The In-Editor AI Assistant: Build Emails by Chatting

Published July 17, 2026

Build the email without leaving it

You can describe an email in plain language and watch it take shape on the canvas — without ever switching tabs, opening a separate chat window, or pasting a prompt somewhere else. Temway’s in-editor AI assistant is a chat drawer docked right inside the email and layout editors. You tell it what you want; it adds blocks, rewrites copy, restyles elements, and applies your branding, while you stay on the page and watch each change land.

It runs on your own AI key, not a metered, Temway-managed model. Connect an Anthropic, OpenAI, or any OpenAI-compatible provider, and the assistant does its work on your account — on every plan, with no usage metering.

For the step-by-step reference, see AI Assistant.

What the in-editor assistant actually is

The assistant is a small chat panel that opens beside the email (or layout) you’re editing. Behind the conversational front, it can do everything the visual editor can: add and reorder blocks, change their content and styling, apply your branding, and render a preview. Each action shows up in the chat as a step it took, and on the canvas as a real change to your email.

Three things define how it works:

• It runs on your own key. You bring an Anthropic, OpenAI, or OpenAI-compatible key (a local Ollama install counts). The model is yours, the usage is billed to your provider account, and there’s no Temway-side metering — AI authoring isn’t gated to a top tier.
• Your key never reaches the browser in plain text. Once you’ve entered it, the key is encrypted at rest and only decrypted on Temway’s server for the single moment a turn needs it. Your browser only ever holds a short, masked preview (the last few characters) — never the key itself.
• It shares the canvas safely. The assistant takes the edit lock on the email it’s working on, so its changes and yours never collide. You can stop a response mid-stream, take the lock back, and finish a tweak by hand whenever you want.

Keys live at the workspace level, so one editor can add a key and every teammate uses it from their own assistant. You can keep several keys on hand and switch between them — or between models — from the drawer.

Why it matters

• No context-switching. The fastest AI workflow is the one that doesn’t make you leave your work. With the assistant inside the editor, your email stays visible the whole time — you watch each change land, and you correct course immediately instead of describing a problem from memory in a separate window.
• You stay in control of cost and model. Because the assistant runs on your key, you pick the provider and model that fit your budget and quality bar, and the spend lands on your own account. There’s no shared allowance to run out of and no surprise upgrade wall.
• The whole team gets it. Keys are shared across the workspace, so a single key added by an editor lets every member build with the assistant. No per-seat AI billing, no key-passing.
• Your key stays protected. Bring-your-own-key is only safe if the key is handled carefully. Temway never exposes the plain text to the browser after entry — it’s encrypted at rest and touched only server-side, only when needed.

How to use it

1. Add your key. Open Settings → AI Assistant and add an Anthropic, OpenAI, or OpenAI-compatible key. The key is validated before it’s saved, so you’ll know immediately if it was entered correctly. Once it’s in, the workspace can use it.
2. Open the assistant. In the email or layout editor, open the assistant drawer. Pick the key (and model) you want to use from the drawer’s selectors.
3. Describe what you want. “Create a welcome email from my branding — warm tone, a hero headline, a short intro, one button linking to the signup, and our social block at the bottom.” The assistant builds it on the canvas, one step at a time, and you watch each block land.
4. Iterate by message. Refine in small steps — “shorten the intro to two sentences”, “give the button a larger shadow”, “add a divider above the footer”. One change per message keeps you in control and makes anything easy to undo.
5. Preview, then finish. Ask for a web preview to check the result. For anything pixel-specific — a nudge to an image, an exact color — drop the drawer, take over the canvas by hand, and polish.
6. Ship. When it’s ready, export the HTML or push it to your ESP for the real send.

How it differs from connecting Claude or ChatGPT

Temway supports two distinct AI surfaces, and they’re built for different moments. It’s worth knowing which is which.

Connecting Claude Desktop, claude.ai, or ChatGPT through the Model Context Protocol lets an external assistant drive Temway from outside the app — you chat in the assistant you already use, and it builds emails and layouts here through the protocol. That’s ideal when your workflow lives in that assistant, or you want to build emails as part of a larger task it’s helping with. See why MCP matters for email.

The in-editor assistant is the opposite direction: Temway hosts the chat, and it runs on your key. It’s ideal when you’re already in the editor and want to build or refine the email in front of you without breaking your flow. The authoring abilities are the same; the home base is different.

Many teams use both — the in-editor assistant for everyday edits and iteration, and an MCP-connected assistant for batch work or for when they’re already working inside Claude or ChatGPT. The AI vs. manual drag-and-drop article breaks down when AI authoring of either kind beats clicking.

Common mistakes

• Skipping your branding setup. “Use my branding” only works if your branding is filled in. Set your colors, fonts, and logo first and every prompt gets easier.
• Stacking five edits in one message. It works, but a single change per message is easier to review and undo. Small steps keep you in control.
• Forgetting you can stop a response. If the assistant heads the wrong way, hit stop, take the edit lock back, and redirect — you don’t have to wait for it to finish.
• Asking for content with placeholders. “Add a button” gives you a placeholder; “add a button labeled ‘Start free’ linking to temway.com/signup” gives you your button. Real copy and real links always beat “put something here.”
• Leaving an invalid key in place. If a provider rejects a key, update it in Settings — the assistant surfaces the rejection clearly, but it won’t fix the key for you.

Where to go next

• For the quick reference, see AI Assistant.
• Get copy-paste prompting recipes in Create Stunning Emails with AI.
• Understand the other AI surface in What Is the Model Context Protocol?.
• See when to lean on AI vs. the visual editor in AI Email Builder vs. Manual Drag-and-Drop.
• Avoid the common pitfalls in AI Email Writing Best Practices.