Let someone help in a support session

Sometimes the quickest fix is to let the person helping you look at Maisnie themselves: a source that stopped working, a check-up of an install that has been running for months, a setting you’d rather not change alone. A support session lets them do that without ever holding your passphrase or any of your passwords, and without ever seeing your notes.

You start it, at home. You send them a link that works once. It ends on its own after the time you chose, and you can end it sooner whenever you like. Afterwards you can read everything they did.

What they can and can’t do

In a support session the person helping you can:

• open the Setup pages and change the plain settings there: your vault’s place, which sources are on, your time zone, your briefing’s hour, People’s threshold, and for an AI connection you already have, its model names and spending limit;
• press Save and test, the same check you have, so a fix is proven before they leave;
• import a setup card, with the same limits as everything else here;
• open the Check-up: the version you’re running, whether every part is up, the checks maisnie doctor runs, each source’s last run, the newest lines of the run journal, and the last 40 lines of each of Maisnie’s logs (the front door’s, Setup’s, Home’s, remote access’s, and each source’s own), with every saved password or key, and anything shaped like one, hidden.

They can never:

• see or type a password, key or private link. Every one of those fields shows The owner enters this, on this computer, where it comes from, and whether it’s set. If one needs changing, you type it in yourself, on your own computer, while they wait. Before you do, look at the server or address beside it: for a source with no saved password yet, the person helping you can set where it goes, and your password goes there. When they did, the password field says so: “The mail server was set to … during a support session on … Check it before you type the password.”;
• change where a saved password is sent: once a source has a saved password, its mail server, port and username are yours to change;
• add, remove or repoint an AI connection, or change which connection answers which kind of question. Your questions and briefings carry your notes, so where they go is yours alone: the provider, address and program of every connection, key or no key, are shown with a line saying you change them at home, and a form that names another one is refused;
• open Home, Ask, People, a person’s page, the briefing, search, or any note. Your notes are not part of a support session, ever;
• learn or change your passphrase;
• turn remote access on or off, or change whether sessions from away may change things;
• protect your stored passwords, or reach the key that protects them;
• read the support log, or start another support session.

Starting one

1. At home, open Settings and find Support session. Press Start a support session. (Away from home, the page tells you to start it at home instead. A session from away can still end one.)
2. Choose how long it lasts: 30 minutes, 1 hour (the usual), 2 hours or 4 hours. The time starts now, not when they open the link.
3. Press Start the session. The next page shows the link, once. Copy it and send it to the person helping you, by email or chat or however you talk.

If remote access is on, the link goes through your own address, so they can use it from anywhere. If it’s off, the page says so: the link then works only on your home network, which is what you want when someone visits in person.

The link works once. When they open it they see a short page and press Begin; from then on that one browser is in the session, and the link no longer works for anyone else. If it never gets used, or it reaches someone it shouldn’t, end the session and start a new one: the old link dies with it.

There is only ever one support session at a time. Times on these pages are in your own time zone; the person helping you also sees how many minutes are left.

While it’s open

Settings says A support session is open until and the time, or that it’s still waiting for the person helping you to open the link. See it or end it takes you to the page with End it now.

Ending it, or reaching the time you chose, ends it at once: the next thing their browser asks for is refused, and the link and their place in the session are gone for good. A change they were sending as it ended is not saved. They can also end it themselves when they’re done.

If Maisnie can’t write the end of the session to disk (a full disk, say), it still ends it at once and tells you so; the page asks you to come back and end it again if Maisnie restarts before it could write it down.

Reading what happened

In Settings, under Support session, Support log lists the most recent sessions, newest first: when each started and ended, who ended it, and what happened in between, in order:

• each page they opened;
• each setting they changed, by the name the Setup pages use, with what it was before and what it became. A password or key is only ever shown as set or not set, never what it is;
• each Save and test they ran;
• anything they tried to open that isn’t part of a support session, which was turned away. If they open the same pages over and over, the log keeps a count instead of every line, so the start, the changes, the tests and the end are always there.

The log stays on your computer, in Maisnie’s own folder, next to your sign-in records; see privacy.

If you’d rather they didn’t

A support session is entirely optional. A setup card does most setup without anyone reaching your computer at all, and for anything about your notes themselves, share your own screen on a call instead: they see only what you choose to show.