Cards in the chat

You say: "Find me somewhere to stay in Valletta for three nights, two adults."

Player One does: puts a card in the conversation: two or three stays side by side, each with a picture, a rating, the total for the dates and a link to the hotel's own page.

You see: the card as part of the reply, headed "Three nights in Valletta" with the dates and numbers on the line under it. Tap the one you like and press the button, and your choice goes back as your next message. The agent carries on from there.

A card is how an agent lays something out when plain words would be clumsy: options to pick from, a few questions to answer, results to compare. It is drawn in Player One's own style, so it looks the same whichever agent made it, and it sits in the thread like the rest of the reply. It is not a web page. When an agent needs a bigger interactive page, with a colour picker or a place to drop files, it opens one in a tab beside the chat instead: see The preview pane.

What you do with one

Tap to choose. Options come as cards or rows. For a single pick a tap is often the whole answer. Where you can pick more than one, or there is more on the card to fill in, a button at the foot sends it.

Fill in a short form. Text boxes, tick boxes, sliders, dates and times, lists to pick from. A longer form is split into steps, headed "Step 1 of 2" with the step's name. Where the agent allows it, a Skip button passes over a question.

Just look. Some cards ask nothing: a table of figures, a chart, a list of results with pictures and facts. Tap a picture to see it larger. A row or card that points at one page opens that page when you click it.

See what you answered. Once you answer, the card shows an Answered tag and a line in the chat says what you chose. A card with several fields leaves one line per field, each under a short label.

Change your mind. The small cross on the Answered tag unlocks the card with your earlier answer still chosen, and you answer again. A quiz question that has already shown its answer cannot be changed.

When a card asks for an answer, the agent stops and waits for it, and shows one waiting card at a time. Reload the page or open the chat on another device and the card, and your answer, are still there.

Kinds you will meet

Choices. Pick one, or pick several, from plans, sizes, routes, times of day or anything else the agent can list. A yes or no card can come up before the agent sends, pays, deletes or deploys something, with a preview you can edit before you agree.

Forms. A few fields to fill, in one step or several.

Plans to approve. A plan laid out step by step, with a status and two buttons: approve it, or ask for changes.

Results. Stays, products, places, flights or train times, each with its picture, the facts that matter, a rating where there is one and a link. A fact the agent could not check is left off the card rather than filled with a placeholder.

Tables and charts. Figures in columns, bar charts to compare a few values, and line charts for a trend over time.

Checklists and progress. Steps you tick off, or a bar and a list of phases for a piece of work under way.

Time slots. A diary or timetable you read, or a set of slots you tap to book one.

Quizzes and flashcards. See below.

Passwords and keys

An agent that needs an API key, a password or a certificate puts a masked box on a card. What you type goes straight to the Vault and never passes through the agent, and the answer line in the chat reads "Saved to vault" instead of the value. The card can offer to keep the secret in the Vault under a name for next time. A private key or certificate of several lines can be pasted or chosen as a file, and arrives exactly as written. In a chat that other people can reach, such as a public link to a sandboxed agent, the box does not appear and the card says "Secrets can't be entered in this chat."

Quizzes and flashcards

You say: "Quiz me on the Hanley lease, five questions."

Player One does: shows one question per card. The moment you tap an answer the card shows whether you were right and, in a line, why, including why the likeliest wrong answer is wrong.

You see: the next question, and at the end a score card with the questions you missed and a button to try those again.

Flashcards turn over when you tap them and ask you to mark each one knew it or not yet. The cards you missed come back as a smaller set. Your agent keeps the result of each round in memory, so the next round starts from your weak spots and shows how you are improving. Say "stop" at any point and you get the score so far. In the web chat a quiz usually opens in a tab beside the chat, so it stays in view as the conversation goes on, and the chat holds a line pointing to it.

On other channels

On Telegram a card arrives as a message with buttons you tap. A card that needs a password or key is answered in Player One, not in the messaging app. See Channels and communication for the apps Player One connects to.

Where it lives

In the thread of any chat, on the web and on a phone. Cards have no page of their own and no menu entry. A command that needs your permission is a different kind of card, with Once, Always and No on it: Stay in control covers those.