--- title: What is Cycle AI description: "Cycle AI is Smart Cycle Discounts' natural-language assistant for creating and managing discount campaigns. Instead of clicking through the 5-step wizard, you describe the sale you want — \"40% off winter coats next weekend\" — and Cycle AI drafts a…" url: "https://webstepper.io/docs/smart-cycle-discounts/cycle-ai/what-is-cycle-ai/" updated: "2026-04-14" category: Cycle AI --- # What is Cycle AI Cycle AI is Smart Cycle Discounts' natural-language assistant for creating and managing discount campaigns. Instead of clicking through the 5-step wizard, you describe the sale you want — "40% off winter coats next weekend" — and Cycle AI drafts a complete, ready-to-launch campaign for you. Cycle AI is available to all merchants; the Free plan includes 10 conversations per month and the Pro plan includes 50 per day. --- ## What Cycle AI Can Do | Capability | Example | | --- | --- | | **Create campaigns** | "Run a summer sale — 25% off all t-shirts for two weeks" | | **Refine through conversation** | "Make it 30% instead", "add shoes too", "extend to Friday" | | **Edit existing campaigns** | "Change the Summer Sale discount to 30%" | | **Pause, activate, delete, duplicate** | "Pause all active campaigns", "delete last month's Black Friday draft" | | **Bulk actions** | "Activate the three scheduled Pride campaigns" | | **Answer questions about your store** | "Which campaigns are running right now?" | Every suggestion appears as a **preview card** before anything is saved — nothing is committed until you approve it. --- ## Where You Find It ### The Floating Action Button (FAB) Cycle AI lives in a small circular button pinned to the bottom-right of the Smart Cycle Discounts admin pages. Click the sparkle icon to open the chat panel. - Visible on the dashboard and campaigns pages - Not shown on non-plugin pages — it's a campaign tool, not a general WordPress assistant - Pulses gently on your first visit to draw attention, then stops ### The Chat Panel Clicking the FAB opens a 420px-wide chat panel: ``` ┌─────────────────────────────┐ │ ✦ Cycle AI ✕ │ ├─────────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ Suggestion cards │ │ (first time) │ │ │ │ Your messages │ │ AI responses + previews │ │ Progress steps │ │ │ ├─────────────────────────────┤ │ [ Type your prompt... ]→ │ └─────────────────────────────┘ ``` - **Chat area** — scrollable history of your conversation with previews and progress steps inline - **Input bar** — type your prompt (up to 500 characters) and hit send - **Conversation persists** across page navigations within the plugin (but not across browser sessions — closing the tab starts fresh) --- ## First Use: The Consent Step The first time you open Cycle AI, a welcome modal appears: > **Ready to try Cycle AI?** > > > > Describe the sale you want and Cycle AI drafts it for you. To do that, it sends your prompt and a summary of your store (product names, categories, and tags) to our hosted AI service. Click **Enable Cycle AI** to opt in. This is required by WordPress.org Guideline 7 (third-party services) — you must explicitly consent before any store data leaves your site. ### What gets sent to the AI - Your prompt text - A summary of your store: name, URL, currency, timezone, and base country (so “target my country” resolves correctly) - Your product catalog (up to 250 products): IDs, names, prices, category IDs, stock status - Your category list with product counts - Your tag list with product counts (so “promote my summer tag” resolves to the right tag) - Key product segments: bestsellers, slow movers, new arrivals - Stock summary (low-stock and out-of-stock counts) - Upcoming holidays and events relevant to your store's locale - Your current campaigns (IDs, names, status) — so the AI can reference and manage them - Available user-role slugs (so “wholesale customers only” resolves to the right role from your store) ### What does NOT get sent - Customer data (names, emails, addresses, order history) - Payment information - Order details - WordPress user accounts - Anything outside the WooCommerce catalog and campaign data You can disable Cycle AI at any time from the panel header's disable button — disabling stops further data from being sent. --- ## Free vs. Pro | Capability | Free | Pro | | --- | --- | --- | | Cycle AI access | ✓ | ✓ | | Natural-language campaign creation | ✓ | ✓ | | Conversational refinement | ✓ | ✓ | | Edit/pause/activate/delete via AI | ✓ | ✓ | | Bulk actions via AI | ✓ | ✓ | | Free-tier discount types (percentage, fixed, BOGO) | ✓ | ✓ | | Pro-tier discount types (tiered, spend threshold, bundle) | — | ✓ | | Pro-only campaign settings (usage limits, stacking, advanced filters, subscription controls) | — | ✓ | | Quota | 10 conversations/month | 50 conversations/day | Webstepper hosts the AI service and provides the API key — you don't need an OpenAI account or any additional configuration. Your Pro license includes API usage up to the daily limit. --- ## What Cycle AI is Not - **Not a replacement for the wizard.** The wizard is still there for fine-grained control. Cycle AI generates a draft; you can edit every field in the wizard before launching. - **Not autonomous.** Cycle AI never activates, pauses, edits, or deletes a campaign without showing you a preview or confirmation card and waiting for your approval. - **Not a chatbot for general WooCommerce questions.** Its knowledge is scoped to your store's catalog, campaigns, and the plugin's own capabilities. - **Not a per-product AI.** It recommends catalog-wide or segment-based discounts, not individual-product price optimization. - **Not a replacement for [Campaign Intelligence](/docs/smart-cycle-discounts/campaign-management/campaign-intelligence-system/).** Intelligence evaluates campaigns after they exist (verdict, risk, recommended action). Cycle AI creates and manages them. The two work together — Cycle AI creates the campaign, Intelligence tells you whether it's Ready to launch. --- ## Getting Started 1. Go to the Smart Cycle Discounts dashboard or campaigns page 2. Click the sparkle FAB in the bottom-right 3. Enable Cycle AI in the consent modal 4. Pick a suggestion card, or type your own prompt 5. Review the preview, refine if needed, then click "Review & Launch" For your first prompt, try something like: *"Run a 20% off sale for my bestsellers for the next 7 days."* Next: [Creating Campaigns with Cycle AI](/docs/smart-cycle-discounts/cycle-ai/creating-campaigns-with-ai/).