Deputy (AI assistant, powered by Claude)

The Deputy is SubnetSlinger's own AI assistant, powered by the Anthropic Claude API with your own key — it is NOT Microsoft Copilot or GitHub Copilot, and has no connection to them. (Send the whole Posse instead when you want a full multi-agent sweep — see the Posse article.)

What it does: an AI assistant that doesn't just chat — it can actually run the diagnostic tools (ping, traceroute, DNS, port scan, HTTP, TLS audit, IP info, public IP, WHOIS, NTP, SNMP, subnet calc, MAC lookup, ARP table, and your machine's own interfaces / sockets / routes) to investigate a problem, then explain what the results mean. It can also work with your SubnetSlinger records — read your inventory and incidents, check drift, run a runbook, pull up reference docs, and keep its own per-project memory and tasks. Ask in plain English ("why can't this host reach the gateway?") and it decides which checks to run, reads the output, and answers with the evidence.

Setup (in 3 steps — see the "First time? AI setup in 3 steps" panel in-app): (1) pick a provider in the "AI" dropdown — Anthropic (cloud, the default), Ollama (local), OpenAI-compatible, or Google Gemini. (2) Paste that provider's API key into the Key box (each provider's help panel links to where you get one). For Anthropic you can also pick a key you saved yourself in the Vault, and choose a model: Haiku 4.5 (fastest/cheapest, the default), Sonnet 4.6 (balanced), or Opus 4.8 (most capable) — bump it up only when a problem needs deeper reasoning. For OpenAI-compatible, set the Base URL + model + key: one adapter covers ChatGPT (api.openai.com/v1) plus anything that speaks the same API — Groq, OpenRouter, Azure OpenAI, a local LM Studio or vLLM. For Gemini, set the model (e.g. gemini-2.0-flash) + key from Google AI Studio. (3) Decide storage — see next paragraph.

Storing your keys — persist on device, or enter each time: the "Store AI cloud keys on this device" switch controls whether your cloud keys survive a restart. ON (the default) saves each key into SubnetSlinger's encrypted Vault and loads it automatically next launch, so you never re-type it — unlock the Vault (rail) so it can be saved. OFF keeps keys in memory only: you re-enter them every session, and turning the switch off also removes any key this app had saved. Turn it OFF when company policy forbids storing secrets on the machine; leave it ON for convenience on your own box. The switch and its live status line sit right below the key fields. See "AI models & token usage" for costs and the token readout. Your conversation and tool results are sent to whichever CLOUD provider you pick (Anthropic, OpenAI-compatible, or Gemini) to generate answers; on Ollama nothing leaves the machine.

Before anything is sent to a cloud provider (Anthropic, OpenAI-compatible, OR Gemini), SubnetSlinger scans your message and every tool result for secret-shaped text — private key blocks, password= fields, Bearer/Basic auth headers, API keys, JWTs — and strips them, replacing each with a labeled [redacted: ...] placeholder. You'll see a 🔒 notice in the chat whenever this happens; what's shown in your own chat window is always the full, unredacted original — only the copy sent to the cloud is scrubbed. This is a pattern match, not a guarantee: it catches well-known secret shapes, not everything a person could type. Don't paste a real password or key into the Deputy expecting it to always be caught — when in doubt, switch to Ollama (local) for that conversation instead.

Prefer local + private? Switch the "AI" dropdown to Ollama (local) to run an on-machine model instead — no key, no cost, nothing leaves the box. See "Ollama — run the AI locally". Tools, MCP, and the read-only safety all work the same either way.

Safe to run: yes — the assistant has READ-ONLY tools only. It has no SSH command execution, no file transfer, and no access to your stored credentials. For anything that changes a device — a config edit, shutting a port, containing a rogue host, rotating a key — it tells you what to do and why; it cannot and will not do it for you. Treat its tool runs like clicking the tools yourself: only point port scans and SNMP at gear you're authorized to test.

Reading results: tool runs show up inline as 🔧 lines so you can see exactly what it checked. If it ran a check, the conclusion is grounded in that result — verify the 🔧 output if a recommendation looks surprising. While the Deputy is working a banner shows it's running and the chat auto-scrolls to the latest line.

Keeping a result: click Save to Incidents to store the whole investigation as a durable, timestamped Incident (then export it to Markdown or Print/PDF from Records ▸ Incidents — handy as release or ticket evidence), or Copy to grab the transcript. The tool-call AUDIT trail is written to the Activity log automatically either way; the chat text itself is kept only if you Save or Copy it.