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

# Ask Howly

Ask Howly is a built-in assistant that answers questions about your connected portal. You ask in plain English, and it reads your real workflows to answer. What's broken, what to fix first, what a change will affect, and what to clean up.

Every other feature in Howly shows you what's going on. Ask Howly is where you find out what to do about it. It reads the same data as the map, the health checker, and the audit, then turns it into a direct answer with the next steps and the exact workflows to open.

<Note>
  Ask Howly is **read-only**, like the rest of Howly. It reads your portal and recommends what to do. It never creates, edits, enables, disables, or deletes anything in HubSpot. Every change is made by you.
</Note>

## Where to find it

Open the workflow map and click **Ask Howly** in the top right to open the panel. It sits beside the canvas, so you can ask about a workflow and still see it. Type a question, or pick one of the suggested prompts to start.

## What you can ask

Ask Howly answers questions grounded in your live portal. Some of the most useful ones:

### Priorities and cleanup

* "What should I tackle next?"
* "Which workflows need attention first?"
* "Can you give me a workflow cleanup plan?"
* "What are the three things I should fix first, and why?"

### Specific workflows

* "What does the Lead Nurture Sequence actually do?"
* "What happens if I turn this workflow off?"
* "What depends on the MQL Handoff workflow?"

### The whole portal

* "Summarize the state of this portal in a paragraph I can send a client."
* "Which workflows are broken, and what's breaking them?"
* "Find workflows that look like duplicates."

Every workflow Ask Howly names in an answer is a link. Click it and you land on that workflow in the map.

## What Ask Howly can see

Ask Howly reads the same portal data the rest of Howly is built on:

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Portal health" icon="heart-pulse">
    The health score, workflow counts, and issues grouped by category and severity.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Workflow issues" icon="triangle-exclamation">
    Broken enrollments, circular dependencies, duplicates, stale, orphan, and empty workflows.
  </Card>

  <Card title="The workflow list" icon="list">
    Every workflow in the connected portal, so it can resolve one by name.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Workflow detail" icon="diagram-project">
    The full configuration of a single workflow: its triggers, actions, and connections.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

Because it only reads your connected portal, its answers reflect your real workflows. It doesn't invent scores, counts, or workflows. If the portal isn't connected, it will say so instead of guessing.

## Ask Howly and the Howly MCP

Ask Howly runs on the same read-only engine as the [Howly MCP](/mcp/overview). The difference is where you use it.

* **Ask Howly** lives inside the Howly app. There's nothing to set up. Open the panel and ask.
* **The Howly MCP** connects Howly to your own AI client, like Claude Desktop or Cursor, so you can ask the same kinds of questions there. See [Connect](/mcp/connect) to set it up.

Use Ask Howly for the fastest path to an answer. Use the MCP when you'd rather work in your own assistant.

## Good to know

* Answers are generated with AI and can contain mistakes. Ask Howly shows the workflows behind an answer so you can check it against your portal.
* It reads the HubSpot portal connected to your Howly account. If you manage several portals, make sure the right one is connected.


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