At Zapier, we use Coda as our go-to workspace app to document everything from team charters to project briefs to article outlines. But drafting this type of content—or any content, really—can be a true slog.
As if it heard the collective groans of note-scribblers everywhere, Coda announced Coda AI—an AI-powered "work assistant" that can take on repetitive tasks, brainstorm new ideas, and generally speed up your workflows.
While this is promising, I wanted to know if Coda AI could really deliver. Keep reading to find out how Coda AI works, how to use it, and my take on whether or not it's the game-changer it claims to be.
What is Coda AI?
Coda AI, which is currently available to all users for free, is the productivity app teams know and love, but with the power of artificial intelligence (AI) built directly into its platform.
Similar to other AI productivity tools, Coda AI is designed to help you get more out of your notes with the power of AI. For example, you can prompt it to extract data from a table, summarize existing content, and automatically generate new content.
Note: Coda AI is not available on the Coda mobile app.
How does Coda AI work?
Coda AI launched with three AI-powered features:
AI assistant. Writes and edits content, including summaries, task checklists, and blog posts.
AI column. Generates content directly within the cells of a table. It's essentially the AI assistant, but it refers only to AI used within a table column.
AI block. Writes summaries or finds inferred action items from existing data in your tables or pages.
But this framing is a little misleading.
Instead of viewing these as three separate features, I recommend thinking of them as building blocks you're already familiar with using in Coda, sprinkled with a little AI magic.
With that in mind, here are the three functions I'd broadly categorize Coda AI's capabilities into:
There are many use cases for Coda AI—more than I can cover in this article. So, for the sake of simplicity, let's look at just a few examples of each function in action.
One more note worth mentioning: how the various AI-powered features appear varies from user to user. For example, the image below—courtesy of a use case demo from Coda—shows an expanded view of a table column's dropdown options, including Edit assistant. To be clear, this is the AI assistant in an AI column.
But in the table I created, the AI assistant appears as Edit AI.
And if your table wasn't originally built with an AI column, the AI feature might appear simply as AI or Add assistant. All that's to say is no matter what tool name is displayed on your end, it's most likely the AI assistant.
How to generate new content with Coda AI
Generate new content directly onto a Coda page
To generate content directly onto a page, enter Ctrl+Space on a new line. Alternatively, type forward slash (/) for the full menu of insertable elements.
In the prompt bar that appears, select what you'd like the AI to do: Write a or Make a table of. Once you select an option, Coda AI will suggest different types of content it can generate. Choose from one of the suggestions or type in your own prompt.
You can enter instructions like "Write a packing list for a seven-day trip to Ireland" or "Make a table of the top 10 must-visit attractions in Ireland." Then hit Enter, or click Create, and Coda AI will generate the desired content.
If you're happy with the results, click Keep in the prompt bar. Alternatively, you can enter a new prompt or choose from a list of suggested ways to modify the result.
In this example, I used Coda AI to change the bulleted packing list into a checklist.
That's it! But there's one catch: if you use AI to generate content (i.e., text or a table) directly onto a page—not within an AI block or AI column—once you select Keep, you can't review or modify the prompt. It's frustrating, especially if you're still experimenting with how to write the perfect prompt.
To avoid playing an unwanted game of Finder's keepers, I recommend using AI blocks or columns instead. Here's how.
Generate content in an AI block
Type forward slash (/) on a new line, and click AI block.
Two bars will appear on your page: the top bar is where your content will populate, and the bottom bar is where you enter your text instructions.
Enter your prompt as you normally would, and then hit Enter or click Create.
Again, if you're happy with the results, click Keep. Or click the Refresh icon to prompt the AI assistant to try again.
If you want to modify your prompt later on, click the AI block menu, which looks like three dots stacked vertically (⋮), and then click Change prompt.
Revise your text instructions in the prompt box that appears. You can even fine-tune the results by Length, Tone, and Type.
Generate content in an AI column
Here's how to use Coda AI to automatically generate text or data within the cells of a table.
