Getting Started

The Assistant

7 min read

One chat that answers your Berdee questions and builds complete lessons for you. Part of Plus and Studio Pro.

The assistant is a single chat you open from Assistant in the sidebar. It does two things:

Answers your questions about using Berdee, in plain language, drawn straight from the help center — so you don't have to hunt for the right article.
Builds lessons for you — you describe the lesson you want, approve a plan, and it writes the whole thing: scenes, questions, pictures, narration, and grading.

You don't pick a mode. Ask a how-to question and it answers; describe a lesson and it plans one. It works out what you're after from what you type — and you can do both in the same conversation, so "how do I assign this?" is a fine thing to ask right after a lesson lands.

The Assistant plans new lessons from scratch; Ask Berdee works on the lesson you have open in the studio.

Which plans include it

The assistant is part of Plus and Studio Pro, and every message you send it counts toward your plan's monthly AI allowance. The Free plan doesn't include AI features, so on Free, Assistant in the sidebar opens a short page instead of a chat: what the assistant can build for you, how much monthly AI allowance Plus and Studio Pro include, and a See plans button to compare them.

On Free and have a how-to question? The help center answers it for free, on every plan. That page links straight to it, or see Searching the Help Center.

Asking questions

Ask how-to and "what is" questions about using Berdee, for example:

"How do I create my first lesson?"
"How do I assign a lesson to students?"
"What's the difference between a scene and a widget?"
"How do payouts work for published lessons?"

Type your question and press Enter (or Send). The answer streams in as it's written, and while the assistant is looking things up you'll see a small note like "Searching the help center."

Where the answers come from. Every answer is grounded in the Berdee help center — the same articles you can read yourself. When the assistant uses an article, it references the article's path (for example, /help-center/workflows/assigning-materials) so you can search for it or open it directly. If the help center doesn't cover your question yet, the assistant says so rather than guess — it's better to tell you something isn't documented than to make it up.

Building a lesson

Describe the lesson in plain language. The more you say about the grade, the goal, and the kind of practice you want, the closer the first draft lands. For example:

"Build a 4-scene lesson on the water cycle for grade 3, ending with a short quiz."
"Make a fractions practice lesson for 5th grade — a few multiple-choice questions and one put-in-order question."
"Create an intro to the parts of a plant with a labelled diagram and two check questions."

The full walkthrough — questions, the plan, the build, pictures and narration, and changing a lesson afterward — is in Have Berdee Build a Lesson. The short version:

It asks before it guesses

When something important is missing, the assistant asks you first with buttons to click, instead of guessing — _before_ it plans anything, so a wrong assumption never costs you a whole draft. The decisions it clarifies up front are the ones that shape the entire lesson:

Grade or age band — a grade-2 lesson and a grade-8 lesson on the same topic look nothing alike.
Teaching versus practice — how much of the lesson explains and how much of it asks.
Length — how many scenes, when you didn't say.
Theme — a seasonal or holiday look, your own idea, or none.

Pick the option that fits, or type your own answer in the message box if none do, and it continues. It won't interrogate you: anything you already said (a grade, a scene count, a specific focus) it takes as given, and there's a small fixed number of questions per lesson — past that it makes a sensible choice and tells you what it assumed.

You approve the plan first

Before a single scene is written, the assistant posts the plan as a message you can scan: the grade band, the length, whether it's scored, one line per scene in plain teaching words, and anything it assumed. Then it asks one question — _"Ready to build this plan?"_ — with buttons to approve it or ask for changes. No scene is written until you approve, so this is the cheapest moment to say "make scene 3 about roots instead of stems."

A draft does appear in your library before that, as soon as the assistant starts planning — it's where the lesson will land, and approving gives it the plan's real title. See Have Berdee Build a Lesson for the detail.

Watching it build

A build checklist appears in the chat as soon as the assistant starts planning. Once you approve, it adds one line per scene, then Building your lesson, and ticks off as the work happens. Scenes are written in parallel, so several tick within seconds of each other. The checklist stays after the build finishes, so you can always see what was made.

Before the lesson is delivered it's checked the same way the studio checks a lesson before you can assign it: every button leads somewhere real, the scenes flow in order, the grading adds up, and what was built matches the plan you approved. A lesson that can't pass isn't delivered half-built — the assistant tells you plainly what went wrong and what happens next.

Your lesson, in the studio

When the build finishes, the chat shows a card — _"Your lesson is ready — 6 scenes · saved as a draft"_ — with a Go to the lesson button that opens it in the studio. The lesson is already in your library as a draft, with the title, description, grade levels, and subject filled in from the plan, pictures generated for its image spots, narration recorded, and one of Berdee's house themes applied for the grade band.

Everything is yours to change — the wording, the pictures, the point values, the order of the scenes. To change the colors and fonts, switch themes from the studio's ⋯ → Settings menu: see Themes and Palettes.

Changing a lesson you already built

Stay in the conversation that built it and say what to change — _"make scene 3 harder"_, _"add one more practice scene"_, _"drop the flashcard scene"_. The assistant rewrites only the scenes your request touches and updates the same lesson; the rest is carried over untouched, including any edits you've made in the studio. Each change becomes a new version of the draft, so your earlier version is always one click away in History and Restore.

Already closed the tab? Open Assistant again. If your most recent conversation built a lesson or is still building one, it reopens on its own, with its checklist and cards intact; otherwise click Continue. New conversation starts a clean one. Changes only work in the conversation that built the lesson, and Berdee reopens only your most recent conversation from the last 30 days, so make your changes before you start a new one.

If you've hand-edited a scene the change would rewrite, the assistant asks first — Replace my edits on those scenes or Keep my edits — rather than quietly overwriting your work. The checklist shows each round as Changes · round 1, round 2, and so on, and the finished card reads _"Your lesson is updated"_ with what was rewritten and what was kept. A lesson can be changed this way up to ten times in one conversation (a change that didn't finish still counts); after that, use New conversation to build the next lesson.

If you've reached your lesson limit

An AI-built draft counts like any other lesson in your library. If you're at your plan's lesson limit, the assistant tells you the moment it would start planning one — _"You've reached your plan's lesson limit, so I can't start a new lesson right now"_ — before anything is planned or spent. Delete a draft you no longer need, or see Plans for more room.

Questions still work. The lesson limit stops new lessons, not answers: you can keep asking how-to questions in the same chat while you're at the cap.

Good to know

Every message you send in the Assistant counts as one AI action from your plan's monthly allowance — a how-to question, an answer to one of its questions, a plan approval, a change request. The work Berdee does behind the scenes to finish a build — however many scenes, however many retries — doesn't cost extra. If you reach your allowance, the assistant pauses until it resets (or you can upgrade your plan). See AI and Voice.
You stay in control. A built lesson lands in your library as a draft; nothing is published or assigned until you say so, and all the grading and styling is editable.
Be specific. Whether you're asking a question or requesting a lesson, naming the details gets a sharper answer or a closer first draft.
Ask a follow-up. The assistant remembers the current conversation, so you can refine without repeating yourself.
If it isn't responding. When the assistant can't be reached, you'll see _"Berdee's assistant isn't responding right now. Please try again in a minute."_ instead of a spinner that never ends. A message that didn't go through doesn't count against your allowance, so just send it again.