someone on the retune roadmap asked for a bot that could keep a live price list. this is the closest thing i built. you upload the sheet to your bot, and anyone who can open its chat asks it in plain words.
retune is free if you run your own copy: it runs on your own computer, with an agent that builds what you ask for.
the shop in the video is sunrise bakery. i made it up to show the feature. the video uses a sales export, not a price list. the questions work the same way, though: find the row, give the number.
near the end, the owner asks the bot in the chat widget how much they made in march. it answers with one number and no chart, because one number doesn't need a chart.
you can already give a retune bot a price list as a normal training file. it reads it as text, in pieces, the way it reads a web page. that's fine for "how much is a croissant". it isn't fine for "what's our cheapest gluten free loaf", because the bot is reading text, not doing the math.
a table works differently. the file comes in with each column marked as numbers, text or dates. when someone asks about it, the bot writes a query, runs it on the table and answers from the result. every answer has a show query button with the exact query and the rows behind it.
if your prices live on your website instead of a sheet, re-reading your website on a schedule is the better fit.
the same bot runs in the chat widget, so a phone or a tablet behind the counter works. someone asks "what does the large sourdough cost?" and gets the number. a question like "our five most expensive items" gets a bar chart.
who can ask depends on which bot you put the sheet on. anyone who can open a bot's chat can ask about its tables.
if the sheet has things customers shouldn't see, like your cost price or stock counts, put it on a separate bot for staff. put that bot's widget on a page only your staff use. keep the bot on your website to the prices you'd print anyway.
if you rent things out by the hour, the rental letter covers the buttons customers tap for prices.
it's the file you uploaded, not a live link to your till or your google sheet. when a price changes, export the sheet again, delete the old table and upload the new one. until you do, the bot answers from the old file.
each file comes in as one table, from its first sheet. it can be up to 5 mb, 50,000 rows and 60 columns.
it's an ai model writing the query, so now and then it can pick the wrong column or the wrong row. for a price, one look at show query tells you which row it used.
the rows are stored with the bot, in your retune account. the ai model sees the column names, a few sample values and the rows a query returns.
it fits a shop where the price list or the stock sheet is what everyone asks about. someone updates it every week or so. it won't fit if prices change by the hour, since the bot only knows the last file you uploaded.
a sales export can answer harder questions too, like what sold most last month. the letter about fridays shows that with a bakery's sales.
the tables feature isn't switched on for new accounts by itself. sign up, then email me at olive@reframe.so and say you want tables on your bot. once it's on, a tables panel shows up on the train tab, and you drop your sheet there. the rest of the steps are in ask questions about a csv file.
a live link to the sheet isn't there. if you need it, tell me what you'd use it for.
olive