What Ask the Sky can do

Ask the sky — the launcher's built-in AI assistant — can do more than answer questions. When you allow it, it acts through the launcher's own controls: the same things you could do by hand, done for you on request. Here's the range.

#Open and find things

• Open an app. Name an app and the assistant launches it.
• Search your apps. Ask what's installed and it searches deep sky — the full A–Z list of every app — by name.
• Rename an app. It gives an app a new name, as deep sky's "rename" does, or puts its own name back. Stars already on a ring keep their names.
• Open any star. It opens a star — an app, folder, or shortcut on your sky, your home screen — as lifting your finger on it would. For a folder, the panel closes once the reply is in, and the folder's ring — the wheel of apps — blooms.
• Open a launcher screen. Deep sky, Settings on any page, the star index (the quick A–Z picker), the shuttle — the suite's shared tray — the region editor, the talisman screen, or the add screen.
• Answer how-to questions. Ask how something works or where a control is, and it looks it up in the launcher's built-in instructions and tells you.

#Build and arrange your sky

• Read your whole sky. It can see every region, folder, and star, at any depth, before it changes anything.
• Add any kind of star. Apps, links, folders and rituals (a folder that opens everything inside it), an app's shortcuts, system actions, Zenith's own actions, Direct entries, and shuttle items. It can put them on a region's ring or inside any folder, and at an exact spot if you say where. It can fill a folder it just made, so one ask can build a whole layout.
• Change a star the way the ✎ star editor does. Rename it, move it (with everything inside) into another folder or region, re-place it on its ring, pick a colour swatch, show or hide its label or app icon, switch the breath pause, set its haptic feel, or turn a folder into a ritual and back.
• Dress stars and apps. Give one a Zenith icon, an icon pack's match, or one named pack icon — or put back its own.
• Remove a star. (Destructive — see below.)
• Shape the regions. Add a region — a zone of the sky that groups stars — set the region count up or down, and place the divider lines. More than 2 regions needs (Gold). It can also build the welcome's starter ring into an empty first region, and hide or show apps in deep sky.

#Manage your skies

A sky here also means a whole separate home layout — a star chart you switch between.

• Create, switch, and rename skies. Start a fresh named layout, move to another by name, or rename one. More skies than the free one need (Gold).
• Delete a sky, or erase all rings. (Destructive — see below. It won't delete the sky you're on.)

#Gestures, actions, and talismans

• Your gestures. It can tell you what each corner, edge, flick, and the double-tap does, set one to a built-in action or to an app, folder, shortcut, Direct entry, or system shortcut, and run what one is set to.
• Go home. It can take you to the home screen.
• Not the zenith actions. Shade, lock, recents, back, quick tiles, screenshot, and power menu go through zenith actions — the accessibility helper that lets gestures do system things — and they run only from your own gesture. The assistant never runs them, even with the helper on, whether you name one or ask it to run a gesture set to one. It says "<action> uses Zenith actions, which only run from your own gesture", points you to that gesture, and nothing fires. It can still set a gesture to one of them for you.
• System shortcuts. Open things like the camera, a timer, or a new alarm in your Clock app.
• Talismans — your drawn-shape shortcuts. It can list them, rename one, point it at an app, action, or folder, move it up or down in priority, play its glyph back so you can see how it's drawn, and cast it. A talisman set to shade, lock, recents, back, quick tiles, screenshot, or power menu it won't cast — it asks you to draw it yourself. Deleting one is destructive.
• Run a ritual by name.

Anything it does on the sky — a folder's ring, the star index, a gesture's action, a cast — happens once its reply is done and the panel closes, so you can see it.

#Settings

• Change any setting by name, in the words the Settings screen shows: every switch, slider, and chip, plus the ask panel's own 👁, ✦, and 🔊. Gold settings stay (Gold) here too, and the assistant says so. Only the clean, mono, and pastel themes are free, and only the top "sparkler" level needs Gold.
• Set the icon pack for your app stars, or go back to system icons.

#Beyond the sky

• The shuttle. Read what's in it, add text or a link, and use an item the way its panel does: open it, bring up Android's "open with" list for a file, or copy it. Letting an item go is destructive.
• Links and email. Open web addresses and Zenith's own pages, and start email drafts. It never sends one; you do. An address you didn't type or say in your ask doesn't open by itself: it waits under the reply as a "↗ open …" line, and opens only when you tap it. A plain http address always waits, its line ending "— not a secure page".
• Other apps. Hand text to another Zenith app, open an app's Android info screen, or bring up Android's uninstall confirmation, which you answer. Text goes to another Zenith app at once only when you named that app in your ask; otherwise it waits as a "→ send to …" line, sent only when you tap it.
• Other Zenith apps' own work. When you name another Zenith app, or the job is plainly its own — "add dentist on Friday to my calendar", "put this in my journal" — the assistant uses that app's own abilities, and that app does the work on its own data. It reaches only Zenith apps installed on this phone, with their AI on. See Ask the Sky across the suite.
• Linked accounts. List the accounts you've linked for the suite. Removing one is destructive.

