NexPilot is an assistant that sits beside a participant's profile and helps you think about this person before and during a session. It is not a chatbot bolted onto the product — it can read the participant's actual results, plan and history, which is what makes it worth asking.
You will find it in the guidance panel on a participant's profile. It needs the horizontal room, so it is a desktop feature. If you do not see it, your organisation may not have it switched on — ask your administrator.
What it can see
When you ask about a participant, NexPilot can look up:
- their assessment results, and how old those results are
- their education background, where recorded
- occupations on their Planning Board, and their reactions to them
- the state of their plan, and recent activity on it
- education programmes and deadlines relevant to them
- open tasks
It also remembers your conversation, including from previous sessions, so you can pick up where you left off without re-explaining.
What it cannot see
- Your private notes. It has no access to them at all.
- The participant's name, email or username — these are removed before anything is sent. See What the AI sees.
- Any other organisation's data.
The session brief
Above the chat sits a brief you can open before a session. It is preparation, not conversation — three short sections, assembled from the record rather than written by a model.
- Since you were last here — what has moved. Anything the participant did is set in darker text, because that is the half you did not already know.
- Worth covering — a short agenda for this session, drawn from where the case actually stands.
- An amber line when goals were set aside with no reason recorded. It is phrased as a question, not a warning: some decisions genuinely need no reason, and you are the judge of which. The point is that months from now, when it is raised again, somebody will want the line.
The counseling steps
At the foot of the brief is a ladder of six steps, ticked as far as this case has come. It is reference, not instruction — what has been done, and what each step is for.
| Step | What it means here | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Know the student | The assessment is read and their situation is recorded |
| 2 | Open the field | Enough candidate occupations to be worth comparing |
| 3 | Test against reality | The shortlist is checked against routes, entry rules and the labour market |
| 4 | Agree, and sign | Goals become a plan, and the plan is signed |
| 5 | Walk the path | Tasks and messages against the agreed goals |
| 6 | Keep it alive | Review, and re-agreement when things change |
A step can tick while saying "done, with the data this plan has". That is honest rather than grudging: the same step done without route data for that country did less work than one done with it, and the ladder says so instead of implying otherwise.
Before the first signature the ladder marks where you are. After it, the ladder stops pointing — by then a case has a plan, and two different parts of the panel each claiming to say "what now" is one too many.
What the framework names mean
Hovering a step shows a stamp such as ASCA appraisal · DOTS-S. These name the counseling traditions the step answers to, and they used to be printed under every step — six citations stacked in a panel read while sitting with a participant. They justify the method to us and to an institution; they tell you nothing you can act on mid-session, so they moved to hover.
| Stamp | Step | The tradition |
|---|---|---|
| ASCA appraisal · DOTS-S | 1 | The American School Counselor Association's appraisal phase; the self-awareness element of the DOTS model |
| DOTS-O · Blueprint B | 2 | DOTS opportunity awareness; area B of the career-management Blueprint |
| ASCA advisement · DOTS-D | 3 | ASCA's advisement — recommendations drawn from data; DOTS decision learning |
| Gatsby BM3 · the plan document | 4 | Gatsby Benchmark 3, which requires a personal plan with records |
| DOTS-T · Blueprint C | 5 | DOTS transition learning; Blueprint area C |
| CEDEFOP lifelong continuum | 6 | CEDEFOP's position that guidance is continuous rather than an event |
You do not need any of this to counsel well. It is here so that a counselor who wants to know what a step rests on can find out, and so an institution asking which standards the process follows has an answer.
What it is good at
Asking it to prepare you is where it earns its cost:
- "What should I ask about in Thursday's session?"
- "They are unsure about nursing — what is behind that in their results?"
- "What has changed since we last met?"
- "What is missing before this plan could be signed?"
It is at its best on questions about this participant, because that is where it has evidence you would otherwise have to assemble by hand.
What it is not for
It does not score anything. Profiles and occupation matches come from a deterministic engine. NexPilot reads those results; it never produces or changes them. If it ever appears to disagree with a match percentage, the match is right.
It does not decide, and it does not replace you. It has never met the person. It cannot hear what you heard in the room, and it has no view of their circumstances beyond what is recorded.
Check anything factual before acting on it. It is a language model with good sources, not an oracle — treat a claim about a deadline or an entry requirement as something to verify, not something to relay.
What it costs
Conversations draw on your organisation's AI balance. Each exchange costs a small amount depending on its length and the model used. Your current balance and what has been spent are on the Billing page.
Your organisation can turn AI off entirely, and an individual counselor can decline it. Both are checked before any cost is incurred — you cannot be charged for something you or your organisation switched off.
Related
- Your Counseling Desk — the whole surface this sits on
- What the AI sees, and what it does not — for when a parent or a data protection officer asks
- Billing and your plan — where the balance lives