How Storyflow AI Works

Storyflow has one AI assistant for the whole app. Not a separate one for documents, another for the canvas and a third for Tactics: the same assistant, which knows where you are and what you are looking at.

Teams use it to plan commercials, brand campaigns and social media campaigns. Hand it a brief and it lays out the plan, the references and the tasks on a board everyone can see, then turns that board into something you can send.

Because it is one assistant with one memory of the conversation, you can research a topic on the dashboard, move to a board and ask it to build from what you just discussed, then open a document and have it write the same material up, without re-explaining anything.

What you can ask it to do

Research, laid out on your board

Ask a question and it searches the web live, gathers sources, images and insights, and lays them out on your canvas. It cites the sources it used, so you can check them, and it builds on what is already on your board rather than starting from a blank page. See Web Search in AI Chat.

The slow parts, done for you

It sorts your notes, pulls the names, costs and dates out of a PDF, makes pictures for your shot list, and turns your board into a PDF, a poster or slides. Work that takes hours by hand takes minutes, and you keep every creative decision.

Everything it can make

Everything it builds is real content you can move, edit and delete yourself.

• Plans and boards: notes, headings, to-dos, walls, tables and arrows, up to a full project plan, task list or kanban board.
• Visual thinking: mind maps, flowcharts, charts, dashboards, moodboards and color palettes.
• Production work: storyboards and shot lists.
• Designs: visual pages and designs such as a positioning map, a timeline or a one-pager.
• Writing: drafting and editing inside a document.
• Images, on Pro and Max: generate and edit pictures on the board, working from your reference images.

It also edits what is already there: rewrite a card, split one into several, merge several into one, recolor a wall, add labels or arrange and group a messy board.

Where to use it

• On a board or in a document: open the panel from the AI orb. It stays with you as you move around, and it can build on the board or write in the document you have open.
• On the dashboard: say what you are making in the box at the top. It creates the board and fills it, so nothing is typed twice.
• In ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants: connect your own assistant, explained further down this page.

What it can see

The assistant is not guessing about your workspace. On any request it knows:

• Where you are: the project, the board or the document currently open.
• What you have selected: elements selected on the canvas, or text highlighted in a document, become the subject of the request.
• What you attached: anything you added to the message with the + button.
• Who you are: your AI settings, meaning what you have told it about yourself and any knowledge items you have saved.

Everything else is closed until it opens it. A file on your board is just a filename until the assistant reads it, and a link is just a URL until it fetches it. This is deliberate: it looks things up rather than assuming, which is why it can say "that PDF says X" instead of inventing something plausible.

It reads PDFs, spreadsheets, CSVs and documents, transcribes audio, and can see the images you select.

How a request is carried out

1. It reads first. For anything about your own content, it fetches the current state of the board or document rather than relying on what it saw earlier in the conversation.
2. It researches when the answer depends on the world. Prices, tools, events and anything with a date benefit from a live web search.
3. It works step by step, applying as it goes. Cards appear on your board one at a time as they are made. There is no preview step and nothing to approve: the work is real content from the moment it lands.
4. It asks when the request is genuinely ambiguous, using a short form in the chat rather than guessing and building the wrong thing. See When the AI Asks, and What It Assumes.

Because the work is applied as it goes, undo is how you reverse it. One undo reverses a turn, and anything deleted stays in the board's trash for 7 days.

Steering it

Select first. Whatever is selected when you send a message is what "this", "these" and "it" mean. Selecting three cards and asking to expand them edits those three rather than creating three new ones alongside.

Attach what it should work from. The + button adds files and context to your message. Attaching the brief, the transcript or the reference material is the single biggest lever on output quality.

Type @ to point at something. @-mentions bring in notes, documents, boards and images. Mention a Tactic and the output takes the shape of that method rather than a generic answer.

Type / for a workflow. Workflows are jobs the AI already knows how to do, such as a shot list, a campaign brief or a competitor teardown.

Set how much it takes on. The Effort dial decides whether it does what you asked and stops, or carries the job further.

Stop or queue. The send button becomes a stop button while it works. You can also type your next message mid-run and it will be picked up in turn.

Use it from ChatGPT, Claude and other tools

If your team already works in ChatGPT or Claude, you do not have to switch. Storyflow supports MCP, an open standard that lets AI assistants use other apps. Connect it and your assistant can read your boards and documents and build new ones, in the projects you allow.

To connect, open Settings, then MCP & Apps in Storyflow and pick your assistant:

• ChatGPT: install Storyflow from ChatGPT's plugin directory. Availability depends on your ChatGPT plan, workspace and region.
• Claude: add a custom connector with the address https://mcp.storyflow.so/mcp.
• Gemini, Grok, Claude Code, Cursor and others: use the same address. The exact steps for each are in Connect Claude, ChatGPT and Other AI Tools.

You sign in to Storyflow when you connect, then choose which projects it may use and whether it may make changes. A connection lasts 30 days before it asks you to sign in again, and you can remove it at any time.

How this differs from Storyflow AI. Storyflow AI sits beside your work: it sees what you have open and selected, and it follows your AI settings. A connected assistant keeps its own chat history and tools, and reaches into Storyflow when it needs to. Plenty of teams use both.

Memory and personalization

In AI settings you can tell the assistant about yourself, how you want to be addressed and how you like answers written, and save knowledge items it should treat as reference facts. These apply to every conversation, so you stop repeating the same preamble. You can see what it remembers as a graph.

Chat history

Conversations are saved per project, so you can reopen an earlier thread and carry on with its context intact rather than starting over. Long-running work keeps its thread instead of scattering across one-off chats.

Best practices

Give it context before you give it instructions. A board holding the real material beats a long prompt describing it.

Ask for research on anything factual. Built from memory, a factual board reads generic and dated. Built from research, it carries names, numbers and specifics.

Say what good looks like. Length, tone, audience and format up front save a round trip.

Correct the thing, do not restate the request. "Shorten this to two sentences" beats retyping the original prompt with one word changed.

Iterate in one thread. The conversation is context. Refining in place is better than a fresh chat per idea.

More in AI Best Practices.

Privacy

Your projects are private by default and your content is not used to train AI models. See Data Privacy & AI Training for the detail.

Plans and usage

• Free: Storyflow AI inside the app is not included. You can still connect ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant, with 25 actions a week. Every read and every change counts as one action.
• Plus: Storyflow AI with an allowance that renews every billing period, and unlimited actions from connected assistants.
• Pro: much more AI usage than Plus, and AI image generation.
• Max: the most AI usage, AI image generation and a team workspace.

Compare plans.