Ask who is booked on Saturday, and get Saturday.
The assistant you already use can read your venue the way you would: tonight’s bookings, what is on the lunch menu, who is on the rota, when a regular last came in. It works today, with a key you make and can take back. This page says exactly what is built, what is still new, and what does not exist yet.
Create a key in Settings, hand it to your agent, and it sees exactly the venues and actions you ticked.
The straight answer
Where this actually stands
A page about something this new is easy to write badly, so here is the ledger instead. Three states, nothing rounded up.
- Built
The credential, its limits, and the undo button
A key that belongs to one account, carries only the permissions ticked for it, and cannot be shown money unless money was one of them. Every call that uses it is written down, and what it changed can be put back by a person from your settings. Written, taken apart by a security review, rebuilt, tested, and switched on: you can make one in your settings right now.
- Live, still new
The server your assistant talks to
All 75 things an agent may ask for are wired up, along with the ready-made routines: brief me on tonight’s service, are we short on Saturday, what can this guest eat. The address is https://mcp.guestavo.com/mcp. Paste that and your key into your assistant and the calls land on the same API your dashboard uses, refused only where your key was not given that far. It is young, though: the venues pointing an agent at it now are the ones deciding what changes next.
- Not started
Somewhere to find it, and what it costs
It is in no assistant’s directory, and we are not putting it in one yet: a listing is an invitation. We would rather the venues we know go first and the listing follow what they find. Nothing counts what an agent asks for and nothing bills for it either. Both are real questions now rather than later ones, and neither is answered.
What it is for
Questions, in the words you already use
Every line below is a question the frozen tool list can answer, paired with the thing in your account it reads to answer it. If there was no tool for it, the question is not on this page.
- 01
Who is booked in tonight, and where does the pressure land?
Reads Tonight’s bookings with party sizes, the rota for the same hours, and anything on at the venue.
- 02
Is there a table for six on Saturday at eight?
Reads The same free-slot check that sits behind your booking page, read from the staff side, narrowed by party size and service type.
- 03
Put the Hribars down for four on Friday.
Reads Takes the booking and confirms it — if you ticked the permission that allows writing, and at a venue you let that key work in. Nothing goes to the guest from the agent; your own confirmation and your own reminder run as they always do.
- 04
Can someone with a celery allergy eat here?
Reads The published menu, dish by dish, with the 14 EU allergen tags already on it.
- 05
Are we short on Saturday?
Reads Rostered hours against booked covers, hour by hour, so the gap is visible. What those hours cost is a separate permission.
- 06
When was Ana last in, and what did she book?
Reads Her guest record and her visit history.
What it will say no to
Reply to a review. Tell you what sold plate by plate. Send a campaign. Charge anybody anything. None of that is in the tool list, and neither is your till, so an assistant asked for one of them is meant to say it cannot rather than invent a number about a real restaurant. That is why the list is 75 tools and not eleven hundred.
The part worth reading twice
Your account, and only what you ticked
This is the bit that is genuinely different, and it is also the bit that had to be built before anything else. An assistant gets exactly the access you handed it, inside one account, and it cannot quietly widen that. Every call that needs the key is written down before it happens, and what it changed can be put back.
- 01
One account, and as little of it as you like
A key is created inside one account and stays there. A request naming any other account is refused before a single row is read or written, and no permission on the key widens that. Inside your own account you say how far it reaches: everything, or these venues only, or these actions only, or a different set of actions at each venue. Whatever you leave out is refused — and so is anything the key asks for that cannot be pinned to a venue at all, because "I cannot tell which one" must never read as "any of them".
- 02
Only the boxes you tick
Permissions are per module and per direction. Read the menu is a different tick from change the menu. A key that takes bookings cannot open the rota, and a key that reads the rota cannot cancel a table.
- 03
Money has a tick of its own
Revenue, margin, per-shift pay and cost per cover sit behind one permission that nothing else brings with it. Without that tick the figures are left out of the answer rather than zeroed, so an assistant adding up a month cannot read a missing number as a quiet week. It covers the wage on a rota row and the spend on a booking, not only the reports, and what decides it is the key rather than the person who created it.
- 04
Written down before it happens
Anything that changes something is recorded first: which key asked, what it asked for, which venue it was acting at, and how the record looked beforehand. If that cannot be recorded, the request is refused instead of performed quietly. Reads are written down too, with the same question asked twice in an hour kept as one line and a count. There is no question a key can ask that leaves no line — the free-slot check included, which used to be the exception and is not one any more.
- 05
And you can put it back
What an agent changed, a person can undo from your settings, newest first, all of it or none of it. If somebody edited that booking in the meantime the undo refuses rather than overwriting their work. It also says plainly what it cannot retrieve, like a menu that sat on your public page for an afternoon.