#The assistant itself

• About the launcher. Its version and the Zenith Core version beneath it, whether Zenith Gold is unlocked (it can only read this), whether Zenith is your home app, and whether its services are on.
• Its own setup. List providers, switch to another provider that already has a key — or to "On-device (Gemini Nano)" when this phone can run it — pick one of that provider's listed models, and test the key. It never asks for, sees, or types a key.
• Lenses — shared AI modes — listed and turned on or off, when Zenith AI is installed.
• Chat memory. Read it, edit a line, or delete one. Deleting a line, or erasing it all, is destructive.
• AI consent. List the providers you've said yes to, and withdraw one or all.
• Safety. Read the blocked-request and report counts, copy the safety log, and report a reply in the open panel.
• Odds and ends. Open a feedback or crash-report email draft, discard the crash log, reset the hints, replay the welcome, play the sky's voice sounds (Gold), and list, open, dismiss, or snooze comets — notifications drifting across the sky. Dismissing one is destructive.

#What stays yours

Some things only you can do: add a widget, pin a file you pick, choose your own image for an icon, get icon packs, tap to stay during a breath pause, draw a talisman, switch on zenith actions, run shade, lock, recents, back, quick tiles, screenshot, or power menu, add a file to the shuttle, send an email, answer Android's uninstall question, link an account again, pick a background picture, enter an AI key, accept the 👁 notice, and switch "allow destructive actions".

#See your screen (only if you ask)

Turn on the "👁" eye in the ask panel and a description of your current screen rides along with each question, so the assistant can reason about what you're looking at. It's off by default.

The first time you tap it, a notice titled "👁 interpret screen" opens. It names your AI provider and what goes with each ask: your region names, the stars in your first region, and whether the clock or weather is showing. Nothing changes until you tap "turn it on". "cancel" leaves it off. While it's on, a line under the header says the description "rides with each ask to your chosen AI provider. Zenith itself stores nothing." Tap the 👁 again to turn it off.

#What you allow it to do

Five switches shape what the assistant may do. Find them in Settings › ask the sky under "what it can do", shown while "ai & assistant" is on:

• "guide" — let it teach you how to do things yourself.
• "tools" — let it act through the app (add a star, switch sky…). Off, it can only advise, and other Zenith apps' abilities are held back too.
• "↳ allow destructive actions" — shown while "tools" is on, and off by default. Its words read "remove stars, delete skies", but it guards every destructive step: removing stars, deleting skies, erasing all rings, forgetting Direct entries, deleting talismans, letting go of shuttle items, deleting a line of the chat memory, erasing the chat memory, dismissing comets, and removing linked accounts. It holds back other Zenith apps' destructive steps too. While it's off, the assistant asks you to turn it on, and the step is refused even if it tries. While it's on, a yes/no card comes before each destructive step. It asks the step as a question in the app's own names, like "Remove the star “Maps”?" — or, for another Zenith app, "<app> wants to: …". Tap "yes, do it" to go ahead. "no" changes nothing, and so do "stop" and closing the panel. Several steps in one ask each get their own card.
• "converse" — let it hold an open, back-and-forth conversation. Off keeps replies short and task-focused.
• "show what actually changed under each reply" — on by default. See below.

#What actually changed

Under each reply from the AI, grey lines show what the assistant really did. They're built from the app's own results, never from the AI's words:

• "↳ ✓ …" for each change that worked, like "Renamed my sky to test sky".
• "↳ ✗ …" for each step that was refused or failed. A destructive step held back reads "↳ ✗ This needs “allow destructive actions” turned on."
• A line from another Zenith app names it first: "↳ ✓ Zenith Calendar: …".
• "↳ nothing in the app was changed" when nothing changed.

Looking things up gets no line. So if the assistant says it did something and there's no ✓ line, it didn't happen. Replies the app answers by itself — AI off, no key, a blocked ask, the on-device model missing from this phone — get no lines. With no key for the chosen provider, the reply reads "add an API key in Settings → ask the sky → provider & key to talk to the sky."

With "On-device (Gemini Nano)" chosen, the assistant answers in words only. It can't change anything, so every reply reads "↳ nothing in the app was changed".

Now and then a grey "ⓘ" line appears just above a reply. It tells you, once, that Gemini answered with a different model than the one you chose: "ⓘ (Your chosen model, <model>, isn't available on your key, so <other model> is answering.)"

See also. Set up Ask the Sky · Voice, memory & lenses · AI safety — Zenith Guard · Settings reference (secondary lookup)