The personas in detail

Why multiple personas?

A PLC programming environment needs different viewpoints:

• When coding, you want to create variables and compile quickly.
• When code-reviewing, you want no accidental changes.
• When commissioning, you only look at live values — not at the code.
• When onboarding a trainee, the AI should ask for every step, so the trainee sees what is happening.

Instead of constantly toggling the security profile, ForgeIEC ships with ready-made personas — each with its own role and its own permission tier.

You switch between them as tabs in the AI panel.

The five personas

Blacksmith Master — the foreman

• When to pick? Default for active programming.
• What may it do? Everything: create variables, write POU code, compile, upload, start/stop the PLC, observe values.
• Caution: It can bring a PLC into stop state. Confirmation questions are shown for every action (except in Fast mode, see Daily operation).

Reviewer — the second pair of eyes

• When to pick? When you want your code looked over before deploying.
• What may it do? Read only: project variables, POU bodies, library blocks. It cannot create variables, cannot modify code, cannot trigger a deploy.
• Safety benefit: You can let it chat unattended — it cannot break anything, even with bad instructions.

Doc — the documentarian

• When to pick? When you want to generate comments or a documentation file from finished code.
• What may it do? Read + write variable comments. No POU body changes, no deploy.
• Typical use: “Read my MotorControl POU and write a short comment for each variable describing what it does.”

Monitor — the observer

• When to pick? When you do diagnostics on a running plant WITHOUT any risk of changes.
• What may it do? Only read live values, fetch oscilloscope captures, show task statistics.
• What may it NOT do? No variable creation, no force settings, no code touching, no deploy.
• Typical question: “Why does Motor_Ready stay FALSE during startup? Look at the last 5 seconds on the oscilloscope.”

Trainee — for onboarding and first contact

• When to pick? When onboarding a new colleague — or when you yourself are using the AI assistant for the first time and want to see everything step by step.
• What may it do? In principle everything like Blacksmith Master.
• What’s different? Fast mode is always off for this persona. Every single action requires your click confirmation. Even if the operator types “do it, do it, do it” in rapid succession, a question pops up after every step.

Customise personas or create your own

Personas live under Preferences → AI → tab “AI Agent Profiles”:

• + below the profile list — add a new profile.
• - — delete the selected profile.
• Click an entry → the right-hand form lets you edit Name, Role, Endpoint, Model, API key, Enabled, and the System prompt.
• “Reset to defaults” — restore all personas to the factory defaults (discards your customisations).

The system prompt is the text used to “prime” the AI on every request. Set style, language, level of detail, and domain knowledge here (e.g. “Always reply in German, terse technical style”). Each persona also carries a Role that determines which MCP tool set is available — see Security and Tools.

Which persona for which task?

Next

• Daily operation — input tricks, emergency stop
• What the AI can do — actions overview
• Back to the AI overview