AI Chat

The built-in AI Chat is a conversational assistant that is aware of the TIA Portal project you have open. It lives in the chat view of the workbench: open it from the Activity Bar or with the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P → "Chat"). Send a message in the chat input at the bottom, pick a model in the per-message model picker, and the assistant replies in the chat — calling TIA-aware tools when it needs project context.

The assistant introduces itself as AnyAutomation Studio and gives a short capability summary on first greeting: analyze and document PLC blocks; generate, convert, and review SCL / AWL code; browse and search the open TIA Portal project; run tests and help debug.

The chat mascot

An animated robot sits in the chat title row, to the left of the title. The title row always renders — even on a fresh, empty chat — so the mascot is visible from the moment a session opens, and a new session shows a New Chat label next to it. The mascot reacts to what is happening:

• At rest it blinks slowly and its eyes follow the pointer.
• While the assistant is responding the eyes keep blinking and keyboard keys flash in sequence.
• After several seconds of continuous responding it shifts into a deeper "thinking" state. This is held back for short responses and is suppressed entirely if your system prefers reduced motion.
• It shows a brief success or error reaction when a response finishes, squints while you type, and goes to sleep after about a minute of idle.

Signing in to a provider

Chat models come from AI providers you sign in to — no API key to paste. The built-in providers use a browser or device sign-in flow, after which their models appear in the chat model picker:

You can also bring your own API key (BYOK) for additional vendors through the native model management.

Where to sign in: an AI Provider button sits in the chat input toolbar. Clicking it opens a Manage AI Provider Sign-In list — one row per provider, each showing whether you are signed in. Select a signed-out row to start the sign-in flow; select a signed-in row to confirm and sign out. The same list is reachable from the Command Palette (search "AI Provider").

Connecting local AI servers

Besides the sign-in providers, the chat can also draw models from a local or self-hosted AI server — no sign-in required. Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, and SGLang are supported; the Custom entry additionally connects any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Local servers are available from the Basic plan.

Setting up: open the Agent Customizations editor and go to the Providers section. Each server has its own card there with an address field; the usual local address is pre-filled (for example http://localhost:11434 for Ollama or http://localhost:1234/v1 for LM Studio) — adjust it only if your server runs elsewhere. The Custom card starts with an empty address field. If your server requires a key, enter it in the optional API-key field; local servers usually need none.

Address rules: web addresses must start with https://; plain http:// is accepted for localhost addresses only. A rejected address shows an error message right under the field.

Using models: once the server is running, its models appear automatically in the chat model picker. Select one and chat as usual — tools and agent mode work too.

The Manage AI Provider Sign-In list (see above) is grouped in three sections: Subscription & Accounts for the sign-in providers and GitHub Copilot, Cloud Providers for the cloud providers with an API key (see below), and Local & Self-Hosted for the local servers. Each entry in the latter two groups shows Ready or Not configured; selecting one opens the Providers settings page.

If no models appear in the picker, check that the server is running and the address you entered is correct.

Connecting cloud providers with an API key

The chat can also draw models directly from cloud AI providers — using an API key instead of a sign-in. OpenRouter, Mistral, Groq, Cerebras, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Together AI, Hugging Face, Fireworks AI, Vercel AI Gateway, Arcee AI, Alibaba Model Studio, Z.AI, MiniMax, Moonshot AI, Baidu Qianfan, Volcano Engine, BytePlus, and Kimi Coding are supported. Cloud providers are available from the Basic plan.

Setting up: open the Agent Customizations editor and go to the Providers section. Each cloud provider has its own card there: paste your API key (required — you get it from the provider's console). If needed, you can override the server address; it must start with https://. Z.AI, MiniMax, and Moonshot AI additionally offer a Region choice (for example a global or a China variant); Default is the standard region.

Every provider card — including the local-server cards — offers two more optional fields: Additional model IDs adds comma-separated models the provider does not list itself, and Context window overrides caps per model (model-ID=tokens, comma-separated) how much text Studio sends to that model.

In the Manage AI Provider Sign-In list (see above), the cloud providers appear in their own Cloud Providers group, each with a Ready or Not configured status. Once a key is saved, the provider's models appear automatically in the chat model picker — chat as usual; tools and agent mode work too.

If your key is rejected, check it in the provider's console and paste it again.

Choosing a model

The model picker in the chat input selects which provider and model answer the next message. Open it to switch models on the fly; "Manage Models…" from the picker opens the native model catalog where BYOK vendors and per-model details are managed. Each message can use a different model.

Thinking effort and context size

Right next to the model name in the chat input, supported models offer two extra per-model choices. Models without these capabilities simply don't show the buttons.

