead time over the past quarter” generates a visual inline.
- Use context — Open the chat widget from the relevant page. The AI will use your current view as context.
- Ask follow-ups — Compass AI remembers the conversation, so you can drill down without restating everything.