Ask Berdee in the Studio

Ask Berdee is a chat pinned to the bottom of the studio editor. Open any lesson and you'll see the pill — describe what you want in plain language and it helps from right there: answering a question, editing the lesson directly, building new scenes into it, or finding an image.

The Assistant plans new lessons from scratch; Ask Berdee works on the lesson you have open. Reach for Ask Berdee while you're actively building or refining one.

Opening it

Click the Ask Berdee pill at the bottom of the studio to open the chat panel. It's draggable, so move it out of the way of whatever you're working on. Each studio session starts a fresh conversation — close the studio and come back, and you begin with a clean slate.

What it can do

Answer a question

Ask something like _"how do flashcards work?"_ or _"what does scoring config do?"_ and it answers right in the chat, grounded in the real help center content — it won't invent features that don't exist.

Edit the open lesson

Ask for a change — _"make the title on scene 2 bigger"_, _"add a hint to the multiple choice"_, _"move the image to the right"_ — and it makes the change directly. It isn't limited to the scene you're looking at; name or describe any scene in the lesson. Edits are safe to try: each request is applied as a single step, the chat shows a receipt of exactly what changed, and the receipt has an Undo button that reverses the whole thing in one click (regular undo in the toolbar works too).

Build new scenes

Ask for something bigger — _"add three practice scenes about fractions"_, _"build a quiz scene for what's on screen"_ — and Ask Berdee works the same way the Assistant does, in miniature:

1. It plans first. You get one short message — a bullet per new scene in teacher words, the grade, and whether it's graded — and a question, _"Build these N scenes?"_, with Build them and Change something buttons. A quiz question gets its own scene, so "a five-question quiz" is five scenes. The grade comes from the lesson's own grade tags; it only asks when the lesson has none. One request builds up to 8 new scenes.
2. It writes the scenes. Once you confirm, each scene is written and checked for completeness. If a scene can't be written, Ask Berdee stops and asks what to do — add the other scenes, try that scene again, or skip it — so you only get part of a batch when you choose to. The panel shows what it's doing as it goes — _Planning the new scenes_, _Writing scenes_, _Adding scenes_ — and it takes a minute or two.
3. It adds them to the lesson you have open, right after the scene you're on, in the lesson's own colors and fonts. The last new scene is wired onward to whatever follows — the next scene, or the closing scene — so the lesson still flows. Drag them into place if they belong somewhere else.

Step-by-step, from asking for three questions to a finished lesson: Add quiz questions to a lesson with Ask Berdee.

Four things to know about built scenes:

• Pictures aren't chosen for you. New scenes arrive with empty picture spots where a scene called for an image, and Ask Berdee offers to find pictures once — say yes and it runs the image search below for you.
• Narration is recorded right after the scenes are added. New scenes include narration only when you ask for it. Each new narration widget's audio is made in the background with Berdee's default voice, and it uses text-to-speech characters from your plan — the same as pressing Generate Audio yourself. If your plan or this month's characters run out partway, Ask Berdee tells you which clips weren't recorded; open that narration widget and press Generate Audio when you're ready.
• It plans from a focused set of activities — text, images, buttons, multiple choice, matching, fill-in-the-blank, text and number answers, sorting, flashcards, narration, and sound effects. For anything else in a new scene (a drag-to-bucket, a hotspot, a video), ask for the widget by name and it's added as an edit instead.
• The lesson's own checks still apply. New scenes are added the way you'd add them by hand, so the studio's publish checks — every button leads somewhere, the score adds up, there's a way to finish — run when you publish or assign, not when the scenes are inserted. Preview the lesson before you hand it out: Preview and Test a Lesson.

Building new scenes runs a safety check on the plan before anything is written. If that check can't run — a hiccup at Berdee's AI provider — Ask Berdee says building is temporarily unavailable while answering questions, editing, and image search carry on. If the provider is unreachable altogether, the whole chat is unavailable, not just building.

Find and pick images

Ask for a picture — _"find a photo of a rain cloud for this scene"_ — and it searches the stock library or your own uploads and shows the results as a grid right in the chat. Click the one you want: it's added to your media library and placed into the widget for you.

Good to know

• It works on the open lesson only. To create a whole new lesson from scratch instead, use the Assistant — see Have Berdee Build a Lesson.
• Conversations don't carry over. Each time you open the studio, Ask Berdee starts fresh — it always works from the lesson as it is right now, never a stale memory of it.
• Edits are checked before they land. Each change is checked against the lesson before it's applied; if part of it doesn't fit, Ask Berdee corrects it and sends the whole change again, so the lesson isn't left half-edited. If it isn't doing what you meant, say it another way or name the scene and widget.
• It won't add a paused widget. Now and then we pause a widget. Ask Berdee can still edit the ones already in your lesson, but it won't add another — it tells you that widget isn't available right now and suggests something else. Scenes it builds aren't covered yet, so a new scene can occasionally include a paused widget; it works like any other, and you can delete it. See When a widget is greyed out.
• Built scenes are yours like any other. They're ordinary scenes in the open lesson — edit, reorder, or delete them freely; nothing is saved to students until you assign.
• Messages use your AI allowance. Each message you send counts as one AI action from your plan's monthly allowance (Plus and Studio Pro) — the same pool as other AI features. The behind-the-scenes work Berdee does to finish a request doesn't cost extra, and there's an hourly limit to catch runaway use. If you hit your allowance or your plan doesn't include AI features, you'll see the upgrade prompt. See AI and Voice for allowance details.

See also: Lessons and Scenes, The Assistant.