The week in Vietnam's Hop Huong commune when a training company went to the commune government to teach AI. Ten months later, the prompts from that class were a plugin installed by 4,000 people

Trợ lý AI Hành chính ("Administrative AI Assistant") is a Chrome extension that helps Vietnamese commune officials write official documents. It doesn't connect to any LLM itself; it just automatically fills prepared prompts into the Gemini web page. It launched in May and grew to 5 users over 4,000 months with no single spike, the growth rate steady the whole time. It was built by a small company in central Vietnam that teaches AI classes to commune governments, and most users installed it in class. The model of "the agency pays for classes, individuals pay for the tool" is worth learning, but the Vietnamese market is already full of free competitors, and outsiders find it very hard to get into commune government meeting rooms.

2025 Jul 8, Tu Mo Rong commune

2025 Jul 1, Vietnam abolished the district level and reorganized the whole country into a two-tier "province–commune" local government, and many communes were merged and reorganized. One week later, on Jul 8, the newly established Tu Mo Rong commune in Quang Ngai province held a training at its commune government office titled "Application of Artificial Intelligence in Administrative Work." Cadres from the commune party committee, the commune chairman, the People's Council, the Fatherland Front, and village heads and branch secretaries attended; the Quang Ngai digital transformation website says 300 people in total.

The training was run by a small company called FunEdu (Công ty TNHH Đầu tư và Phát triển Giáo dục FUNEDU). The class covered using AI to look up regulations, check drafts, build your own chatbot, write official letters, reports and plans, and make mind maps for meetings. In his opening remarks, commune chairman Trần Quốc Huy said: "The commune has just been established and is in the process of restructuring its organization for the two-tier government model. Using AI is an important way to serve the people faster and more professionally." (nongnghiephuuco.vn, 2025-07-08)

This isn't FunEdu's first run. Three months ago it had already taught in the same mountain district, Tu Mơ Rông county, as covered by Nhân Dân 2025-04-25. On its course site, courses are named after government units: UBND xã Ba Tô, Ba Vinh, Tây Trà, Ia Chim, Lý Sơn special zone... several are marked 「已付费」 (paid).

On 2026 May 26, FunEdu turned the prompt set it taught in class into a Chrome extension, using the instructor email from its course site, [email protected], as the developer email. The install link on its official site still calls the plugin by its old name, "FunAI Hành chính."

What it is

Install the plugin, log in to gemini.google.com, pick a "mouth" (sector) and an assistant in the plugin, enter a few requirements, and the plugin fills a long prompt into Gemini. What comes back is an official document formatted per Decree No. 2020 of 30, exportable to Word or PPT. The first line of the store page says: "không tích hợp API riêng, không phát sinh chi phí ẩn" (no separate API integration, no hidden fees).

Its value is in how finely it's split. The official site (11-06) divides users into 6 "mouths": People's Committee, People's Council, Party Committee, Fatherland Front, mass organizations, education, and health. There are 159 assistants and 1,215 small features in total. Each mouth has different document conventions, and the plugin fills them in correctly:

The numeric part of the document number is deliberately left blank. The official site says "the software never assigns numbers itself"; clerks fill it in after checking the register. Settings have only two fields: the agency name (for example "UBND XÃ ĐĂK TÔ") and the subordinate department. If you enter either wrong, the letterhead, number, and signature are all wrong together. Assistants are specific, down to "receiving Party membership applications," "meeting with voters," "conscription speeches," and "People's Council interpellation forms." Generic AI can't produce these formats, and civil servants can tell at a glance that it was made by someone who knows the job.

The prompts live on a server, so updates don't require reinstalling. The official site shows the data version has reached v539 and the plugin is at version 4.8.57, with two versions released in one day in Nov 6.

How far it got

Not big, but it's been growing steadily. The curve from a third-party extension stats site: Aug 31 1 thousand, Sep 20 2 thousand, Oct 8 3 thousand, Oct 23 4 thousand, adding about 1 thousand every two or three weeks. As of early November, the Chrome store kept showing 4,000 users, 5 ratings, all 5 stars.

5 ratings against 4,000 users means it never asked for good reviews. Adding a thousand every two or three weeks with no sudden spike fits a rhythm of "hold a training, install a batch" (inference).

Where the money comes from

There are two streams of money, from two sources.

Training fees, paid by the agency. The commune government hires FunEdu to teach, and the money comes from public funds. The plugin is a deliverable of the course, and students install it on the spot in class.

Plugin fees, paid by individuals. Section 5 of the official usage guide says: click "💎 Upgrade," choose monthly or annual, scan the QR code with your banking app, and keep the auto-generated transfer note; Pro activates within seconds. Prices are only visible after login, and how many features the free tier includes isn't public. The number of paying users can't be found.

