Employee assistant
Proposal · the assistant is not implemented · a scripted demo of its screen, the requests it would send, and their approval built 11 October 2026 · the Assistant tab showed "In development" instead of the demo from 14 October 2026 · the live chat with the store's agent built and the scripted demo removed 19 October 2026, checked against a local Agentfy only · not deployed
The proposed assistant lets employees ask for schedule changes in plain language; it checks the rules, offers options, and sends a ready-made change to the manager for approval.
Employees ask the assistant, the assistant does the puzzle, the manager still decides.
What an employee can ask
- “I can’t work Thursday evening, can someone cover?”
- “Can I swap my Saturday with someone’s Sunday?”
- “I need to start an hour later on the 14th.”
- “When am I working next week?”
The first channel is the Shiffty app itself, which managers and employees share; see Architecture. Whether employees can also write from a messenger the team already uses is not decided.
What happens with a request
An illustrative exchange (not output from a real system):
Employee: Can I get Saturday off? My sister’s wedding.
Assistant: Your Saturday shift is 12:00–20:00. Chloe and Dan are available and under their weekly hours. Chloe would cover it without overtime. Should I send the swap to Chloe and then to your manager?
Employee: Yes.
Assistant: Sent to Chloe. Once she agrees, your manager gets the change to approve. I’ll let you know.
Behind this, the assistant:
- Finds the affected shift.
- Checks who could take it without breaking rest, hours or availability rules.
- Proposes the least disruptive option and says what it would cost (overtime, a gap).
- Asks the colleague, if another person is involved.
- Sends the change to the manager, who approves or rejects it in one step.
- Updates the published schedule and tells everyone affected.
What the assistant should not do
- Approve on its own. In the first version the manager approves every change. Automatic approval of small changes is a possible later rule, not a default.
- Pressure colleagues. A colleague who is asked to cover can say no without explaining why.
- Share more than needed. An employee sees who could cover a shift, not colleagues’ personal reasons or pay.
When no option works
If nobody can cover without breaking a rule, the assistant says so and passes the request to the manager with the facts: who was checked and why each option failed.
What is built
Since 19 October 2026 (the owner's decision, for good) the Assistant tab is a live chat with the store's agent on Agentfy, for an employee or a manager whose store agent is ready — built and checked in a browser against a local Agentfy only, not deployed, with no hosted Agentfy connected. It answers in free text about the person's own shifts, checks a day off, a swap, a cover or different hours with the API's fixed checks, finds who could cover, explains a refusal and says where the person's requests stand. A proposed change is a card, and it becomes a request only when the person presses Send request; the request then goes on as described below. When the assistant is not available the tab says why, and everything is done by hand in the other tabs. Before that, the screen was a scripted demo with no agent (11 October 2026), which answered a few fixed questions from the person's real shifts; from 14 to 19 October 2026 the tab said only "In development"; on 19 October the demo was removed from the code. See Screens. What it would hand on is (11 October 2026, on a developer's machine, not deployed): a request to change one's own shift, sent to a colleague when one is asked and then to whoever decides — the employee's own manager, or the owner for a manager's request. The colleague can say no without a reason, which ends the request. The manager approves or declines in one step, and a decline always carries a reason the requester sees (14 October 2026); approving checks the shifts again and updates them, and a decision can be undone while the week is not over. Steps 2 and 3 above are only fixed checks for now — opening hours, rest, weekly hours, shifts on one day that do not overlap (up to three since 14 October 2026), the same store — not a search for the best option, and nobody is notified outside the app. Requests are made by hand in the app (the request form), in the assistant's chat or through the API. See Data structure and Screens.