---
title: The AI assistant
description: Automatic first-look troubleshooting when something goes down.
category: advanced
updated: 2026-10-17
tags: [ai, troubleshooting, assistant]
---

The AI assistant does the first round of troubleshooting for you. When a monitor goes
down, it investigates and writes up what it found — so your first alert already comes
with a head start instead of just "it's down".

![The Automatic incident diagnosis setting in Notifications, with an Enable button and text explaining that turning it off does not affect monitoring or down alerts](/img/docs/app-first-responder-setting.png)
*You can switch the diagnosis off for the whole account here, or for one noisy
monitor from that monitor's own panel. Either way your down alerts keep coming —
only the written diagnosis stops.*

## Automatic incident troubleshooting

When a monitor goes down the assistant looks at the failure — the error, recent
history, and related signals — and emails a plain-language summary of the likely
cause shortly after your alert. It's a first look, not a verdict, but it often points you
straight at the problem.

**Paid plans** include a monthly allowance of these diagnoses, shown on the
[pricing page](/pricing), with a daily limit, and each monitor gets at most three diagnosed
outages and one diagnosed slowdown or flapping episode in any 24 hours. Allowances reset on
the 1st of each month (UTC). The alert itself always goes out; past a limit, only the
write-up waits. The **Free plan** includes **3 diagnoses a month**, and during the
account's **first 14 days** 25 starter AI uses on top, shared between these diagnoses and
the interactive assistant below and used first: each diagnosis and each question you ask
uses one. When they are all used, a confirmed outage still gets a one-line verdict (within
daily limits), and the full write-up is kept on your Incidents page, locked, until you buy a one-time AI pack
(25 uses for $5, shared, no expiry) or move to Hobby or above; either opens the locked
write-ups you already have. Your monitors, incidents and down alerts carry on exactly as
before either way. The [MCP connector](/docs/integrations/mcp-overview) has its own Free
allowance of 300 requests in the first 14 days. The Incidents page and the assistant panel
both show what you have left.

## Interactive assistant

The interactive assistant lives in the dashboard. Ask it about your monitors and
recent incidents in plain language and it will pull the relevant details together
for you, and it can propose changes that you confirm. **Paid plans** include a monthly
allowance of questions, with a daily limit, separate from the diagnosis allowance. On the
**Free plan** each answered question takes one of the 25 shared starter uses described above
while they last, then one of the plan's **5 questions a month**, then an AI pack use, and the
panel tells you how many are left.

## How it treats your data

The assistant only reads your own monitoring data to do its job, and it never makes
changes to your monitors on its own — any change it suggests is yours to approve.

## Get started
- [Compare plans](/docs/account/plans-and-limits)
- [See how alerts reach you](/docs/alerts/notification-channels)

## Related
- [How alerts work](/docs/alerts/how-alerts-work)
- [Analytics & reports](/docs/advanced/analytics-and-reports)