Ask OpenBoxes about your stock: the AI assistant

How much amoxicillin do we have, and where? When do those lots expire? What is on its way to us? In OpenBoxes, answering any of these means opening several screens, one location at a time. A manager looking across sites feels it most: the figures are all there, but putting them side by side takes a while. OpenBoxes Lift now has an AI assistant inside OpenBoxes that does the looking up for you.

Ask in plain words#

Click Assistant on an OpenBoxes page and type a question. The answer comes first, then the figures behind it, then a short line saying what was looked up, with links to the OpenBoxes screens that show the same thing. A few questions it answers:

• "How many 10 ml syringes do we have at each of my locations?"
• "When do the saline lots at the Main Warehouse expire?"
• "What's on its way to Clinic B?"

It looks up products, stock at one location or across your locations, lots with their expiry dates and bins, and the stock movements going to or from a location. Expiry questions work best when you name the products you care about.

Across your sites#

Ask about a product "at each of my locations" and the assistant checks every location you can open and puts them side by side. If you ask about a location you cannot open in OpenBoxes, it says so and leaves that location out rather than guessing.

What does this screen mean?#

The assistant also explains the screen you are on: what a status means, or what a page is for, from the OpenBoxes guide.

How we built it to be safe#

It works as you. The assistant asks OpenBoxes with your own sign-in, so it sees what you can see and nothing more.

It only looks where you can. It only looks at the locations you can open in OpenBoxes. Another location is left out, and the answer says so.

Nothing changes until you confirm. At launch the assistant could only read. Since 5 October 2026 it can also prepare draft stock requests, if your account owner turns them on: it shows the draft first, nothing changes until you click Confirm, and the draft is never submitted. It can now also make stock changes, if your account owner turns them on: it shows a preview first, nothing changes until you click Confirm, it works only at the location you are working at, and the assistant cannot undo a stock change. Apart from these it cannot create, edit or delete anything in OpenBoxes, and it never touches users, roles, passwords or settings. How draft stock requests work and how stock changes work.

Answers sit in a sealed box. The answer area cannot reach your OpenBoxes session or load anything from the internet.

A fixed list of lookups. The assistant can only use a short, fixed list of lookups. Product names and descriptions are written by people, and someone could type an instruction into one; the assistant treats that text as data, and the fixed list means it has nowhere else to go.

Answers still come from an AI and can be wrong, so check important figures in OpenBoxes. It does not give clinical, dosing or other medical advice.

Your data#

To answer, the assistant sends your question, the figures it looked up, and your name, roles, current location and the page you are on in OpenBoxes to Anthropic, our AI provider, and the request is processed in the United States. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, Anthropic does not train its models on it. We keep conversations for 90 days, a conversation ends when you sign out of OpenBoxes, and our staff read one only when you ask our support team for help with it. The details are in our privacy policy and on the sub-processors page.

What it costs#

It is included on every plan and is off until the account owner turns it on. Once it is on, your instance gets a monthly allowance of questions: 100 on Shared, 500 on Dedicated and 2,000 on Enterprise. Up to a fifth of the month's allowance can be used in one day. If you need more, the account owner can add 500 questions a month for $25 a month, up to 4 packs, on Shared and Dedicated, while the assistant is on. On Enterprise the assistant is turned on once it is added to your agreement. See pricing for the rest.

Try it#

The public demo has the assistant switched on: request demo access and you get up to 5 questions a day on the demo's sample data (visitors on the same network share that limit). Since 5 October you can also have it prepare up to 3 confirmed draft stock requests a day there. It does not change stock on the demo. The sample data is shared with other visitors and resets every night.

If you are already a customer, your account owner can turn it on from the AI assistant page in the portal, after reading and agreeing to the AI assistant terms; it is off until then. The AI Assistant guide has the details.