Getting Started with Kai: Your First 5 Minutes

If you've just enabled Kai in your Keboola project, you might be wondering: "Okay, now what?"

This guide walks you through your first conversation with Kai, following the same steps Jordan demonstrated in the introduction video.

What is Kai?

Kai is Keboola's embedded AI assistant: your context-aware data agent that understands your data, transformations, flows, and configurations.

The key difference? Kai lives directly inside your Keboola project and already knows everything about it. Instead of clicking through menus, you simply ask Kai to explore data, build pipelines, and debug issues.

Opening Kai for the First Time

There are two ways to access Kai:

Option 1: Click the button
Look for the Kai button on your project homepage (top-right corner).

Option 2: Use the keyboard shortcut
Press A from anywhere in your project to open Kai instantly.

The sidebar will appear on the right side of your screen, ready for your first question.

Step 1: Ask About Your Project

Let's start with a simple example: asking Kai what's in your project.

Kai Invokes Tools

As Kai thinks, you'll notice it's using tools to understand your project. These tools let Kai query your storage, check configurations, and analyze your setup.

💡 Tip: While Kai works, you'll see helpful tips appear in the interface.

You Get a Report

Kai will give you a report back with:

• What's in your project
• Direct links to storage objects
• Easy ways to explore alongside Kai

Suggested Actions Appear

After the response finishes, you'll see suggested actions.

Step 2: Run a Query

Next, try asking Kai to run a query on your data.

Kai will go through the process of:

• Understanding which data source to use
• Generating the SQL
• Running it

Features to Know While You Wait

Chat History

Your chat history is stored right here in the sidebar. You can always go back to previous conversations.

Full Screen Mode

You can open Kai in full screen if that's more useful for your work. Just click the expand icon.

Step 3: Find What Creates a Table

Try asking: "What transformation creates this table?"

Instead of having to explore manually, Kai will:

• Tell you which transformation creates it
• Give you the direct link
• Get more details to explain how all the logic works

Step 4: Run a Transformation

Now let's try running a transformation. This demonstrates two important features:

Tool Approval Process

When you ask Kai to run something, Kai won't just run it automatically.

Anything that's constructive in your project (including creating or updating any configurations) will require your approval.

Follow Mode

Once you approve the job, you'll notice Kai takes you directly to the job screen. This is follow mode: it gives you the option to follow Kai around as you're working and see what it happens to be doing.

Resources

Now that you've seen the basics, here's some resources to explore:

• Log in your Keboola Project
• Kai Documentation
• Kai Now Handles Long Conversations Automatically
• Building Kai: From the eyes of our AI Team Lead: the challenge, the approach, and what Kai can do today.