Assista: The AI helper in Analytica: Transparent Decision Intelligence
AI chatbots operate as “black boxes”—generating text and code without context, accountability, or transparency. In high-stakes decision-making, that isn’t enough. You need an open-box decision model: a transparent, shared representation of the assumptions and calculations on which to collaborate.
Assista is the first AI collaborator built to show its work. It integrates a familiar chat interface with Analytica’s visual influence diagrams, helping you build models, draw diagrams, write expressions, and explain insights. Whether you are a novice who is learning the ropes or an expert accelerating your workflow, Assista acts as an integrated productivity tool as you work with Analytica.
It makes for a new kind of collaborative modeling process that we call Transparent Decision Intelligence.
Assista is included in all desktop editions of Analytica, even Free Analytica.
Work Smarter with Assista: influence diagrams
Assista is a time-saving AI assistant to help analysts with decision modeling, risk analysis, and complex data exploration.
Instead of breaking focus to search documentation or manually refine your model, Assista helps where you need it, when you need it, in your own language (not only English!).
- Faster Problem-Solving: Ask complex questions, get instant answers
- Seamless UI Interaction: Modify settings, adjust visuals, and refine models with a single command
- Model Structuring Made Easy: Get help building your model and including the important variables and influences.
- Use your own language —Write prompts in English, French, Spanish, and other common languages, and it answers in your own language.
See Assista in Action
What You Can Do with Assista
Assista transforms how you work with Analytica. Use the chat window to add variables, write definitions, or change styles—all without needing to dive into the user guide. Assista offers expertise not just in Analytica, but also in problem structuring and model design.
| What You Need | Sample request | What Assista does |
|---|---|---|
|
How do I do X? |
“How can I share my model on the web?”
“How do I find the optimal strategy?” |
Finds features and functions, even when you don’t know their names.
Gives step-by-step instructions. Or does it for you. |
|
Understand a model |
“How does it calculate revenue?”
“What does this model do?” |
Explains what each variable or module does, or summarizes the entire model. |
|
Get insights |
“What are insights and recommendations from this result?” |
Points out the peaks and valleys, cross-over points, most appealing options, surprises, and explains the most useful insights. |
|
Build a model
|
“Build a model to compare technology options to power a new data center.” |
Builds an initial model, designs clear influence diagrams, estimates key inputs, and writes clear formulas. |
|
Write definitions |
“Model how prices affect sales based on elasticity.” |
Generates Analytica Definitions. Very helpful when you aren’t sure of function names or syntax. |
|
Import data |
“Read tables from this spreadsheet, (PDF, or CSV file), and convert to tables.”
“(You can simply drag files into the Assista window.)” |
Converts tables into Analytica arrays, adding new indexes for each dimension as needed. |
|
Change settings |
“Increase diagram font size.”
“Make this node purple.” |
Modifies model settings without you having to read the user guide to learn menus and dialog boxes. |
|
Document |
“Add descriptions and units to objects missing them.”
“Write a PDF user guide for this model.” |
Writes documentation within the model, or as a separate document. |
|
Critique |
“What are the key limitations or weaknesses?”
“How can we fix them?” |
Lists salient problems and missing variables in your model. Suggests how to fix them with priorities. |
|
Use another language |
“Erkläre dieses Modell.”
“Expliquez-moi ce qui se passe.” |
Assista understands common languages and replies in the same language. |
Mistakes and the value of a shared model
Like any AI, Assista is fallible. But its integration within Analytica provides a unique safeguard. Because you collaborate with Assista via a shared model, you can immediately see its assumptions and formulas. You can fix issues yourself or ask Assista to iterate, ensuring the final result is robust and understood.
Spreadsheets and procedural code, like Python, often hide logic in “black boxes,” making errors difficult to spot. Analytica was designed from inception to be transparent. Through Influence Diagrams, Intelligent Arrays, and a declarative Flow Architecture, every dependency is explicit. Assista is an open-box collaborator that makes it easy to scrutinize each variable and calculation.
What Users Are Saying
“Fantastic work on Assista! We were all blown away by the amazing things it can do, like coming up with intelligent suggestions on modeling price sensitivity as well as solutions in Analytica modeling.”
Jim Lipkis
Monaco Rick Analytics, Inc, Los Altos, California
“I have made great use of Assista. It works extremely well, and has accelerated my model building, especially when I get rusty and can’t quite remember how I implemented something long ago. It also helps increase the quality of the models when I ask it to check the architecture and function of my models. It quickly points out potential issues or weaknesses. I really like that I can ask it to make changes to existing variables or generate new ones.”
Scott Sidener
Westinghouse Electric Company, USA
How can I try Assista?
- All editions of Analytica include Assista — even the Free edition.
FAQ: What You Need to Know
Assista is much more than a Help system. It not only explains how to do what you want in Analytica without you having to search the docs, it can actually do many of them for you itself, including write Analytica expressions in variable Definitions. It can help build, explain, critique and improve models, and much more.
No, Assista works with plain English (and other common languages). Simply type (or speak) your request naturally into the Assista chat window
Yes, it can add variables, draw influence diagrams, write or correct Definitions, modify style settings, add Units and Descriptions, and even create functions.
Instead of reading the User Guide docs, just ask what you want to know. It can help build the model, import data, find or estimate input values, add descriptions, explain results, and much more. It can speed up model development by a factor of four or more.
Assista is fairly reliable, but like any AI it can make mistakes. You should always check model assumptions and Definitions, as you should when working with a human collaborator.
Yes, it helps you learn Analytica faster. It can explain features, show you how to use them, structure and build models, write expressions, and much more. It even has a Tutorial mode that takes you through the Tutorials using example models, without you even having to open the Analytica Tutorial.
Yes. By default it uses OpenAI chatbots, and can use other Large Language Models (LLMs), including from Anthropic (Claude). But it has a lot of internal smarts with functions that let it view and change your Analytica model, read Analytica docs, and special skills for Analytica, model structuring, and influence diagrams, and more.
Yes. Assista is included in all Desktop Analytica editions, and even in Free Analytica. In the future, if the token costs become too high, we may set a cap on the amount of free usage, and offer a paid tier for high-intensity users.
Assista may pass parts of your queries including some data and model components along to OpenAI or other AI providers. All queries and responses are encrypted during transit. Those providers agree not to use that information for AI training, and to delete it within 30 days. Lumina may retain queries and answers for internal QA and customer support. In the future, we may offer options with higher levels of privacy, including immediate deletion and no internal records.
No, Assista needs an internet connection to access AI-powered assistance on a Lumina server which in turn may query OpenAI or other large language models.
If you’re using Analytica, Assista is already integrated—just access it from the toolbar. If not, you can download Free Analytica, which also includes Assista, or book a demo to see how it transforms your modeling workflow.
See also
Why Analytica
What is Analytica software?
Tools & methods
