AI assistance

schakl. runs no AI service of its own and sells no credits. You connect your own account at Anthropic, OpenAI or a server that speaks the OpenAI API, and every AI feature in the platform runs through that one key, that one budget and that one usage meter. With nothing configured, no AI control is drawn anywhere in the app.

Where to find it

Instellingen → AI (Settings → AI), in the Integraties (Communication & integrations) group: provider, key, model, features, house style, budget, speech and usage.
The Assistent (Assistant): the sparkle icon at the top right of the bar, on every page.
The Schrijfhulp (Writing assist): the sparkle icon in the toolbar of every rich text field.
The Urenhulp (Time assist): the Snel toevoegen (Quick add) field above the entry form on Uren (Hours).
Brief me and AI-rapport (AI report): two buttons on the client page.
On Taken (Tasks): Inspreken (Dictate) beside Nieuwe taak, and on every task the Aanpassen met schakl box and the Stappen schrijven met schakl button.
Instellingen → Taken (Settings → Tasks): the task address, whose blanks the AI fills in.

AI falls under the commercial licence; see Licences.

Setting it up

Open Instellingen → AI. You need the AI-instellingen beheren (Manage AI settings) permission, which admins hold by default.
Pick a Provider: Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenAI-compatibel (eigen server) (OpenAI-compatible, own server). The last one is anything speaking the OpenAI chat API at an address of your own.
Paste your key into API-sleutel (API key). It is stored encrypted and never played back: next time it reads “Er is een sleutel opgeslagen; laat leeg om die te behouden” (a key is stored; leave empty to keep it), and leaving it blank keeps it.
Fill in Basis-URL (Base URL) only for OpenAI-compatible, for example https://ai.example.com/v1. Saving without it is a validation error on that field.
Leave Model empty for the provider’s default, or type one yourself. The field is free text so a new model needs no new release of schakl.; Modellen ophalen (Fetch models) pulls your provider’s current list in as suggestions.
Tick what you want under Functies (Features), optionally fill in Huisstijl (House style) and Maandelijks tokenbudget (Monthly token budget), and press Opslaan (Save).
Press Verbinding testen (Test connection). It round-trips a small request through the stored settings; on a failure the provider’s own error text is shown verbatim.

The features

Each feature is its own checkbox with an Eigen model (optioneel) (Model override) box beside it, so you can put a fast model on the time assist and leave the larger one for writing. Features that read what somebody else wrote (an e-mail, a meeting) deliberately get a checkbox of their own: an agency happy for AI to polish a colleague’s paragraph has not thereby agreed to it reading a client’s mailbox.

Feature	What it does
Assistent	The chat panel: questions about your whole workspace, and recording a stated list of things
Schrijfhulp (Writing assist)	Rewriting, shortening, translating and writing out in every rich text field
Urenhulp (Time assist)	Snel toevoegen and Vul mijn dag aan on Uren
Briefing & rapporten	Brief me and the AI report on the client page
E-mail in taak (E-mail into task)	Filling in a task you create while approving an e-mail, from that e-mail
Taak inspreken, aanpassen en plannen (Dictate, adjust and plan tasks)	Dictating a task, changing a task in words, writing its steps
E-mail naar taakadres (Mail to task address)	Filling in what a task mailed to the task address left open
Vergadertranscripten en verslagen (Meeting transcripts and minutes)	Transcribing a recorded meeting and drafting its minutes (Meetings)

Assistent. The sparkle icon in the top bar opens the Assistent slide-over. You ask about anything in your workspace (clients, projects, tasks, hours, domains, invoices, marketing figures): the assistant searches the same API an external AI client gets over MCP, and so sees exactly what you may see and nothing more. On a client, project or task page it inherits that record, so “this client” resolves. Answers carry source chips that deep-link to the records they came from, and while it works you see what it is reading (“Leest domeinen…”, reading domains).

It writes only from a fixed list: create or change a task, post a comment, log hours and start or stop the timer. Every write goes through, as you, the same checks as doing it on the screen yourself, with your permissions and on your activity trail (“Opslaan…”, saving). Configuring something, sending an invoice or publishing a report is beyond it; widening that list is a deliberate decision in the code, not a search result.

Schrijfhulp. Every rich text field (client, contact, project, task, interaction, invoice and quote texts, task and subscription templates, and long-text custom fields) carries a sparkle icon with: Verbeteren (Improve), Inkorten (Shorten), Uitbreiden (Expand), Spelling & grammatica (Spelling & grammar), Zakelijke toon (Business tone), Informele toon (Informal tone), Vertalen naar Nederlands / Engels (Translate to Dutch / English) and Schrijf uit (Write out). The result appears separately first, and you choose Vervangen (Replace) or Invoegen (Insert). Whatever you put under Huisstijl (up to 4,000 characters, e.g. “write informally, address the reader as je, keep sentences short”) is prepended to every writing request.

Urenhulp. On Uren you type one line into Snel toevoegen, for example “gisteren 14:00-16:30 website Jansen, homepage overleg”. The server looks up your own clients, projects and tasks and prefills the entry form with them; saving is yours. Whatever the line itself says unambiguously (“gisteren”, “afgelopen vrijdag”, 14:00-16:30, “2 uur”, “90 min”) is filled in even without the model, so half a match still yields half a line. Vul mijn dag aan (Fill in my day) compares your work schedule with your approved leave and what you already logged, and suggests draft rows for the gap from tasks you demonstrably worked on that day. Nothing there is saved without your click either.

