How to use your own openAI assistant in Airtable automation?

You can make API calls to your own Assistant using the automation scripting. However, since Airtable doesn’t securely store secrets, I’d recommend using an external tool like Make.com to handle the actual request. You can then link the automation to a button, allowing users to trigger it for an experience similar to the native Airtable AI solution.

Hey ​@Robert_Tellier 

While Airtable doesn’t (yet) support custom OpenAI Assistants directly inside its AI automation interface, you can still use your own Assistant API by integrating it via scripting in Airtable Automations. All you need is a bit of JavaScript and an OpenAI API key (make sure your assistant is published and has a stable endpoint).

Set up your OpenAI Assistant using the Assistants API

Inside your Airtable automation, trigger a script when a certain condition is met (e.g. new content request)

Use in the script to POST to your Assistant’s thread endpoint with user message

Poll for the response, grab the assistant’s reply, and update the Airtable record

​@Robert_Tellier 

Your best bet for this to use Make’s advanced automations & integrations with Airtable.

Make is a no-code/low-code tool that natively supports a bunch of different LLMs, and if they don’t have the LLM that you’re looking for, you can integrate it using their HTTP module.

If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.

For example, here is one of the ways that you could instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.

I also give live demonstrations of how to use Make in many of my Airtable podcast appearances.

For example, in this video, I show how to work with Airtable arrays in Make.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Thanks ​@ScottWorld and ​@Sachin_191 👍

Additional question:

Yes I already use Make.com extensively in conjunction with OpenAI custom Agents. Not so at home yet  with using Airtable automation and Page design.

I want to build a use case in Page design where the input field (airtable field) is the prompt for my OpenAI agent (via a webhook to Make.com). which I can activate with a button. But also that the result from Make.com appears in that same input field (both in de db as interface). Any experience with this, or further tips?

Thanks 🙏

I’m not sure I understand your question.

You want to trigger a Make webhook from a single-select field in Airtable?

Yes, that’s what I always recommend, and in this thread, I show how to instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant 

Hey ​@Robert_Tellier 

Yes! That kind of interactive flow with Airtable Interfaces (Page Designer) is totally possible and super fun to build. The key here is using a Button field in Airtable to trigger a webhook scenario in Make, passing in the field value (prompt) to your OpenAI Assistant, then writing the response back into the same field (or another one if needed) to reflect it in both the database and UI—almost like live AI-enhanced editing

Let’s schedule the call