Make a Sidekick by talking to it

There is no Sidekick form, and nowhere to tick "include weekends". You make a Sidekick the way you ask Rally for anything: say what you want, and a drafting assistant works out the details and writes them down.

Start a new Sidekick#

There are two places to start one.

• In the Sidekicks window, click New Sidekick at the top right. (Open the window from the account menu at the bottom of the sidebar → Sidekicks.)
• In a Channel or Breakout, click its name in the title pill, choose Sidekicks, then Add Sidekick → Create new Sidekick. This opens the Sidekicks window on a new draft that starts as Only you; to get a Sidekick that belongs to the Channel, ask Rally in the Channel instead (see below).

Rally shows Creating Sidekick… for a moment, then opens your new Sidekick. On one side is its details panel; on the other, a panel headed Conversation. That conversation is with the drafting assistant.

If something goes wrong you see Sidekick could not be created with a Try again button.

Describe what you want#

Write to the drafting assistant as you would to a capable colleague. Say what the job is, when it should happen, and where the result should go:

Every Friday at 4pm, look through the #support channel in Slack for questions we did not answer, and post a list here with links.

The assistant asks follow-up questions when it needs to: which Slack channel, what counts as "unanswered", whether you want an empty list on quiet weeks. Answer them in plain words. When it has what it needs, it saves the Sidekick straight away and tells you so in the conversation. There is no Create or Save button to look for; saving is the assistant's job.

Each save fills in or updates:

• the name and description;
• the instructions the Sidekick follows;
• any triggers (see Triggers and schedules);
• an icon and colour, picked to suit the job.

Until the assistant has enough to save a working version, the Sidekick stays a Draft. A half-finished draft never replaces the last version that worked.

Keep talking to change it#

The conversation does not end when the Sidekick is saved. Come back any time and ask for changes: a new time, a shorter summary, a different name, a different icon. The details panel suggests some under Make it work for you: "Keep it short" or "Use a more casual tone."

Every change is saved as a new version. A run that has already started finishes with the version it started with, so editing a Sidekick halfway through a run will not confuse it mid-sentence.

If you want an Organization Sidekick rather than a personal one, say so in this conversation before it is published. New Sidekicks start private to you.

Change the icon and colour yourself#

The drafting assistant chooses an icon and colour, but the hexagon is yours to repaint. Click the hexagon in the Sidekick's details panel to open the palette, then pick from the Color ring and the Icon grid. Each click saves at once, and the palette stays open while you try a few. Every window showing that Sidekick updates to match.

A recognisable hexagon is worth a minute: it is how you spot the Sidekick in the Sidekicks window and in a Channel's Sidekicks list. Changing it needs permission to manage the Sidekick; if you lack it, the palette shows an error and the hexagon goes back to how it was.

Channels and Breakouts have icons and colours too; those are covered in Names, icons and colours.

Or ask Rally in a Channel#

You do not have to leave a conversation to make a Sidekick. Ask Rally in any Channel or Breakout:

Every Friday, summarize this Channel and post it here.

Rally first looks for a suitable Sidekick the Channel already has and reuses it. If there is none, it makes a small one owned by the Channel and passes your request to that Sidekick's drafting assistant. You see the work in the conversation under a Sidekicks row, and the new Sidekick appears in the Channel's Sidekicks list, in its title pill menu.

A Sidekick made this way belongs to the Channel (its scope badge says Channel). If you asked from a Breakout, that Breakout becomes its home and where it posts by default.

Writing good instructions#

The drafting assistant turns what you say into instructions, so a vague request gets you a vague Sidekick. These habits help.

• Say where the result goes. "Post it in this Channel", "send me a Slack DM", "email the summary to me". A Sidekick does not deliver anywhere on its own; see Where a Sidekick's results go.
• Say what to do when there is nothing to report. "If nothing new came in, say nothing" keeps quiet weeks quiet.
• Name the sources. "The #support channel", "my Gmail inbox", "new Granola notes". Rally can only use tools that are connected; see Connecting your other tools.
• Describe the shape of a good answer. "Three bullet points, newest first, with links" beats "a summary".
• Name the time zone if it matters: "9am Pacific".