Briefing & rapporten (Digest & reports). On a client page, Brief me summarises that client’s recent activity, with source chips. AI-rapport drafts a monthly report you edit in the editor and save as a record. This is the light version in the core; the full report with a branded PDF, a schedule and sending is the reporting module.

Tasks. Three features work on Tasks:

Taak inspreken, aanpassen en plannen. Inspreken lets you say a task in one go and hands you a draft you read through whole before anything is saved. On an existing task you type or speak what should change into the Aanpassen met schakl box; schakl. applies it as you, under your name on the trail. Stappen schrijven met schakl builds a checklist from the title and the description.
E-mail in taak. Create a task while approving an e-mail and schakl. reads that e-mail and fills the task in: description, steps, a deadline if there is none yet, the links from the mail. It writes from your agency’s side: a mail you sent the client becomes a task for you, not for the client. Who gets the task, for which client and whether the client sees it are things an e-mail can never decide, however it is worded.
E-mail naar taakadres. A mail to the task address becomes a task; the AI only fills in what your own words left open and never overwrites what you wrote.

Dictating instead of typing

Speech to text needs a credential of its own, because Anthropic (the default provider) has no transcription service. Instellingen → AI carries a Spraak naar tekst (Speech to text) block for it:

Spraakaanbieder (Speech provider): Uit (Off), OpenAI, OpenAI-compatible or Mistral (Voxtral). Anthropic is deliberately absent, because that setting could never work. On Uit your chat provider is reused, which only resolves if that is OpenAI or a compatible server.
API-sleutel voor spraak (Speech API key), Basis-URL (compatible only), Spraakmodel (Speech model; empty means whisper-1 on OpenAI) and Maandbudget audio (seconden) (Monthly audio budget in seconds). Audio is counted in seconds rather than tokens, so it gets its own budget. For meetings, pick a model that labels who spoke; the screen names which ones do.

There are four places with a microphone, and each follows its own feature’s checkbox:

Where	Feature	At most
Snel toevoegen on Uren	Urenhulp	2 minutes
Inspreken on Taken, and the Aanpassen met schakl box on a task	Taak inspreken, aanpassen en plannen	5 minutes
The Assistent’s input box	Assistent	5 minutes
Recording a meeting	Vergadertranscripten en verslagen	as long as the meeting

Whatever you dictate always lands as text in the field first. Reading it back is the whole point — Dutch proper nouns are exactly what a recogniser gets wrong, and “Janssen” instead of “Jansen” silently matches no client at all. In the assistant you send the message yourself; with a dictated task you read the draft before anything is created.

The microphone is drawn only when a speech service is configured, that place’s feature is on, you may do the thing (log hours, create tasks) and the browser is allowed to record. That last one requires https://. While recording, the counter runs with the cap beside it (0:42 / 5:00), and when the cap is reached the recording stops and the screen says so. Too long, or an unsupported format, is a clean error rather than a half-transcribed line.

Budget and usage

Maandelijks tokenbudget is a soft cap per calendar month; empty means unlimited. The Verbruik (Usage) panel shows this month’s requests and tokens per feature, with a bar that turns amber at 80% and red at 100%. Over the cap, the app says “Het maandelijkse AI-budget is bereikt.” (the monthly AI budget has been reached) with a Toch doorgaan (Proceed anyway) button, so an urgent question does not strand on a limit you set yourself.

Usage records counts and labels only. The text of a question or an answer is stored nowhere in schakl.

Permissions

Permission	What it opens	Held by default
`ai.use`	Using the AI features: assistant, writing assist, time assist, briefings, tasks and dictation	Administrator, Member
`ai.settings.manage`	Instellingen → AI: provider, key, features, budget, test and usage	Administrator
`time.entry.write`	Additionally required to dictate hours, because the transcript becomes a time entry	Administrator, Member (own entries)
`tasks.task.create` / `tasks.task.write`	Additionally required to dictate a task or change one with schakl	Administrator, Member

Clients with a portal login are not given ai.use, on purpose: AI reads across the very records a client role is scoped away from. What the assistant records additionally needs exactly the permission the screen would ask for.

Good to know

A feature you just toggled can take up to half a minute to appear for colleagues: the list of active features is briefly cached.
The model name is free text, so a typo is not a validation error but a provider error on first use. Verbinding testen brings that forward.
Relative dates in the time assist match your day: they resolve in the organisation’s timezone and against the day you are actually looking at, not the server’s clock.
If your sentence says nothing about billable, the field stays empty and the project’s own setting wins. It is never quietly defaulted to non-billable.
Names are matched literally. “Jansn” finds nothing. What you yourself logged in the last thirty days is weighed in, so Tuesday’s client is usually recognised anyway.
An e-mail cannot make the AI do what it may not. For E-mail in taak, assignee, client, project, status and client visibility are simply not among the fields the model may fill in, and a link only comes along if it appears verbatim in the mail.
AI-configuratie verwijderen (Remove AI configuration) at the bottom of the page takes every AI feature away until a new key is entered. The usage history is kept.
An expired licence stops generation, while the settings screen and the usage history stay readable.