Building with Parabola's AI chat interface
While this course focuses on the fundamentals of Parabola, you'll immediately notice that there's a new, AI-first way to build in Parabola—and it's incredibly powerful. In this video, we introduce you to Parabola's chat interface, share some example prompts, and highlight prompting best practices.
Building challenge
The building challenge will begin when you get to the first "Pulling data" lesson. If you have any questions on the challenge as you build, feel free to ask Parabola.
Building in Parabola just got a whole lot easier. With our latest update, you can now build powerful workflows by simply describing what you want to automate—in plain language. Our AI-powered chat interface transforms how teams work by making automation feel like a conversation. Whether you're streamlining sales reports or connecting siloed systems, Parabola makes it happen in minutes—not hours or days.
This course introduces you to Parabola’s new AI capabilities while grounding you in the foundational concepts that will set you up for long-term success. You’ll learn how to speak “automation” fluently, understand best practices for prompting, and discover what’s possible when you combine your business logic with Parabola’s powerful tools.
What You’ll Learn
In this course, you’ll master the basics of building in Parabola and get hands-on experience with the AI co-builder. You’ll learn how to:
- Use AI to build a flow just by describing your use case
- Load data from sources like Shopify, Google Sheets, and emails
- Apply logic using filters, calculations, and if/else steps
- Export data to destinations like email or Excel, and build visualizations
- Use prompting best practices to improve results and troubleshoot errors
- Tap into a growing set of AI features that help with documentation, step suggestions, flow explanations, and more
By the end of this course, you’ll have built a fully automated sales report flow that pulls in Shopify data, filters it, exports results, and visualizes trends.
Why Fundamentals Still Matter
AI makes building in Parabola faster than ever—but to unlock its full potential, you still need to understand how the tool works under the hood. That’s why this course emphasizes core Parabola concepts: loading, transforming, and outputting data. The better you understand how your data flows through Parabola, the more powerful your AI prompts will become.
Best Practices for Prompting
Think of prompting like asking a trusted coworker for help. The more specific you are—mentioning data sources, logic, and column names—the better Parabola can support you. Throughout this course, we’ll highlight great prompt examples like:
- “Help me build a sales report broken down by SKU using the last 30 days of data imported from Shopify.”
- “Filter out any sales where the gift card value is not blank.”
- “Send an Excel report to adam@parabola.io and visualize sales by week.”
You’ll also learn how to prompt for more advanced tasks like adding documentation, resolving errors, and summarizing flows you didn’t build yourself.
What AI in Parabola Can Do
Beyond adding steps, AI in Parabola can:
- Set up integrations and connect APIs
- Resolve flow errors and explain what went wrong
- Add documentation and rename steps
- Suggest improvements and streamline flows
- Assist with writing custom transform prompts
- Explain existing flows—perfect for onboarding or handoffs
And that’s just the beginning. The list of capabilities grows every week.
Getting Started
To begin, head to the Building Challenge section below. You’ll find a link to start the flow used throughout this course. Each lesson includes a challenge to reinforce what you’ve learned. By the end, you’ll have a solid foundation in both traditional and AI-powered building in Parabola.
Let’s get started—your path to automation starts here.