Assistant
Describe the ride you want in a sentence and Velorki turns it into a route, with your consent, a rounded position at most, and no route history sent.
The assistant turns a sentence like "a gravel loop of about 80 km with a café stop" into a route on the planner. It is the one part of Velorki that sends what you typed to a server, so it asks for your consent first and tells you exactly what goes.
The assistant is part of Velorki Plus.
Open it#
Tap Ask in the toolbar of the route sheet on the Plan tab. The sheet is titled Ask for a route: "Describe the ride you have in mind. Velorki turns it into a request and plans the route on your phone."
With a route on the map the sheet opens on This route instead, a question about that route (see Ask about this route); New route above it switches back.
If the Ask button is not there, this build of Velorki has no server address at all, which is the case for a self-built copy with no relay of its own.
Consent, and what leaves the phone#
The first time you send something, Velorki shows Before the assistant asks:
What you type is sent to the Velorki server, which forwards it to our AI provider. Nothing else goes with it: no name, no account, no route history.
If you allow it, your position is sent as well, rounded to about one kilometre, so "from here" means something.
Three answers:
- Allow, with my rough position sends your text and a position rounded to roughly a kilometre.
- Allow, text only sends your text and nothing else.
- Not now sends nothing and switches the assistant off.
What actually travels: your text, optionally the rounded position, your language and unit settings so the answer fits, and, for a route description or a question about a route, a digest of the route (see below). No identifier of you or your phone is put into the prompt.
Change your mind at any time under Settings → AI assistant → What is sent, whose subtitle always says which of the four states you are in, with a Change button beside it.
Ask for something#
Type a sentence and tap Ask. Three examples are there to tap:
- A flat 30 km loop from here
- 60 km to Freiburg on quiet roads
- A gravel loop of about 80 km with a café stop
Other things that work well: a distance and a direction, a place to ride past, a surface, how much climbing you want, a start that is not where you are.
The sheet shows Thinking… while the model answers, then Looking up the places… while the place names are turned into coordinates. Then it summarises what it understood: "Loop of about 80 km", "Starting where you are" or "Starting at Freiburg", and a chip per place to ride past.
If a name matches more than one place far apart, Velorki asks Which Freiburg? with up to three choices. Tapping one resolves it on the phone, with no second trip to the model.
What happens with the answer#
The sheet closes itself and the planner takes over:
- A loop with no particular place to pass opens the loop sheet with the search already running.
- A loop through named places becomes waypoints with the loop closed, and Velorki says "The route is on the map."
- A point-to-point route becomes waypoints with the bike profile set, and again "The route is on the map."
From there it is an ordinary plan: edit it, ask for variants, save it.
What it does not do#
The model never returns coordinates and never computes a route. It returns a structured request, a distance, a shape, some place names and a preference or two, and everything after that happens on your phone. That is why the assistant works as a way to express what you want, and not as a source of facts about roads.
It can also be wrong. If it says something you did not mean, rephrase with a clear distance and a clear place.
Ask about this route#
With a route on the planner's map, Ask opens on This route: "Ask anything about the route on the map." Examples to tap: Check this route, Where can I get coffee around halfway?, Where can I refill my water?, Avoid the main road, Is this ok for a road bike?
What goes: your question and the digest of the route described under Describe this route, positions included. Your own position does not go in this mode.
The answer is a few sentences and up to six findings along the route, each with where it is. Show moves the map there. A finding the planner can act on has a button:
- Add as stop routes through a café, a tap or another place from the digest, inserted where the route passes it.
- Avoid keeps the router off that stretch. It is drawn dashed on the map, and the chip Keeping off 1 stretch over the map has Allow again.
- Use Gravel (or another bike) plans the route again with that profile.
Each one is a single step that Undo takes back, and the sheet stays open and marks it Applied. The model only suggests places from the digest; it never makes up a stop or a coordinate.
This route is not offered for a route imported from Strava.
Describe this route#
The other thing the assistant does is write a paragraph about a route you already have. Open a route in the library and tap Describe this route; the sheet starts writing at once, and Save as description stores the text with the route. Write again asks for another go.
Before it asks, the phone matches the route against its routing tiles and its offline place search and builds a digest: the distance, the ascent, the paved and unpaved shares, the waypoint names, the stretches of the route with their kind of road, surface and gradient, its climbs, the towns and villages it passes, and cafés, bakeries, water taps, toilets, viewpoints and bike shops within 300 m of it, each with its distance along the route and its position. Without downloaded tiles for the area only the figures go. The model gets the positions too, to about 10 m, so it knows where the ride is; a route that starts at your door shows where your door is. Every place the description names comes from the digest, so it can say "the café in Caniço at km 9" and mean a café that exists. It writes in the language and the units the app is set to.
The button is not offered for a route imported from Strava, because Strava's terms do not allow their data to be given to an AI provider.
Limits and errors#
The assistant is rate limited: twenty requests an hour and a hundred a day.
| What the sheet says | What it means |
|---|---|
| "Too many requests. Try again in 90 seconds." | you hit the rate limit |
| "The AI assistant is part of Velorki Plus." | no subscription |
| "The assistant needs your consent before it can send anything." | consent is missing or refused |
| "I am not sure I understood that. Try naming a distance and a place." | the model was not confident |
| "I could not find "Freiburg". Try another spelling or a nearby town." | the place name did not resolve |
| "I need to know where to start. Turn on location, or name a starting place." | "from here" with no position |
| "The assistant could not answer:" | the server or the model failed |
Try again clears the error and keeps what you typed.
Reporting a bad answer#
Settings → AI assistant → Report AI output opens a mail to us: "Tell us about an answer that was wrong or inappropriate." Please use it. Wrong and inappropriate answers are how the prompts get fixed.