> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.aresdeploy.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Chat with Ares

> Talk to your operator in plain English. Ask questions, give instructions, change direction.

Chat is how you manage Ares. There are no settings mazes and no automation builders: you tell your operator what you want, and it either does the work, routes it through approvals, or tells you what it needs. Everything else in these docs describes what Ares does; chat is where you steer it.

## The three kinds of message

**Questions.** Anything about your business's current state:

* "How many leads this week, and how many booked?"
* "What did we spend yesterday and what did it get us?"
* "Show me everyone who has not been followed up with."
* "What are leads saying about the new offer?"

Answers come back with real counts, real names, and real quotes from conversations, because Ares is answering from your live data, not summarizing a report.

**Instructions.** Work you want done:

* "Follow up with everyone who filled out the form but never booked."
* "Pause the Fresno campaign."
* "Draft a spring promo ad, show me before anything runs."
* "Stop texting anyone tagged repeat-customer."

Routine work starts immediately. Anything customer-visible or money-related routes through [approvals](/using/approvals), and Ares tells you which path it took.

**Context.** Facts about your business that change how Ares operates:

* "We are booked out three weeks. Slow the ads down."
* "We added patio covers as a service."
* "Never mention financing unless they ask."

Context sticks. State it once and it becomes part of how your operator works from then on.

## Brief it like a new hire

The single biggest upgrade to Ares's judgment is context only you have. A useful briefing sounds like:

> "We do epoxy and polyaspartic floors, mostly residential garages, occasionally commercial. Sweet spot jobs are 2 to 4 car garages. We cover the whole metro but hate driving past the river for small jobs. Estimates run 30 minutes, mornings are best. If someone asks about DIY kits, we do not sell them."

Every sentence in that paragraph changes something about how Ares qualifies, schedules, or talks to leads.

## Interrogating decisions

Every action Ares takes can be questioned:

* "Why has nobody texted the lead from Tuesday?"
* "Why did you pause that campaign?"
* "Why did this lead get marked cold?"

You get the actual reason, drawn from the actual records. If the reason reveals a mistake, say so; the correction becomes part of its operating context, and it will tell you what it is doing differently.

## What chat will not do

Chat instructions cannot cross the hard lines: no overriding an opt-out, no deleting contacts, no launching spend without a preview and confirmation. Ares declines these and explains why, rather than pretending they are possible. The full list lives in [Core concepts](/core-concepts) and [Approvals](/using/approvals).