Thinking effort: supporting models show an additional section next to the model name (for example High). Clicking it opens a Thinking Effort picker with the levels the model offers — typically along the lines of Low / Medium / High, with the model's default marked (default); the exact levels vary per model. Higher levels make the model reason more deeply before answering: better on hard problems, but slower and potentially costlier. Your pick is remembered per model.

Context size (Claude models): Claude models that support a very large context window show a second section (for example 200K). It opens a Context Size picker with two choices: 200K (default) and 1M. With 1M, much longer sessions fit without the conversation being trimmed; it may cost more. The context-usage indicator follows your pick immediately. The former "1M context" checkbox in the settings is gone — if you had it enabled, pick 1M once per model instead.

Visible reasoning

While a model thinks, its reasoning streams live into a collapsible "thinking" section within the answer — expand it to follow along, collapse it to keep the chat tidy. How the section presents itself is adjustable in the Settings (Ctrl+,) via the chat Thinking Style setting: collapsed, collapsed with a preview of the latest thought, or a fixed scrolling view.

Proactive TIA project context

While a TIA Portal project is connected, the assistant automatically receives a short summary of it on every turn — the project name, the TIA Portal version, and the available PLC names — without you having to attach anything. This lets the assistant answer project questions in context; for anything deeper it calls the TIA tools to read blocks, walk the tree, or search the catalog. When no project is connected, nothing is injected.

Agent Customizations editor

All AI customization is managed in a single native editor. Open it from the chat gear → Open Customizations, from the Command Palette, or from the Open Agent Customization link in the AnyAutomation Settings editor (Ctrl+,). Its sidebar includes a section for external MCP servers (see AI Integration); the sections most relevant to TIA work are:

• Agents — the AI personas (system prompt + a curated tool list). Pick the active agent from the chat agent picker.
• Skills — reusable task playbooks you invoke from chat.
• Instructions — Siemens reference guides that are auto-applied to the chat context where they match the active file (for example, opening an .scl file pulls in the SCL / styleguide guides).
• Tool Approvals — the per-tool approval gate (see below).

Agents

The following expert agents ship with Studio. Each is selectable as the active agent and carries its own system prompt and tool list:

Skills

Skills are task playbooks you invoke from chat. The shipped skills cover the common TIA workflows: explore / describe / document the project, explain / describe / document a block, generate / review / optimize SCL, convert AWL to SCL, write unit tests, run a safety check, compare blocks, and export blocks. For EPLAN: explore the project and export it as PXF/PDF, and edit pages, devices, properties, and reports.

Instructions

The Instructions section lists the reference guides the assistant can draw on (the Siemens Programming Styleguide, the SCL and AWL→SCL references, the OPC UA reference, the Unit-Testing reference, the Canvas reference, and the Forge templating reference for writing your own block-type templates). Where a guide declares a file pattern, it is applied to the chat context automatically when a matching file is active.

The Siemens guides are license-gated: they resolve and feed the model only while your account holds an active AI-chat entitlement (Professional, Enterprise, or an active Trial). With an entitled license they simply work — there is no key, dialog, or extra step. On sign-out or a tier downgrade they stop resolving.

Delegating to sub-agents

The assistant can hand a focused sub-task to one of your agents — it picks the agent by name, the agent works on its own with its own tool set, and it returns a result that the assistant folds into its answer.

Each hand-off appears as a collapsible block, titled with the agent name and the model it used. While the agent works, you can watch its progress live: the block's title shows its latest activity, and expanding the block reveals its reasoning and draft answer growing as it goes, alongside the tools it uses. When the agent finishes, the block shows its final result and stays in the conversation for later review.

An agent can declare its own model; the hand-off then runs on that model. If it is not signed in, the hand-off continues on your current model and notes that in the block.

During a task the assistant automatically follows your project's rule files and can load a skill on demand.

Tools

The assistant has a set of TIA Portal-aware tools that operate against the connected project. Read tools (project tree, block source, block info, hardware-catalog search, query / analyze) run silently and feed their results back as context. The assistant can also reference tools in a prompt by name from the chat tool picker.

When the assistant asks to open or show a block, it opens the block's source as a read-only editor — SCL / STL highlighted, XML for graphical languages — and reports a short confirmation in the chat.

Tool approvals

Tools that change the project are gated before they run. In the Tool Approvals section of the Agent Customizations editor, each TIA tool has a four-level approval choice:

A choice takes effect immediately for that tool's in-chat confirmation prompt. Always Allow and Always Deny persist across window reloads; Allow in This Session resets to Ask Every Time after a reload. A Reset All link clears every override.

Mutating tools confirm before applying a change, and destructive tools (deleting a block or device) state in the confirmation that the action cannot be undone. After a confirmed change succeeds, the TIA Portal Project Explorer refreshes automatically.

External MCP servers

Beyond the built-in TIA tools, the AI chat can connect to external MCP servers and surface their tools in the same tool picker. See AI Integration for how to add and enable them.