Click the Add column icon, which looks like a plus sign (+), beside an existing table. Then click AI.
In the prompt box that appears, enter your text instructions. Again, you can narrow down your results by modifying the Length, Tone, and Type. Once done, click Fill.
Tip: To reference a Coda page, table, or column, type @ into the prompt bar, or click the @ button in the prompt box. You can also enter = to open the formula builder.
There are two additional AI column features worth mentioning:
Preview. Directly beneath the prompt box is a real-time preview of what results may populate in each cell based on your current instructions. This is helpful especially if Coda AI can't process your instructions because it'll nudge you to modify it.
Auto-refresh when references change. When this feature is turned on (click the toggle to do so), Coda AI will automatically update the result if any reference cells are modified. And if a new row is added, Coda AI will automatically generate text within any AI columns for that respective row. For example, if I add another must-visit attraction to row 11 of the above table, Coda AI will automatically fill the adjacent cell with a brief description of the attraction. Note: the auto-refresh results may take about 30 seconds to populate.
How to edit existing content with Coda AI
To edit content within a Coda page, highlight the text you want to edit, and then click AI in the formatting menu bar.
Enter your instructions in the prompt bar that appears, or choose from one of the suggested prompts. Click Create and watch as the AI assistant revises your text.
If you're happy with the edit, click Keep in the prompt bar. To change it, enter a new prompt.
Tip: It's not possible to use the AI assistant to edit an entire table. However, if you want to leverage the power of AI, create your table with AI columns.
How to summarize available content with Coda AI
Whether you're using Coda AI to summarize content or find action items, I recommend using AI blocks to do it. This way, you can refresh the content at any time with just one click. Here's how to get started.
Type forward slash (/) on a new line, and click AI block.
In the prompt bar that appears, enter the instructions as you normally would or select one of the suggested actions: Write a summary, Summarize the most common feedback from, or Find action items from. You can also specify the desired length, tone, and type of response. Then click Create.
In the example below, I instructed Coda AI to reference my table, Top 10 Must-Visit Places in Ireland, on another page to generate a checklist of action items (i.e., places to visit).
How about Coda AI's output?
Since Coda AI is "leveraging OpenAI" (for now), the output is as expected. Which is to say there were a lot of glitches and inaccuracies.
For example, in one instance, I asked Coda AI to reference my table of Top 10 Must-Visit Attractions in Ireland to generate a seven-day travel itinerary. The output started off strong with me kicking off my trip in Dublin, Ireland. But then for some inexplicable reason, the rest of the trip had me traveling to other countries like Scotland and Japan.
That's not to say Coda AI isn't valuable for getting the creative juices flowing and accelerating the rote work of content production. For example, instead of having to toggle to other apps or sites to find must-visit attractions in Ireland, Coda AI quickly narrowed down the results for me into a neatly organized table.
Practical ways you can use Coda AI now
While I focused on a limited number of examples of how to use Coda AI, there are a lot of other ways you can put AI to work, including:
Brainstorm content ideas. Experiencing writer's block? Use Coda AI to generate things like taglines, social media posts, and article outlines.
Do background research. Instead of crawling through an endless list of resources, you can use Coda AI to effectively gather information. Just be sure to fact-check everything since AI is known to generate inaccurate results.
Summarize meeting notes. If you use Coda to capture meeting notes, you're just one prompt away from quickly generating a meeting summary and a list of action items.
Tip: Whether you use Coda for taking meeting notes, building product roadmaps, or even meal planning, there's a Coda AI template for that.
Automate Coda
Content production—and all the tasks that come with it—doesn't have to be an all-consuming activity. With Zapier, you can connect Coda with thousands of other apps, so you can do things like notify teammates when changes are made to a Coda doc and add form responses to a Coda table.
Here are a few workflows you can automate right away:
Save new Google Form responses to tables in Coda docs
To get started with a Zap template—what we call our pre-made workflows—just click on the button. It only takes a few minutes to set up. You can read more about setting up Zaps here.
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