An assistant inside a focus app should be judged by two things: does it save you from digging through menus, and is it honest about what it is. This post answers both questions directly — what the assistant can do, what it is deliberately built not to do, and why the built-in limit is a feature.
What it is
Aura Assistant is a conversational interface to AuraLock itself. It parses your request locally and turns it into the matching AuraLock action. It is not a general chatbot, it does not browse the web, and it does not send anything to a cloud service. Everything it hears and everything it decides stays on your device.
What you can ask — the command model
Mostly, you can do the things you already do, faster. The commands group into five areas:
Sessions
- “Start a 25-minute Aura.”
- “Pause my Aura.”
- “End my Aura.”
Scheduling
- “Schedule my Deep Work for tomorrow 7 AM.”
- “Set an AuraWake alarm at 6:30 with a math challenge.”
- “Move my weekend schedule to 9 AM.”
Intentions
- “Set an intention for Instagram: browse, 10 minutes.”
- “Set an intention for the calculator: create, 5 minutes.”
Progress
- “How much focused time did I protect this week?”
- “Which Auras did I run yesterday?”
Help and privacy
- “Open Guardian.”
- “What does the Accessibility permission do?”
- “Explain my journal streak.”
If it hears a request it does not have a command for, it will tell you — it will not guess or invent actions.
What it cannot do
- It cannot answer general questions it has no command for (weather, news, trivia).
- It cannot control other apps. It manages AuraLock only.
- It does not use a cloud AI service, has no memory of past conversations, and knows nothing about you beyond what AuraLock itself records locally.
- It cannot make guarantees it cannot observe. If a request would require a capability AuraLock does not have, it will say so instead of pretending.
Why it is built this way
AuraLock’s privacy model is on-device, and the assistant follows the same rule. Audio stays on the phone; there is no cloud account to breach, no transcript to leak, no usage profile to sell. That choice buys two things: it is private by structure rather than by policy, and it works when the internet does not. The tradeoff is honest — the assistant is only as broad as AuraLock’s feature set — but within AuraLock it is the fastest way to act, and within those limits it is trustworthy because you can run it against your own skepticism.
A small decision framework
If you are deciding whether to use the assistant or the touchscreen, a fair rule of thumb:
- One tap, one screen away → use the touchscreen.
- Two or more taps, or a setting buried in a submenu → ask the assistant.
- A command you might want to repeat daily → teach it to the assistant.
How to teach it your daily shapes
The assistant is most useful when it mirrors your week, not when you use it randomly. Teach it three repeatable phrases and you will stop opening the settings screen:
- Your morning slot. “Schedule my Deep Work for weekdays at 7 AM” — said once, confirmed once, and the routine carries itself from then on. Pair it with an AuraWake alarm so the first minute of the day and the first protected hour share the same decision.
- Your recurring intention. “Set an intention for this video app: browse, fifteen minutes” — one live template that reruns without negotiation, making even the most comfortable browsing visits bounded.
- Your end-of-week audit. “How much focused time did I protect this week?” — asked every Friday, the number tells you whether the month is drifting before the month is over.
Notice the pattern: schedule it, bound it, review it. Once those three phrases exist in your voice, the assistant stops being a novelty and starts being the shortest path between intention and execution — about five seconds of speech against a minute of taps and swipes through menus.
FAQ
Does it need internet? No. It is local by architecture.
Can it keep a persona or remember my day personally? No. That would require cloud memory and a profile — the two things it is built to avoid.
What if it does not understand me? Restate in the command shapes above. It is built to match those, and it will fail loudly rather than guess.
Summary
Aura Assistant is a fast, local, closed-loop helper: turn an intention into a command, get the action, and keep the phone between you and the cloud. See the full overview at Aura Assistant.
