Moving your community to Zen Social

This page is for the owners and admins of a community on Zen Social. It explains how an AI assistant, such as Claude or ChatGPT, can help you move your community over from another platform, such as a Facebook group, and set it up for you. You do not need to be a developer.

What a move looks like

You give your assistant a key from Zen Social, and it does the work for you. The key lets the assistant do what you could do yourself as an admin of your community, and nothing more. You stay in charge: a good assistant tells you what it has found, agrees the plan with you, and asks before it changes or deletes anything.

Some things only you can do, in the app. The most important one is inviting the members: the assistant cannot let anyone in.

This first version sets up the community and its circles. Posts, events, comments and the rota arrive in later versions (see What comes later).

The steps

  1. Make a key. Open your community's Manage page and go to the tab Import & AI access. Choose New key, give the key a name you will recognise (for example "Claude, moving our Facebook group"), and choose how long it works: 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks or 4 weeks. Pick a time that is just long enough for the work.
  2. Paste the message into your assistant. Zen Social shows you a message that tells the assistant where to start and gives it the key. Copy it and paste it into your assistant. You only see the key once: if you lose it, revoke it and make a new one.
  3. Agree the plan. The assistant first looks at your community, its circles and its members, and tells you what it found. Tell it what you want: which groups on the old platform become circles, what the description and colours should be.
  4. Check a sample. The assistant sets up a few things first. Look at them in the app, and tell it to carry on when you are happy.
  5. Join the circles that already exist. You become the owner of every circle the assistant creates. A circle that was already in Zen Social is different: join it yourself in the app, and be its owner or admin there, before the assistant can change it. It cannot join for you.
  6. Invite the members. Only you can do that. People sign up in the app.
  7. Let the assistant match people. When members have joined, the assistant can read the member list and match them to the people on the old platform.
  8. Revoke the key when the work is done. Go back to the tab Import & AI access and choose Revoke next to the key. An assistant using it stops working at once.

What the assistant does

  • It reads and changes the community itself: its name, description, colours and photo.
  • It creates, changes and deletes the community's circles. Its rules tell it to ask you before it deletes anything, and to say exactly what will go.
  • It reads the member list, so it can match people from the old platform.
  • It can start again if it is interrupted. Things it already made are not made twice. A re-run never overwrites something you or other people changed in the app after the assistant last wrote it, and never brings back something you deleted: the assistant skips it and tells you.

What the assistant cannot do

  • Invite people or let them in. That is up to you.
  • Send messages or emails to members.
  • Read direct messages.
  • Take content out of Zen Social.
  • Create a new community. The key belongs to your community, which already exists.
  • Anything you could not do yourself in the app. The key acts as you, never as more.

Nobody is told

Nothing the assistant creates or changes notifies your members: no notifications, no push messages, no emails, and nothing in anyone's daily summary. People only see the result when they come to Zen Social.

The one notice goes to you: when the assistant deletes a circle, you get the app's usual notice that the circle was deleted.

Keeping your community safe

  • Only owners and admins can make keys.
  • A key stops working by itself on the day you chose, at most four weeks ahead. It cannot be extended: if the work takes longer, make a new key and give your assistant its message.
  • A key also stops working if you revoke it, or if you are no longer an owner or admin of the community.
  • Anyone who has the key can change your community until the key expires. Paste it only into your assistant. If you think it may have leaked, revoke it at once.
  • Revoke the key as soon as the work is done.

What comes later

This version sets up the community and its circles, and reads the member list. Later versions add:

  • posts, events and comments, moved in from the old platform;
  • giving old posts back to the people who wrote them, once they have joined;
  • the rota.

Until then, you can already set up the community and its circles, so they are ready when the rest arrives.

For assistants and tool builders

The rest of this guide is the reference, written in English for the assistant or for a developer building a migration tool. Your assistant reads it by itself; the message you paste tells it where.

  • Start here: the rules for assistants. Read it first.
  • Keys and access: sending the key, expiry, what the key may do, limits.
  • The organization: the community itself.
  • Circles: the community's circles, including deleting one.
  • Members: the member list and one circle's members.
  • Errors: every error code and what to do about it.