What CarlBot Can Do

CarlBot works inside IgorBox Studio with the same building blocks you use: the timeline editor, Logic Rules, your media library, and your controllers. This page walks through each kind of job it can help with, how to ask, and where the guardrails are.

One thing to keep in mind throughout: CarlBot works on the page you have open. Open the show, rule, or controller you want to work on, then open the panel.

Edit the timeline

Describe what should happen and when, and CarlBot lays the clips, fades, and color changes out on the show's timeline for you to check or edit. It knows which channels belong to which controller and what kind of channel each one is, so it puts things on the right track.

On a show, CarlBot can:

• Create a show, rename it, change its length, and set it to loop or run as the ambient show.
• Add, move, resize, and remove clips.
• Add, move, and delete fades and control points on dimmer channels, including instant on and off steps.
• Set color stops for a color group, and group a controller's channels into RGB color groups.
• Place audio clips from your media library on audio tracks.
• Rewrite a whole track or the whole timeline.

Good prompts:

• "At 0:03 fire the air cannon on Coffin Room for half a second, then strobe for two seconds."
• "Fade the porch pinspots from off to full over four seconds at the start, hold until 0:12, then snap off."
• "Add a slow red-to-orange color cycle on the Hallway color group for the whole show."

CarlBot works with what's already in the show. If the show already has audio, it can time cues to the track. If you want a clean slate, say so.

Talking props

Give CarlBot a voice track and it writes the time-aligned transcript, then uses the words and their timing to drive a jaw so it only moves on spoken words and stays shut between lines. It can also make a light or a color follow the track, or fire a relay or solenoid on the big hits.

Good prompts:

• "Transcribe the Crypt Keeper intro and make the skull's jaw follow it."
• "Flash the red wash on the thunder hits in the storm track."
• "Make the lantern flicker with the narrator's voice."

A few things to know:

• Upload the audio to your media library first. CarlBot works from the copy in your IgorBox Studio. It accepts MP3, M4A/AAC, OGG, Opus, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, WMA, and WebM.
• CarlBot detects the spoken language automatically.
• Transcription is charged for the full length of the clip, and you see the cost before you commit. If a transcription fails, the credits come back automatically. See Credits & Plans. If you already have the words written down, CarlBot can enter them at no cost instead.
• Non-speech sounds (a laugh, a growl, thunder) are tagged as events on the transcript, each marked Jaw or Ambient. The jaw opens on Jaw events and stays shut on Ambient ones. CarlBot can add and fix events, and so can you in the transcript editor's Events tab. See Tips and Tricks.
• When a prop is set up in the controller's Prop Rig, CarlBot keeps the motion inside the safe range, fires slow cylinders early, and respects the firing limits you set.
• For very long clips, use the transcript editor instead: open the media file (or an audio clip on the timeline), choose Edit transcript, and click Auto Transcribe. It asks you to confirm the cost for long clips.
• The transcript is saved on the audio file. You can correct a word or write a transcript by hand in the transcript editor at no cost, and CarlBot uses whatever is there.
• Audio after the last transcribed line keeps the jaw shut.

Logic Rules

Describe the scare, puzzle, or reset sequence, and CarlBot drafts the Logic Rule and connects the inputs, outputs, and shows for you to check.

On a rule, CarlBot can:

• Create and edit rules.
• Connect inputs, shows, and outputs.
• Bind a hardware input to shows as a trigger.
• Delete rules and triggers.
• Explain a rule someone else built: "Walk me through what the Vault Door rule does."

Good prompts:

• "When the pressure mat on the Lobby Input 16 triggers, play Drop Scare on Coffin Room, then lock it out for 30 seconds."
• "Four buttons have to be pressed within ten seconds. When they are, release the maglock and play the Reveal show. If they miss, play Buzzer."
• "Every night at close, stop all shows and turn off every relay on every controller."

If a rule can be built with the nodes in the editor, CarlBot can draft it; see the node reference for what's available. Webhooks are available to CarlBot as nodes inside a rule, not as a standalone feature.

Logic Rules are a Builder-and-up feature

Basic Triggers are included on every plan. The full Logic Rules editor is available on Builder and up, and CarlBot can only draft rules in an IgorBox Studio whose plan includes them.