- 06
It does not talk to your guests
A booking taken, moved or cancelled by a key sends nobody an email and nobody a text, whatever the request asks for — including the people the request never named, like the three on the waiting list a freed table would otherwise go out to. The confirmation goes out from the dashboard, where a person can see the address it is going to. One message is still yours and still gets through: a confirmed booking is a candidate for your own automatic reminder, so an agent confirming a table sets that reminder going. A guest who has been told they have a table is the one thing here that no undo button reaches.
The list you would tick from
Sixteen permissions, in plain words
- Permission
- Opens
- org:read
- The list of your venues, and nothing inside them.
- org:write
- Open a venue, and set its address, opening hours and booking rules.
- menu:read
- Menus, dishes, prices, allergens, daily specials.
- menu:write
- Build a menu, edit a dish, take one off tonight, publish the lot.
- booking:read
- The book: free slots, bookings, tables and rooms, service types.
- booking:write
- Take, confirm, move and cancel bookings, without telling the guest.
- event:read
- Events and who has registered for them.
- event:write
- Create an event, edit it, publish it, and name the programme’s categories.
- contact:read
- The guest book and its groups.
- contact:write
- Add a guest, correct their details, put them into a group, and make or retire the groups themselves.
- loyalty:read
- Visit history: who came in, and when.
- sales:read
- Event inquiries and the sales pipeline: who has asked, for what, and where each one stands.
- staff:read
- The team, the rota, and how a day is covered. Not what anyone is paid.
- staff:write
- File a shift, move it, publish it. Not the people: nothing here writes a person or their pay.
- analytics:read
- Revenue, margin, per-shift pay, cost per cover. The only tick that returns a figure in money.
- agent:read
- What the key itself has done — its own changes and reads, and whether each can still be undone. Nothing about anybody else’s.
- agent:write
- Let the key take back one of its own recent changes. Its own only, one at a time, within the hour. Never another key’s, and never a whole afternoon — that undo stays yours.
A write tick includes its read, so tick the narrowest thing that does the job. Money runs the other way: nothing implies it, so those figures need their own tick or they are simply absent from the answer. Full access cannot be granted at all, since it would cover tools that do not exist yet and nobody can agree to that by ticking a box.
Before you ask
The honest answers
Can I connect an assistant to my venue today?
Yes. Create a key in Settings, choose which venues and which actions it may touch, and paste it into your agent. It reaches only what you ticked, everything it does is written down against that key, and you can withdraw it or undo its work whenever you like.
What is it, in one sentence?
A way for the assistant you already use to read and act on your own venue data, using a credential you create, limited to the permissions you tick, written down while it works, and cancelled by you the moment you want it gone.
Who can revoke a key, and how long does one live?
Anyone who can manage your team can see every key pointed at your account and revoke any of them, whoever created it, from one screen. A key expires on its own after ninety days unless you set it shorter, and a year is the longest life it will accept. It is also revoked for you if its owner changes their password, resets it, turns off their last second factor, or leaves the account. Keys cannot revoke keys, and they cannot read that screen either, so an assistant has no way to tidy up after itself.
Could an assistant cancel my bookings?
Only if you ticked the permission that allows it, only inside the account the key belongs to, and only at the venues and for the actions you allowed when you created it. A read-only key asked to cancel a table is refused, and so is a key that may cancel at one venue being pointed at another. If it does happen, it is in your agent activity with the key’s name and that venue on it, and you can undo it from there, provided nobody has edited that booking since and the slot has not gone to somebody else in the meantime.
Will I need a developer?
That is the point of the hosted version: an address and a key, pasted into your assistant’s settings, the same way you would add any other tool. Both halves exist today, and creating the key is a screen in Settings rather than a task for anyone technical.
What will it cost?
Not decided. We would rather write that than invent a number, and there is nothing to buy yet either way. Early access to Guestavo costs nothing while the beta runs.
Where does my data go?
The server keeps no database of its own, and is not handed the credentials to open one. It passes a request to the same API your dashboard uses, in the same place, and hands the answer back. The record of what was asked for stays in your account, where you can read it and act on it. What your assistant does with the answer afterwards is between you and whoever makes your assistant, which is worth knowing before you point one at your guest book.
Early access
Tell us you want this
It is the same list as the Guestavo beta. Leave your name, we call within a working day, and you tell us then that agents are what brought you and what you would ask first. Those answers decide what gets built next.
- A say in what is built first. The tool list is frozen, not final.
- The setup written for whichever assistant you use, and a hand with the first key if you want one.
- Nothing to install now, and nothing to pay while the beta runs.
- A person on the phone rather than a reply from a form.
Have something specific in mind? Write to us instead
Drop your email below. We review every signup by hand and reach out within one working day to set up a 20-minute call.