Create Detailed, SMART Rocks with AI-Assistance

How Maz, our AI assistant for Ninety, can help you create Rocks that progress your company towards its goals.

Written by Tommy Mains

Updated at July 22nd, 2025

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Table of Contents

How to Create a SMART Rock with Maz (AI Assistance) Helpful Reading on Rocks and Business Goals Video Overview Who Can Use the AI Rock Assistant Frequently Asked Questions

Rocks are the critical quarterly objectives your teams must complete to align with your annual goals and beyond.

We've written extensively about the proven methodologies for creating effective, business-advancing Rocks and why completing 100% of your Rocks is not a helpful benchmark. Instead, your teams should aim for a level of rigor in your goals to expect an 85% success rate (source). 

 

Learn more about our Rocks tool here.

 

To move beyond theory and into practice, we've trained Maz, Ninety's AI assistant, to guide you step-by-step through creating better Rocks that:

 

How to Create a SMART Rock with Maz (AI Assistance)

We've built this Ninety assistant feature as a collaborative experience. Throughout the process, Maz connects with your data in Ninety, asks you questions, and requests additional information. You should expect to spend 5-10 minutes building a SMART Rock with milestones.

Note: This feature is designed for you to create Rocks that you are accountable for and will own in Ninety.

 

To create a Rock with AI assistance:

  1. Click the Create button on the top right corner of the page.
  2. Select Rock from the Create dropdown.
  3. Click Help me draft a SMART Rock.
  4. Answer each question with as much detail as possible, then press Enter or click the send icon.
  5. Continue the conversation with Maz until you're satisfied with the results. Tip: This is a collaborative experience. You can request assistance or ask Maz questions anytime (such as, “What are our 1-year goals?").
  6. Click Insert Rock details to populate the title, description, and milestones.

 

All generated text from Maz has a blue background (). To start a new conversation, click the new chat button () and click through the confirmation to clear the chat history and start fresh. 

While starting a new conversation will delete the previous one, Maz will remember the ongoing discussion if you need to close it out or step away for any reason. If you exit the chat and return, you'll be prompted to continue the previous conversation or start a new one.

You can also start this process while creating a linked Rock from an existing item or in the Rocks tool by clicking Create Rock > Help me build a SMART Rock.

 

Helpful Reading on Rocks and Business Goals

 

 

Video Overview

Watch the video below for a quick overview of the SMART Rock assistant feature by Maz, Ninety's AI companion.

 

Who Can Use the AI Rock Assistant

The SMART Rock assistant is available to all companies on our Thrive subscription plan to users with one of the following roles:

  • Owner
  • Admin
  • Manager
  • Team Member/Managee

Currently, users with the Coach role cannot use the feature because it's designed to use your Seat in the company to inform the Rock. Additionally, since Observers cannot create or own items in Ninety, they cannot use Maz to create a Rock.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Review some frequently asked questions about our AI Rock assistant below.

Will my conversations with Maz be used to train an LLM?

No, Maz does not transfer or retain your chat history for third-party LLM training. Ninety's internal teams may use conversation history with the Rock assistant or other Maz conversations to improve these features for our users. 

Currently, it only uses your current session context to help you in the moment. In the Future, we will build a memory layer so that Maz can provide personalized interaction in a contextually relevant way. 

 
 

Is my data safe with Maz?

Yes, Maz is fully integrated within Ninety’s secure environment. It is never used to train a public AI model, for example, your data would never show up in a public product like ChatGPT, nor would it show up to any other Ninety user. All interactions are private to your organization and governed by our existing data security protocols.

 
 

When should I use the AI Rock assistant or Maz?

Companies on our Thrive subscription plan can use our Rock assistant feature anytime. Depending on your team's meeting cadence and policies, you could use Maz to draft SMART Rocks before your quarterly meeting to discuss and refine together, or your team may elect Rock candidates during the quarterly meeting, intending to have each user draft Rocks with Maz on their own before the next weekly team meeting.

 
 

Do I have access to the AI Rock assistant?

All licensed users on companies subscribed to our Thrive plan have access to Maz's AI Rock assistant feature. If you don't have access, we'll let you know with an in-line message next to the Help me draft a SMART Rock button.

 

 
 
maz rock creation thrive ai maz

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