Assistant vs the lineup builder
Airwave has two distinct AI systems — the in-the-loop chat and the autonomous durable lineup builder. How they differ, and what they share.
Airwave has two distinct AI systems, and they're easy to conflate because they share a toolbox. Keep them separate:
| AI assistant (this section) | AI lineup builder | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Interactive admin chat that builds channels one at a time, with you in the loop | Autonomous, durable job that designs and builds a whole lineup (~50 channels) in one run |
| Gated by | An AiConnection assigned the chat role (isActive). Nothing else. | WORKFLOW_ENABLED=1 and planner / worker connections |
| Runs on | The Vercel AI SDK, streamed live over /api/ai/chat | The Vercel Workflow SDK (durable, resumable, crash-surviving) |
| Approval | Every write is Approve / Deny in the chat | Runs autonomously (the services skip the needsApproval wrapper); the start is confirmed once because a re-run wipes prior AI rows |
| Model roles used | active (chat) | planner (one big design call) + worker (per-channel loops) |
| Where | packages/api/src/services/agent/{chat,agent-tools,tools}.ts | apps/server/workflows/lineup.ts (+ import.ts) |
What they share
Both systems use the same toolbox in tools.ts, and both stamp their output aiGenerated — so clear_ai_generated cleanly reverses whatever either one made. The difference is entirely in the harness around those tools: the assistant wraps them for approval and streams them to you live; the builder calls them directly and runs unattended.
Why the gates are different
The chat assistant is gated only by a chat-role AiConnection — add one and it works. The lineup builder additionally needs WORKFLOW_ENABLED=1 and planner / worker connections, because it runs on the durable Workflow SDK. If WORKFLOW_ENABLED is unset, the lineup builder is simply unavailable — but the chat assistant still works, because it never touched the workflow engine.
The durable builder is documented in full under Durable workflows (see the AI lineup builder).
See also: Durable workflows · The AI lineup builder · Building channels & packages
Using the chat
The slide-in chat panel — live streaming of reasoning and tool calls, conversation history, the model badge, the approval flow, and the reliability details behind long chats.
Background jobs
The in-process node-schedule job system that runs Airwave's recurring maintenance — metadata sync, schedule top-ups, cleanup — on a schedule or on demand.