FlowFuse
Enable FlowFuse Assistant for standalone Node-RED
Currently, FlowFuse Assistant is only available to FlowFuse hosted instances of Node-RED.
The goal here is to enable it for standalone Node-RED instances so the community can make use of it.
This will require the user to have a FlowFuse Account; they will not need to have an active team subscription
As we did for the Node-RED Tools Plugin, the FF Assistant will provide a way to login to their FFC account. Once logged in, they will be able to access the FF Assistant API. For this level of user, there will be appropriate usage limits (X interactions per day for eg). If the user has an active team subscription, the usage limits will be higher.
NB: not all FF Assistant features use the backend API - will need to review case-by-case on how they are handled.
To achieve all of this, we'll need:
- FlowFuse Assistant Updates
- If running outside FF environment (where env vars provide tokens etc), show option in UI to login
- Login option should perform the OAuth flow to get an access token scoped to just the FF Assistant api
- FlowFuse UI Updates
- Review the UX for a user without a team. A new signup will still be getting a Pro tier trial - but what if they delete that team?
- User Profile page should include something about the assistant and how to use it in local Node-RED
- FF Assistant API backend
- Metering usage per user
- A way to apply usage limits based on the calling user
Have set priority to high as this will connect a lot more users to the platform and stimulate growth.
Due to other commitments, only managing to start this properly today. The first task is to understand the existing Assistant initialisation and how to pull it apart. Currently, if the runtime settings are missing it just doesn't do anything - as expected. I need to pick apart that logic so that if the runtime settings are missing, it still tells the UI to initialise, but in this 'standalone' mode.
Currently not all FFAssistant features are available to all tiers on FFC. Specifically, Inline code completions are a separate feature flag that are not enabled for Starter tier currently.
When we make the assistant available to a Standalone Node-RED, that Node-RED is not tied to a specific team - so no entitlement check can happen.
@gstout52 should the Standalone FF Assistant have access to all available assistant features or keep it inline with the Starter user experience?
My suggestion would be we remove the inline completion feature flag as a tier differentiator and have it available to all.
@knolleary just to make sure we are talking about the same thing here. This is geared at FlowFuse expert right? (FlowFuse assistant, meaning this func is meant to me consolidated eventually into the FlowFuse expert.
https://github.com/FlowFuse/website/issues/4100 is tracking this effort btw in regards to mentioning the FlowFuse expert across our materials
This is focussed on enabling FF Assistant (all of the AI enhancements embedded within Node-RED and exposed via the header menu you link to). This is currently entirely separate to FF Expert the chat UX.
@gstout52 should we get Assistant rebranded/aligned to the Expert branding before we make it available for Standalone? Will be more impactful to have it aligned.
@gstout52 should the Standalone FF Assistant have access to all available assistant features or keep it inline with the Starter user experience?
My suggestion would be we remove the inline completion feature flag as a tier differentiator and have it available to all.
I agree, @knolleary , let's do that.
@gstout52 should we get Assistant rebranded/aligned to the Expert branding before we make it available for Standalone? Will be more impactful to have it aligned.
I am not convinced it will be better to change the Assistant name to Expert yet, as the two functionalities feel different and are interacted with differently by users. But I'm open to persuasion here.