# Reply to patients in your own voice > Let the AI DRAFT bar write the first draft of a Spruce reply, teach Sidekick your style with Preferences, and review every word before you send. Markdown view of https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses/tabflows-for-clinicians/reply-in-your-voice — the HTML page is canonical. [](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses) 1. [Courses](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses) 2. [Tabflows for Clinicians](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses/tabflows-for-clinicians) Let the AI DRAFT bar write the first draft of a Spruce reply, teach Sidekick your style with Preferences, and review every word before you send. 5 min · Last checked Oct 27, 2026 against Tabflows v3.10.63 ## Why it matters Patient messages arrive without a reply attached. **Draft Assist** is a Magic Button, one of the one-click buttons Tabflows places beside the work they act on (the settings call them smart buttons). In Spruce it shows up as the **AI DRAFT** bar and writes a first draft from the conversation and the context Tabflows has, so your reply starts from a draft you can edit. **Preferences** teach Sidekick, Tabflows' AI assistant, how you like to write, so those drafts start closer to your voice. A smooth draft can still get a fact wrong. You review every word, and you press send. ## How the AI DRAFT bar works The bar sits above the Spruce message box, labeled **AI DRAFT** with the Tabflows mark. It appears once the conversation is linked to a patient in Tabflows, with Sidekick on your account and **Hide smart buttons** off. 1. Open a patient conversation in Spruce. By default a draft appears on its own. If you turned automatic drafting off, select **Generate**. 2. Read the draft. The info button beside it, **Explain this draft**, shows its intent, the evidence it used, how your tone and preferences shaped it, and what it left uncertain. 3. Select **Insert** to put the draft in the message box. 4. To revise it there, select **Enhance** in the bar, or hover **Enhance** and type a direction such as "Make it warmer and shorter". The revision replaces the current draft for your review and is never sent automatically. The undo arrow beside **Enhance** restores the previous wording. 5. Edit anything that needs it, then send the reply yourself. Before it writes, the bar reads the recent messages in the conversation, the patient's summaries from your connected systems, a summary of your clinic's Practice Brain (the shared clinic knowledge, such as policies, services and workflows), your saved preferences, and the prices synced from your clinic's billing system. It is set up to state a price only when that price is in the billing list, and otherwise to say the team will confirm the cost. Check every price in a draft before you send. The AI DRAFT bar never sends a message for you. You review, edit and send the final reply. ## Choose when it drafts Two switches control the bar. In the Tabflows sidebar, select **Settings** (the gear), then **Clinic settings**. Your Profile opens in a new tab on **Account**, and both switches are in its **Sidekick** section. - **Hide smart buttons** hides the AI DRAFT bar in every conversation, along with **Enhance** and the AI task recommendation lightbulb. It also hides Referral Assist. It leaves the Tabflows sidebar and AI Patient Summary in place. - **Disable auto-generation** makes the bar wait for you to select **Generate**. Leave automatic drafting on when you handle a high volume of messages, use the bar for most replies, or would rather edit a draft than start from a blank box. Turn **Disable auto-generation** on when you'd rather decide which conversations need a draft. ## Teach it your voice with Preferences A preference is a personal instruction you save for Sidekick. It has a title, a short label like "Communication Style", and content, like "I prefer to be very formal and warm with my patients." Every preference you save is applied when Sidekick drafts patient replies. Preferences shape tone and format. The draft is told not to let them override the conversation, the patient's facts or Tabflows' safety rules, and they don't make missing patient facts available. Keep personal style in preferences: tone and warmth, length, directness, greetings and sign-offs, phrases to use or avoid, and how next steps appear. Clinic-wide facts such as services, policies, forms and approved education belong in Practice Brain, where the whole team shares them. Add one on the [Your preferences](https://app.tabflows.com/profile?tab=memories) tab of the same Profile page: select **Add Preference**, give it a short title and one specific instruction, and select **Create**. It appears in Your preferences. Edit a preference with its pencil, or delete it for good with its trash icon after you confirm. Sidekick can also save a preference itself, when you ask it to remember something or when it notices a clear, repeated pattern in your conversations. Every saved preference shapes your drafts, so read Your preferences now and then, and edit or delete anything you don't want. Specific instructions work better than broad ones. "Use a warm, conversational tone" works better than "Be nice", "Keep messages under 150 words" works better than "Be brief", and "End with one clear next step" works better than "Make it actionable". Make separate preferences for tone, structure, terminology, greetings and sign-offs, and update them when your style changes. ## Review before you send Check every draft for: - Clinical accuracy - Appropriate tone - The correct patient context - A clear next step - Details that shouldn't be included If important clinical details are missing, treat the draft as incomplete. Check it against the source information, and add or correct anything needed before you send. ## Do it in Tabflows Pick one patient message waiting for you in Spruce and answer it from the AI DRAFT bar. 1. Open the conversation and wait for the draft in the **AI DRAFT** bar, or select **Generate** if you turned automatic drafting off. 2. Open **Explain this draft** and see what the draft relied on. 3. Select **Insert**, edit the reply until it is right, and send it yourself. 4. Note the edit you made most. On the **Your preferences** tab of your Profile, select **Add Preference**, write one specific instruction that would have saved that edit, and select **Create**. 5. Open your next patient message and check whether its draft follows the new preference. ## In the Product Library - [Draft a patient reply without starting from scratch](https://www.tabflows.com/university/library/magic-buttons/draft-a-patient-reply-without-starting-from-scratch) - [Make Sidekick sound more like you with Preferences](https://www.tabflows.com/university/library/practice-brain/make-sidekick-sound-more-like-you-with-preferences) - [How to turn smart buttons and auto-drafting on or off](https://www.tabflows.com/university/library/magic-buttons/how-to-turn-smart-buttons-and-auto-drafting-on-or-off) [Next lesson: Draft a referral letter](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses/tabflows-for-clinicians/draft-a-referral-letter) ## Related markdown Section index: [Tabflows for clinicians](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses/tabflows-for-clinicians.md) Alongside this page: - [Draft a referral letter](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses/tabflows-for-clinicians/draft-a-referral-letter.md) - [Prep a visit](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses/tabflows-for-clinicians/prep-a-visit.md) - [Review labs and medications](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses/tabflows-for-clinicians/review-labs-and-medications.md) - [Visit note to tasks](https://www.tabflows.com/university/courses/tabflows-for-clinicians/visit-note-to-tasks.md) Start here: - [Tabflows](https://www.tabflows.com/index.md) - [Tabflows pricing](https://www.tabflows.com/pricing.md) - [Tabflows FAQ](https://www.tabflows.com/faqs.md) - [About Tabflows](https://www.tabflows.com/about.md) - [Contact Tabflows](https://www.tabflows.com/contact.md) - [DPC workflow software](https://www.tabflows.com/dpc-workflow-software.md) - [Directory](https://www.tabflows.com/directory.md) - [Workflows](https://www.tabflows.com/workflows.md) - [DPC finder](https://www.tabflows.com/dpc-finder.md) Every page listed in sitemap.xml has a markdown twin at the same URL with `.md` appended, or by sending `Accept: text/markdown` to the canonical URL. Wider index: [llms.txt](https://www.tabflows.com/llms.txt), [llms-full.txt](https://www.tabflows.com/llms-full.txt), [sitemap.md](https://www.tabflows.com/sitemap.md), [sitemap.xml](https://www.tabflows.com/sitemap.xml). Support documentation: https://www.tabflows.com/university/library — append `.md` to any article URL for its raw markdown.