AI Advisory Generator
An advisory is a rule that watches how one of your products is being configured and speaks up when a choice is risky, unusual, or just worth a second look — a tall single-panel door that might warp, a drawer box too wide for its slides, a finish that shouldn't go on that species. Advisories appear as customers configure the product on your storefront and as your staff build orders, so problems get caught before they hit the shop floor.
The AI Advisory Generator writes those rules for you. Instead of hand-assembling conditions and messages, you describe the rule in one plain-English sentence and the AI returns a complete, validated advisory for you to review and add.
Availability: Commerce and up (paid plans). Like every AI feature in TimberCloud, it's included in your subscription — no separate add-on, no per-use charge — and it works during the 14-day trial.
The golden rule: The generator proposes a draft advisory. Nothing is added to your product until you review it and click Add to advisories — and even then you can open it in the manual builder to fine-tune, or delete it.
Where to find it
- Open a product and go to the Advisories tab (in the product's Advanced settings).
- Click Generate with AI. (If the product has no advisories yet, you'll see Generate with AI next to Build manually in the empty state.)
- The AI Advisory Generator window opens with a text box for your description.
Describing a rule
Write the way you'd explain the rule to a coworker: say when it should fire and what to suggest. You don't need any special syntax — the AI maps your words onto the product's real fields.
A few that work well:
If a door is over 48 inches tall and has only one panel, warn about
warpage and suggest adding a second panel.
When the wood species is White Oak and the finish is Paint, recommend
a different species — paint hides the grain they're paying for.
Block any drawer box wider than 36 inches — our slides aren't rated for it.
Press Enter (or click Generate) to run it. The more specific you are — which field drives the rule, the exact threshold, and what the customer should do instead — the closer the first result will be.
Tip: Point the rule at concrete choices and numbers ("over 48 inches", "White Oak", "wider than 36") rather than vague quality words. The AI turns those into real conditions on your product's fields.
What the AI returns
The generator shows a preview of the advisory it built. It includes:
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Name | A short internal label for the rule (so you can find it later in the list). |
| Severity | How loudly the advisory speaks — see the table below. |
| Message | A title and body shown to whoever is configuring the product. |
| Explanation | A one-line, plain-English note on what the AI built and why. |
| Suggested actions | Optional one-click fixes — each proposes changing a field to resolve the issue (e.g. "Add a second panel"). |
| Warnings | Any cautions from the AI — for example, a field it wasn't sure about — worth checking before you accept. |
Severity levels
The AI picks a severity, and you can change it after adding the rule. The four levels:
| Severity | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Info | Neutral context. Shown, but not stressed. |
| Recommendation | Suggests a better choice. The default for most rules. |
| Warning | A real defect or warranty risk. Hard to miss. |
| Blocker | Cannot be manufactured — submitting the configuration is disabled until it's resolved. |
Important: A Blocker stops the order or storefront configuration from being submitted while the condition is true. Reach for it only when the combination genuinely can't be made — for anything you'd merely discourage, use Warning or Recommendation.
Suggested fixes
Many advisories come with actions — buttons the person configuring the product can click to fix the issue in one step (for instance, an action that sets the panel count to 2). The AI proposes sensible fixes from your description; each appears as a small chip in the preview so you can see what it would change.
Review, revise, or add
Once the AI has generated an advisory you have three paths:
- Add to advisories — inserts the rule into the product's advisory list. It then behaves like any hand-built advisory: you can edit its conditions, message, severity, actions, and where it shows up, and it takes effect once you Save the product.
- Revise — not happy with the result? Just describe a change and generate again ("make it a warning, not a blocker" or "raise the height threshold to 54 inches"). The assistant remembers the conversation, so each revision refines the same rule instead of starting over.
- Cancel — close without adding anything.
Note: Adding an advisory to the list doesn't save it on its own — finish by Saving the product, the same as any other change in the Product Builder.
After you add it
Everything the AI produces is a normal advisory, so you keep full manual control:
- Edit the conditions — adjust the field, comparison, or threshold in the advisory builder.
- Tune the message — reword the title and body customers see.
- Change where it shows — an advisory can appear inline as the product is configured, on document previews, or (for blockers) stop submission.
- Reorder or delete — advisories are a simple list you manage per product.
For the full reference on how advisories are structured and evaluated, see Advisories.
Next Steps
- Advisories — the full advisory model: conditions, severities, messages, actions, and where they surface.
- AI in the Product Builder — the photo matcher, pricing, and advisory AI as you build one product.
- AI Pricing Assistant — write pricing formulas the same way, in plain English.
- Create a Product — the product-building flow advisories plug into.
- AI Overview — every AI capability in TimberCloud and which plan unlocks each.