[New] mobieusKnow: No member-facing AI answer box on the knowledge base (ask-a-question, get a grounded answer)

Area: mobieusKnow (audit p6) · Surface: /know, /know/search, /know/{slug} · Dimension: competitor-gap · Severity: major

The defining 2024-2026 KB feature across the helpdesk space is conversational AI answers grounded in the KB: Intercom Fin, Zendesk AI 'generative answers', Help Scout's AI answers, and Notion Q&A all let a reader type a natural-language question and get a synthesized, cited answer instead of a list of links. mobieusKnow already has the hard part — a working retrieval-augmented assistant that indexes Know pages — but never surfaces it on the Know reader experience. A small 'Ask mobieusAI' box at the top of /know that posts to the existing /api/ai/assistant/ask and renders the answer with source-page citations would close the single biggest competitive gap, reuse infrastructure already shipped, and turn the KB into a self-serve answer engine rather than a document list.

Evidence

The retrieval engine already exists and already grounds in mobieusKnow: AssistantAI::retrieveKnowledge() pulls approved page bodies (AssistantAI.php:232-258) and the route POST /api/ai/assistant/ask is wired (routes.php:1137). But the entire /know surface exposes only keyword search: index.php and search.php render a plain `<form action="/know/search">` text box (search.php:3, index.php:99-105) with no AI ask affordance. The only AI on /know surfaces is authoring-side and gated to staff: ai_wiki_title_suggest/outline/clarity (editor.php:66-118) and the mod-only ai_wiki_suggested_edits (AdminAIController::wikiSuggestEdits requires role 3). There is no reader-facing 'ask the knowledge base' widget anywhere in templates/knowledge/.

Suggested fix. Add an 'Ask a question' box on /know/index and /know/search that calls the existing AssistantAI ask endpoint, renders the answer with linked source pages, and falls back to keyword results. Gate behind the same mobieusAI key/feature flag the editor tools already use. No new retrieval code needed — retrieveKnowledge already returns {title, body, url}.

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