Global Thinker

Global Thinker is Thinkific's AI teaching assistant plugin that lives as a floating widget on the student dashboard. Once enabled, it gives learners access to an AI assistant across the entire site - not just inside a course. 

How Global Thinker Works

Global Thinker is Thinkific’s AI teaching assistant plugin. It appears as a floating widget on the student dashboard and gives learners access to an AI assistant across the entire site, not just inside a course. Global Thinker is mainly intended for schools that have not yet implemented the Learner Hub on their site, since the new Learner Hub does not support site scripts.

Before setting this up on your site, here's what you need to know about how Global Thinker behaves:

• Scope: Global Thinker is designed to support learners outside of the course experience. It's a site-wide, non-course-specific AI tool - but it's just as capable as the in-course version. It can provide course recommendations and do everything Thinker can do when situated inside the course player.
• Published state: Global Thinker respects the published state the same way the course player version does. If Thinker is unpublished, only admins will be able to see it - learners will not.
• Page availability: When activated, Global Thinker becomes available to all logged-in users on any page that supports site scripts. It cannot be activated inside Communities, Checkout, or the new Learner Hub - these areas do not support site scripts today.
• Logged-in users only: Global Thinker is not visible to anonymous users. Learners must be logged in to see and interact with the widget.
• No segment restrictions: Global Thinker is currently available to all logged-in learners and cannot be limited to specific segments. This is different from the course player version, where only learners with access to a specific course can interact with Thinker. 

Once set up, here's what learners get out of the box:

• Keyboard shortcuts: Cmd+K (Mac) / Ctrl+K (Windows) to open or close the assistant, and Esc to close it.
• Smart focus: The cursor automatically jumps to the chat input when the assistant opens, and returns to the floating button when closed.
• Dynamic branding: The assistant's avatar, name, and header are all pulled from the school's settings - no extra configuration needed.
• Placement: Configurable via position (8 presets) and offset. Defaults to bottom-right for the button style and bottom-center for the Ask Bar style.
• Full screen mode: Learners can expand the assistant to a full-screen view. The background is dimmed with a semi-transparent backdrop; clicking the backdrop exits fullscreen. The Ask Bar style opens directly into fullscreen - there's no intermediate popup state.
• Mobile behavior: Below 768px width, the popup and bar collapse to full viewport width minus a 16px gutter. Horizontal offset is ignored on mobile; vertical offset is preserved.

Communities, Checkout, and the new Learner Hub still do not support site scripts and therefore cannot host the widget at this time.

How to Set Up Global Thinker

To add Global Thinker to your site, you will just need to add the Global Thinker code into your site footer code. Once added, you can then customize the widget to your liking!

First, copy the following one of the following code snippets, depending on the options you would like to use.

Minimal script (button style in bottom-right position on page):

<!-- Embedding global Thinker -->
<script
  src="/ai-agent/embed"
  onload="ThinkificTeachingAssistant.load()"
></script>

Full script with all options:

<script
  src="/ai-agent/embed"
  onload="ThinkificTeachingAssistant.load({
    widgetStyle: 'button',              // 'button' (default) | 'bar'
    position: 'bottom-right',           // see position presets below
    offset: { x: 0, y: 0 },             // px nudge from the anchored edges
    barWidth: 480,                      // px — bar style only
    showInCoursePlayer: false           // defaults to false
  })"
></script>

Then, navigate to your site settings and paste the snippet into your site footer code:

1. From the Admin Dashboard, go to Settings
2. Select the Code & analytics tab
3. Select Site footer code

Once saved, the Thinker widget will appear as a floating button in the bottom-right corner of the learner-facing site.

Optional Global Thinker Settings

When Global Thinker is added to your site, you also have a few customization options for the widget. Expand the following sections to learn more.

ThinkificTeachingAssistant.load({
  widgetStyle: 'bar'
})

top-left      top-center      top-right
center-left                   center-right
bottom-left   bottom-center   bottom-right

ThinkificTeachingAssistant.load({
  widgetStyle: 'bar',
  position: 'bottom-center'
})

ThinkificTeachingAssistant.load({
  position: 'bottom-right',
  offset: { x: 24, y: 24 }   // 24px in from right edge, 24px up from bottom
})

ThinkificTeachingAssistant.load({
  widgetStyle: 'bar',
  barWidth: 600
})

ThinkificTeachingAssistant.load({
  showInCoursePlayer: true
})