What Actions and connected AI apps can do

When you're done, you know what your Chirp's Actions send and to whom, what an AI app you connect can do on your account, and how to limit or stop either.

Who this is for: account owners on any plan. Workspace admins and editors also set up Actions in the workspaces they work in.

Actions: what they send, and to whom

An Action lets your Chirp use another service through its API, with the operations you switch on and the key you add. Anyone chatting with the published Chirp can make it use them. See What Actions are.

• Calls go out from Chirp Builder's server, never from the visitor's browser or the AI provider. The service gets what the AI filled in, often taken from the visitor's messages, but not the visitor's network address.
• Your key is added to the request to that service only. The AI never sees it.
• The service's reply goes to the AI model, through OpenRouter, so the Chirp can answer (up to 20,000 characters of it).
• What's kept: each call's operation and result for 30 days, and visitors' answers to confirmations for 90. "No questions, answers, sent values or keys."

Actions: what protects you and your visitors

• Changes ask first. An operation that changes data asks the visitor first, unless you switch Visitors confirm first off for it. Deletes and cancels always ask. Once the Chirp has read an Action's reply or web results in a reply, every change in that reply asks first. See Choose operations, and when visitors confirm first.
• Visitors see where it goes and the values that will be sent (very long values are shortened), and nothing is sent until they confirm. A request expires after 10 minutes. Its values are stored encrypted until then, and erased once it's answered or expires.
• Limits: up to 10 calls in one reply, and 100 Action calls an hour on each Chirp, all its Actions together, from one network address.
• Only public addresses that the schema allows. Changes are never retried and never follow a redirect.
• One switch stops them all: Actions on, at the top of 7. Actions. "Turning Actions off applies right away, for visitors too. Your settings are kept."

To stay safe:

• Switch on only the operations you're happy for any visitor to use.
• Give the Action a key with only the access the Chirp needs, such as a read-only key when the service offers one.
• "Some APIs charge for their use. Those charges come from the API's provider, separate from OpenRouter."

Connected AI apps: what each level allows

When you connect Claude, ChatGPT or another AI app (see Connect Claude, ChatGPT or another AI app), you choose what it may do. Chirp Builder checks that level each time the app uses one of its tools. The app can't get round it by going to Chirp Builder's database directly, and it can't change your password.

• Read only: "See your Chirps, their Actions, your Academy and its students' progress, and your plan, and test Actions that only read data. No changes." That includes each Chirp's settings and instructions, the names of its knowledge files, your Collections, and the Academy report, with the names and emails of students who haven't been active for 14 days. It can also test an Action's operations that read data, which calls that service for real with your key. Changes are only shown, never sent. At every level, an app can read your Actions' addresses, including webhook addresses, which work like passwords.
• Create and edit: also create, import, edit and test Chirps, and add or remove their knowledge files and Actions. Testing a Chirp is a real chat on your OpenRouter key, and testing an Action can send a real change once the app says you agreed (Chirp Builder relies on the app to ask you, as with publishing). It can't publish or delete Chirps, or change who can open one. Some changes still reach visitors at once, without publishing: knowledge files, pausing a Chirp and its visitor limits, a Collection's name, address and Chirps, and Academy and course settings such as how students join.
• Create, edit and publish: everything, including publishing and deleting Chirps, and in an Academy, publishing courses, adding students and deleting modules and lessons. Chirp Builder tells the app to ask you first, but it relies on the app to do so.

The connect page starts on Create, edit and publish. Choose the lowest level that does the job.

Chirp Builder's tools for AI apps don't read or change your password, billing, API keys (an app only sees whether an Action has one) or the password of a protected Chirp. They don't cover leads, analytics, your team, custom domains or email services, and none of them deletes your account.

Where an app's information goes

What an AI app reads goes to that app and the company that runs it, under their own terms. At every level, that includes your instructions, and if you have an Academy, the names and emails in its report.

Changes an app makes to a Chirp show in its History, marked AI app (Chirps it imports are marked Import). Changes to Collections and your Academy aren't listed there. See See what changed in a Chirp.

Change an app's level, or disconnect it

1. Open Settings and find Connect your AI app. The same list is on the Import page.
2. Under Connected apps, choose a level in the menu beside the app (1). "(app) can now: …" It applies from the app's next request.
3. To stop it, click Disconnect (2) and confirm "Disconnect (app)? It will stop working with your Chirp Builder account right away."

When you stop using an app, also remove the Chirp Builder connector in the app itself.

Good to know

• An app works on the account that connected it. A team member who connects their own AI app works on their own Chirps, not on the Chirps in workspaces you share with them. For an Academy in a shared workspace, their app can't list its courses. It can open a course only when they give it the course's id (the last part of the web address while the course is open in Chirp Builder), and only as their role allows.
• Apps you connected before levels existed have Create, edit and publish until you change it. The menu shows each app's level.
• Visitors signing in to their own account at a service (OAuth) is coming soon. Until then, Actions use your key or no sign-in.

If it doesn't work

• Your AI app says it has read-only access, or can't publish. Raise its level under Connected apps in Settings, or do that step in Chirp Builder yourself.
• "Actions are paused across Chirp Builder for maintenance. Your settings are kept." Your Actions start working again when we switch them back on.