[New] Forums (re-run): No on-demand AI reply assist for members/mods in the reply box (only async admin-approval drafts + tone rewrite)

Area: Forums (re-run) (audit p2r) · Surface: POST /thread/{threadId}/reply — templates/forums/thread.php reply form + templates/partials/post-toolbar.php · Dimension: competitor-gap · Severity: major

Discourse AI ('Help me reply'), Intercom Copilot, and Zendesk's AI agent copilot all give the person composing a reply an on-demand, in-context draft button: read the thread, draft a grounded answer, edit, send. Mobieus forums give members only a 'rewrite what I already wrote' tone wand, and reserve from-scratch drafts for an admin-gated background queue. For a question-and-answer community this is the highest-leverage AI affordance and it is missing exactly where the answerer is working. mobieusKnow grounding (already used by the thread summarizer) would make these answers cite real community knowledge.

Evidence

The thread reply box has exactly one AI button — tone-shift, which only REWRITES text the user already typed: post-toolbar.php:139-153 `if (...granted('ai_forum_tone_shift')): ... data-ai-feature="ai_forum_tone_shift" data-ai-source="#postBody" data-ai-mode="replace" title="Rewrite in a friendlier, more concise, or more formal tone"`. There is NO 'draft a reply for me' from thread context. The only forum-reply-from-scratch generator is the async Community Manager batch flow: src/Services/CommunityManager/ReplySuggester.php:15-35 'Phase 5 forum-reply draft enqueuer ... enqueues one cm_draft(kind=forum_reply) per thread ... The matching per-minute queue worker then runs ForumReplyGenerator ... If an admin rejects the draft, no new draft is generated' — i.e. admin-approval only, runs every 2h, capped ~24/tenant/day. By contrast helpdesk HAS an on-demand agent copilot: Features.php:204 `helpdesk_ai_reply_suggest ... 'AI-drafted reply options for agents on every ticket'` (default true) with route src/routes.php:756 `/api/help/ai/reply-suggest`. No equivalent ai_forum_reply_suggest flag or /api/ai/forum/reply-suggest route exists.

Suggested fix. Add an ai_forum_reply_suggest feature flag and a '✦ Help me reply' button in the reply card next to Tone, calling a new /api/ai/forum/reply-suggest that grounds on the thread posts (and optionally mobieusKnow). Reuse the flag-aware MemberAI dispatch + spend-cap path already wired for ai_forum_summarize (thread.php:840-848). Show 1-3 editable drafts; nothing posts without the user clicking Post Reply.

Filed by the automated tenant-app audit and adversarially evidence-verified. Status: verified. Open — not yet actioned.