Zeph, your AI assistant

Zeph is the AI assistant built into TurbineX. It can read what you're looking at, answer questions about OpenFAST and IEC 61400-1, and configure a study for you when you describe it in plain English — the configuration is always shown as an Apply card for you to review before anything commits.

Where to find Zeph

The floating Zeph button lives on the bottom-right of every signed-in page. Click it and a side panel slides in. The panel is stateless across sessions today; closing it discards the conversation, opening it starts a fresh one. The selected study, job, and currently plotted channels are auto-attached as context for any question you ask.

What Zeph is good at

• Configuring studies in plain English.“Set up a parametric sweep on the IEA 22 MW, vary wind speed from 4 to 24 in 2 m/s steps, 3 seeds per point” — Zeph emits a structured intent, the chat shows an Apply card with every field it intends to fill, you click Apply (or ignore it).
• Picking the right study mode.If you describe the work but don't name the mode, Zeph asks. The three modes are Single (one run), Parametric (sweeps), and Certification (the IEC DLC matrix).
• Answering OpenFAST and IEC questions from curated knowledge files — module map, channel naming, IEC wind classes, DLC definitions, the IEA 22 MW verification benchmark, etc. Zeph cites the relevant file or external link rather than guessing.
• Reading your current view.Ask “why does my pitch oscillate after 200 s?” while you have a time-series open and Zeph sees the channel, job ID, and turbine in context.

The Apply card

Whenever Zeph wants to mutate UI state — create a study, update the current one, change DLC overrides — it returns an Apply card instead of touching the UI directly. The card shows every field that would change, the proposed values, and a Discard button. Nothing commits until you press Apply. This is the only safe way to let an LLM near a configuration form.

Apply cards collapse to a single “Applied” or “Discarded” chip after you act on them, so the chat history reads naturally.

Examples

Configuring a study from scratch

“Create a certification study on the IEA-15-240-RWT-Onshore. IEC class IIB, run DLCs 1.1, 1.2, and 6.1 only, three seeds each, yaw set [-8°, 0°, +8°]. Call it iea15-onshore-IIB-smoke.”

Zeph returns an Apply card that fills the Turbine, Environment, and DLCs tabs in one go. You glance at the seed count and yaw list, hit Apply, and you're ready to submit.

Adjusting an existing study

Inside a study, “raise the wind-speed step from 2 to 4 m/s and add yaw = -16, +16” produces a small Apply card with just those deltas. Useful when you're halfway through a configuration and don't want to remember which tab owns which knob.

Verification questions

“What should the first flapwise frequency be on the IEA 22 MW?” — Zeph reads the verification reference data directly and answers with the four-code range from Collier 2024, cites the table, and points you at the verification manual if you want the full benchmark.

What Zeph won't do

• Submit a study without you. Apply cards configure the form; running the campaign is still a click you make on the Run tab.
• Spend tokens unilaterally.No tool call consumes a simulation token. The chat itself is billed per your plan's assistant allowance.
• Multi-step plans.v1 is deliberately one tool, one Apply per turn. Chains like “create the turbine, then a study on it, then submit” need to be driven a turn at a time — the alternative is silent state mutations and we've decided that's not a trade worth making.
• Make verification claims.Zeph quotes published reference data (Collier 2024 for the 22 MW, others as we add them) but won't certify your design. Certification is a paper trail; Zeph just helps you build the configuration that feeds into one.

Tips

• Be specific about the modeif you know it (“a single simulation,” “a parametric sweep,” “a certification run”) — it saves a clarifying turn.
• Name the turbineby its full ID (IEA-22-280-RWT-Onshore, not just “22 MW”) when there are multiple variants in play.
• If the Apply card looks wrong, discard it and rephrase. Editing an Apply card before applying is on the roadmap but isn't in v1.
• Use it as a checking layer.“Does my current setup match DLC 1.3 as defined in IEC 61400-1 Ed.4?” — Zeph will read the catalog, compare, and flag mismatches.

Privacy and what Zeph sees

Zeph is a separate sidecar container in the TurbineX backend. On each turn it receives: the message you just typed; a small rolling window of prior turns in the same panel session; the IDs of the study, job, and channels currently visible in the UI; the org-scoped knowledge files (IEC standard, OpenFAST cheatsheet, verification reference data, intent catalog). It does notreceive your password, API keys, billing details, or other orgs' data. The LLM provider is Anthropic; we don't train on your conversations.

Next steps

Try Zeph on a real study you have open — “explain what this DLC is testing” or “turn this into a parametric over hub height” — and see what comes back. If you want the formal verification benchmark behind any claim about the IEA 22 MW, see Model verification.