The Dalus AI Copilot is your conversation partner for systems thinking. It understands your model, reasons over your documents, and helps you build better system architectures faster.
What Copilot Can Do
- Answer questions about your model structure, requirements, and design decisions
- Generate model elements including parts, actions, states, interfaces, and requirements
- Analyze your architecture to identify gaps, inconsistencies, or improvement opportunities
- Create documentation and summaries of your system design
- Import and process requirements from specifications and standards
Accessing Copilot
Open the Copilot panel from the right sidebar by clicking the Copilot tab. The chat interface appears, ready to receive your prompts. Copilot maintains conversation history within your session, allowing you to build on previous responses.
Providing Context
Copilot automatically has access to your entire model graph—all parts, actions, states, interfaces, requirements, and their relationships. To provide additional context:
Attaching Files
Click the Attach (+) button to upload files directly to the conversation:
- Text files (TXT, CSV) are indexed for semantic search
- Images (JPG, PNG, GIF, WEBP, SVG) can be analyzed visually
- Documents provide reference material for your queries
Attaching Model Elements
Reference specific elements from your model by attaching them to your message. This focuses Copilot’s attention on particular parts, requirements, or subsystems relevant to your question.
Using Documents Hub
Files uploaded to the Documents Hub are available to Copilot. Link documents to specific parts to provide component-specific context that Copilot can reference when answering questions about those parts.
To provide context via a PDF specification, import it under the Requirements page using the PDF extraction feature. Copilot will automatically search through the generated requirements when answering related questions.
Web Search
Click the Web Search icon (globe) to enable Copilot to search the internet for additional context. When enabled, Copilot can retrieve up-to-date information from the web to supplement its responses—useful for referencing standards, specifications, or domain knowledge not present in your model or documents.
Copilot Planning
When you request a non-trivial change, Copilot presents a plan before generating any modifications. This ensures you understand and approve the approach before changes are made.
The planning phase:
- Identifies a viable approach to implementing your request based on the current model state
- Surfaces gaps in understanding such as missing requirements, ambiguous instructions, or unclear scope
- Gathers additional information by asking follow-up questions or searching through the model
- Proposes a structured plan outlining what will be created, modified, or removed
Review the plan carefully. You can refine it by providing additional guidance before Copilot proceeds with generation.
Changes Response
Once planning is complete, Copilot returns a changes response—a structured diff showing exactly which elements will be added, updated, or removed.
Each change is presented as a commit that you can review before applying. The changes response includes:
- Element type: Part, Action, State, Interface, Requirement, etc.
- Operation: Add, Update, or Delete
- Details: The specific properties and values being changed
- Visual diff: Side-by-side comparison for updates
Applying Changes
Changes are applied automatically as Copilot generates them. You’ll see a list of added, updated, or removed elements with their status. After changes are applied, a Reapply button appears, allowing you to re-run the same changes if needed.
After Copilot finishes creating architecture elements, use the Auto Layout button in the canvas controls to automatically arrange the diagram for better readability.
Restoring Previous States
If you want to undo changes, navigate to a previous message in the conversation and click Restore checkpoint. This rolls your model back to the state it was in at that point in the conversation, effectively undoing any changes made after that message.
Summary
After proposing changes, Copilot produces a concise summary capturing:
- The overall approach and rationale
- Key design decisions made
- What was created or modified
- Any assumptions or trade-offs
This summary helps stakeholders quickly understand the changes without reviewing every detail.
Diagnostics Results
The Diagnostics Results panel helps you identify and resolve issues in your model. It displays a list of errors and warnings—such as ports not connected to interface edges, missing relationships, or incomplete configurations.
The diagnostics panel shows:
- Error and warning counts: A summary of total issues (e.g., “109 errors, 30 warnings”)
- Issue details: Each issue lists the affected element and a description of the problem
- Filtering options: View all errors, all warnings, or clear the selection
- Fix Selected: Select issues and click Fix Selected to resolve them automatically
Use the Legend dropdown to understand the different issue types. Review diagnostics regularly to maintain model integrity and ensure all connections are properly configured.
Example Prompts
Structural Modeling
- “Break down the Power System into its subsystems”
- “Create interfaces between the Propulsion Module subsystems”
- “Add a thermal management system with heat exchangers and cooling loops”
- “What parts receive power from the Main Bus?”
Behavior Modeling
- “Create a state machine for the communication module”
- “Add an action to calculate orbital velocity from altitude and mass”
- “Design the startup sequence for the propulsion system”
- “Connect the sensor processing actions to the flight controller”
Requirements
- “Generate requirements for the power distribution system”
- “What requirements are assigned to the Flight Computer?”
- “Create sub-requirements for REQ-001 covering each interface”
- “Check which requirements don’t have assigned systems”
Analysis & Documentation
- “Summarize the current architecture”
- “What are the main interfaces between Avionics and Propulsion?”
- “Identify parts that don’t have any requirements assigned”
- “List all energy connections in the model”
Best Practices
- Be specific: Include element names, quantities, and constraints in your prompts
- Provide context: Attach relevant elements or documents when asking about specific areas
- Review plans: Take time to understand the proposed approach before accepting changes
- Iterate: Use follow-up prompts to refine generated content
- Use natural language: Describe what you want in plain terms—Copilot understands systems engineering concepts
- Break down large tasks: For complex changes, work incrementally rather than requesting everything at once
Limitations
- Copilot works best with clear, specific requests
- Very large models may require more focused queries
- Complex calculations should be verified independently
- Generated content should be reviewed for domain-specific accuracy
The AI Copilot accelerates your workflow while keeping you in control of every design decision. 