The cost side is close to zero: the models run on civil servants' own Gemini accounts (in 2026, Ho Chi Minh City also bought Gemini, ChatGPT, and NotebookLM for officials in 102 wards and communes), and the plugin side only pays for servers and staff. So even with free competitors, it's willing to charge, and it doesn't fear heavy use.

Where users come from

On-site training. This is the main channel and the strongest evidence: the plugin's developer and the training instructor share the same email, the courses are named after communes, and the news reports show training dates and attendance.

Zalo groups. Vietnamese grassroots cadres use Zalo for daily office work. The most prominent button on the official site is "Join the Zalo group," with a note that the main group is nearly at its 1,000-person cap, so if you can't get in, go to the sector groups. Each of the 6 sectors has its own group, and there's also a hotline, 076 276 7776. Version updates and usage tips are posted in the groups.

YouTube tutorials, few. The official channel uploaded 4 tutorials in Jun 9, with views of 1,207, 137, 81, and 48 (YouTube, 11-06). These are manuals for people who already installed it and don't bring in new users.

TikTok, none. Searching "trợ lý AI hành chính" on TikTok, the first 20 videos are all from competitors, and none are from it. The media hasn't covered it either.

Also, the Chrome store once had two plugins called "Trợ lý AI - UBND xã Sơn Linh" and "Trợ lý AI - Đảng ủy xã Sơn Linh", whose descriptions are word-for-word the same as its own. Sơn Linh, like Ba Tô and Ba Vinh where FunEdu taught classes, is in Quang Ngai province. These two plugins look like custom versions built for individual communes. The store pages can no longer be opened now (inference; whether it's the same developer is unverified).

Who it's competing with

The Vietnamese "AI helps civil servants write documents" space is crowded, and most options are still free:

On the Chrome Web Store, it's the only one among similar extensions past 1,000 users, so it leads the pack. Across Vietnam's whole "civil servant AI" market, it's a small player. Its edge isn't content marketing; it's that the hundreds of officials at the training sessions were taught by it in person.

The biggest risks

First, Google. The extension works by filling text into the Gemini web page, so every Gemini redesign forces an overnight fix. If Google builds "official document templates" into Workspace, this layer gets thin. Second, procurement. Ho Chi Minh City has already bulk-bought AI licenses for civil servants, and the next step is likely agencies setting up their own prompt libraries or banning third-party extensions outright. Third, free rivals get ten times its reach on TikTok, and once they also start running trainings in commune offices, its only moat disappears.

If it were you

One-line verdict: Don't build another official-document extension in Vietnam. The space is already crowded with free options, and its real moat is FunEdu's training relationships inside commune governments, which you don't have. What's worth taking is the structure: find a group frustrated by rigid formats whose agency is pushing "use AI," put the prompt pack on the free large models they already use, distribute through in-person training, and keep them in professional group chats.

Who it fits: People who have worked in a state-sector field themselves (local government, public schools, hospitals, party and mass organizations), or who already teach or consult for these bodies and have the connections to get into meeting rooms; people who know the format rules well enough to write hundreds of prompts.

Who it doesn't fit: People hoping to grow mainly through store search and short videos (this product barely grew through either); people unwilling to do offline visits or deal with agencies; people aiming for a big business. Per-seat prices are low, and the ceiling is the tens of thousands of grassroots officials.

How to build it: Pick a group with rigid formats, heavy document load, and a recent policy change, such as local governments in a country that just reorganized, public school teachers who write lesson plans and student evaluations, or grassroots doctors who write medical records and quality reports. First get the standard templates for that field, then split each document type into an assistant that produces output from two or three fields, with headers, numbers, and signatures filled automatically per agency and the document number left blank. Build it as a browser extension that inserts text into the ChatGPT or Gemini page users already have open, with no API. Host the prompts on a server for hot updates, gate paid features server-side, and take payment through local bank QR codes.

How to get customers: Sell training, not the extension. Offer classes to agencies under the name "AI for XX work," paid from the agency's training budget. Install the extension on the spot during class, and pull people into work group chats split by department (Zalo, WeChat, LINE, or WhatsApp, whichever the local market uses). After each session, send a press release with a group photo to local media, and the next agency that sees it will come to you. For major clients, build a custom version with their agency name on it.

Best time to enter: Ride the policy window. When something like Vietnam's July 2025 administrative reorganization or new official-document standards takes effect, or a higher-up orders units to "promote AI", officials urgently need new templates and agencies are willing to pay for training. Once the higher-ups centralize purchasing and pre-set the prompts, the window closes.

Signs you've misread it: (1) After three training sessions, paid conversion is still near zero two months later, meaning the group only uses the free tier and neither individuals nor agencies pay. (2) Local higher authorities start issuing AI licenses centrally and banning third-party extensions. (3) Looking back next year, it's still stuck at four or five thousand users, meaning this path's ceiling is whatever a training company can reach session by session. It can only be a side business.