# AI tagging

> What tagging fills, how to ask for it, the queue, the cost, and how to steer the model with your own words.

AI tagging watches a clip and fills it in: a short name, a one-line description, a value for every AI property chosen from your tags, and a few highlights. All of it replaces what was there. Manual properties are never touched, and the clip's status only moves from New to Draft.

## Three ways to ask for it

| Way               | Where                                                                                                                                                                                                 |
| ----------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| After import      | The Tag with AI after import toggle in the import sheet. On by default.                                                                                                                               |
| On a selection    | The sparkles button in the inspector, or Tag with AI in the context menu. Over several clips the button is a menu: Tag All with AI, or Tag Empty with AI for only the clips with nothing on them yet. |
| From the terminal | `betterlibrary ai request <id>…`. The app runs the queue while it is open.                                                                                                                            |

An untouched clip in the inspector shows a Tag with AI button with the price: "Tag with AI · about 12 credits".

Over a clip that already has something on it, the app asks first, since tagging replaces the highlights and every property except the manual ones. It also asks before any job over 100 credits or over a tenth of your balance.

## What is sent

A downscaled copy of the clip leaves the Mac: it fits in 640 by 480, has no audio, and is deleted after the call. The prompt goes with it. Nothing is sent for clips you do not tag.

The charge depends on the clip's length: a base charge plus a charge per started minute, at the rates in Settings › Account. See [Account and credits](https://docs.usebetterapps.com/betterlibrary/account).

## The queue

Several clips are tagged at once, up to `aiConcurrency` in the library's settings (1 to 8, default 4). The queue lives on the clips themselves, so it survives a relaunch: clips still queued pick up where they were when the library opens again.

| Where         | What you see                                                                                                   |
| ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| The card      | A purple pill: Pending, or In progress with a spinner. Red "AI failed" after a failure.                        |
| The inspector | The AI box: what is happening, and Cancel. After a failure, the reason, Retry, and an x to forget it.          |
| The sidebar   | A progress dial, "3 of 7", and a list button that opens the AI Queue sheet with Cancel per row and Cancel All. |
| A filter      | AI status is Pending, In progress, Failed, or Nothing.                                                         |

Cancel takes a request back. An answer that still arrives is dropped. Rate limits and short outages retry on their own, twice, before a clip is marked failed. Retry in the sidebar asks again for every failed clip.

Editing a clip waits until the AI is done with it: the Edit button and bulk edit are off while a request is pending, since what lands would replace the edits.

## Reading the result

A tagged clip is a Draft in In Progress. Read it, fix what needs fixing, and press ⌘R to mark it Ready. See [Statuses](https://docs.usebetterapps.com/betterlibrary/statuses).

Highlights the AI drafts are a first pass, at most twelve per clip. See [Highlights](https://docs.usebetterapps.com/betterlibrary/highlights).

## Your words, the prompt

The prompt has two parts. The opening line is yours: About this library, in Settings › General, the same text you wrote in the New Library sheet. The rest is the app's: the task, then every AI property and tag with its description.

That means the Properties tab is where you steer the model. Edit a tag's description and the very next request reads it. Mark a property manual and the model stops seeing it. The whole prompt, as it will be sent, is under Preview the whole prompt in Settings › General.

Settings › General also has Tag with AI when importing, which sets the default for the import sheet.

## After a trim or a split

The Trim and Split sheets offer to tag the shorter clip, or both parts, again. See [Highlights](https://docs.usebetterapps.com/betterlibrary/highlights).