Deploy

Once you're happy with a show or rule, CarlBot can send it to its controller, after you say yes. See Deploys & Versions for what deploying does.

Controllers

CarlBot can rename a controller and change its description and tags. With a controller's page open, it can also:

• Set the controller's front button mode.
• Set the controller's ambient show.
• Start or stop a show on that controller.

Each of these shows up as a card with Apply and Cancel, only works while that controller's page is open, and is refused if the controller is offline.

CarlBot can't change firmware, network settings, tokens, or relay modes, and it can't fire individual outputs or use Manual Control. Those stay in your hands.

Answer questions about your rig

CarlBot reads your actual IgorBox Studio: shows, rules, triggers, controllers (online status, firmware version, channel layout, and how each prop is rigged), media files and their transcripts, and what each kind of channel does. That makes it a fast way to find things or sanity-check a setup.

Good prompts:

• "Which shows use the fog machine?"
• "What's wired to the mat input, and what does it trigger?"
• "Is anything deployed to Front Porch right now, and is it online?"
• "Why isn't the Coffin Room show firing when the mat is stepped on?"

It also knows IgorBox in general: how to wire a controller, what a status LED color means, how Magic Provisioning works. Those answers come from the same documentation you're reading now.

Not yet

During the beta, CarlBot doesn't help with:

• Webhooks as a standalone feature (only as nodes inside a Logic Rule).
• Firing individual outputs or driving channels by hand.
• Controller settings beyond names, descriptions, tags, front button mode, and ambient show.
• Running most of the timeline generators. It can animate from audio and fire a relay from audio; for flicker, chases, and the rest, it writes the points directly or you use the generator yourself.

For the things it will never do, creative judgment and physical work among them, see What CarlBot Can't Do. If you ask for something it can't do yet, it tells you rather than guessing. Let us know on Discord when that happens; those requests are how we decide what CarlBot learns next.

Guardrails

CarlBot asks before it does anything you might regret. There are two kinds of check-in, both in the chat panel:

1. Deleting, replacing, and deploying. Before CarlBot deletes anything, replaces work that's already there, or sends a show or rule to a controller, it stops and shows Yes, go ahead and No, leave it. Nothing happens until you click Yes.
2. Hardware actions. Starting or stopping a show and changing a controller's front button or ambient show appear as a card, for example "Run Haunted Hallway on Lobby Controller," with Apply and Cancel.

A few more things that keep you in control:

• Every change is listed. As CarlBot works, each change it makes is listed in the chat, so you can see exactly what it touched.
• Undo. Say "undo your last change" and CarlBot reverts its most recent show or rule edit. It never touches edits you made yourself.
• Your permissions apply. CarlBot can only change what your role allows, and each change is recorded in the audit log as an AI change.
• It won't step on a teammate. If someone else is editing the same show or rule, CarlBot holds off and says so. You can click Apply anyway if you're sure.
• Stopping a reply keeps what's done. If you stop CarlBot mid-reply, the part it already did stays (and is charged). Use undo if you don't want it.

Review before you deploy

Look CarlBot's work over before it goes live, the same as any change to a show. Open the show, scrub through it, and run it in Live Preview before you deploy to the room.

Getting the best results

The longer version of this list, with examples, is on Tips and Tricks.

• Open the right thing first. CarlBot works on the page you're on. Open the show or rule, then open the panel.
• Name things. Use the controller names and channel names from your IgorBox Studio. "Coffin Room's Strobe channel" beats "the strobe."
• Give times. "At 0:05, for two seconds" is unambiguous. "After a bit" is not.
• One job at a time. A single clear request usually costs fewer credits and gives a cleaner result than a paragraph of loosely related asks.
• Answer its questions. When a request is vague, CarlBot asks rather than guesses. A quick answer gets you a better result than a long rephrase.
• Say "continue." On a big job CarlBot may stop partway, tell you what's done, and wait. Say "continue" and it picks up where it left off.
• Iterate. If the first pass isn't right, say what's wrong. CarlBot keeps the context of the conversation and adjusts.