The board of advisors

Your board of advisors is six AI roles, one for each part of a business. While you answer the interview they read along and leave short notes, and any time after that, or before you start, you can ask them a question from Advisors on your dashboard. They are not people, and they do not speak for any real expert.

The advisors suggest; they never do. Your intern does the work, and nothing happens until you approve it.

The six advisors

• Finance advisor: money in and out, what you pay for, how you price, where cash waits.
• Marketing advisor: how customers find you, what they hear, why they come back.
• Operations advisor: the daily work, scheduling, handoffs, and the jobs that eat the week.
• Sales advisor: leads, quotes and follow-up, and where a sale stalls.
• Technology advisor: your tools and data, and what to replace, connect or keep.
• Risk advisor: what could go wrong, and which professional to ask.

Ask your board any time

The Advisors page works like a messaging app. On the left are your chats: Whole board, a group chat with all six advisors, and one chat for each advisor. The chat you have open is on the right, oldest messages at the top and the newest at the bottom.

1. Open Advisors in the dashboard menu, or press "Ask your board of advisors" on your dashboard.
2. Choose Whole board or one advisor in the list on the left.
3. Write your question in the box at the bottom and press Enter (or the send button). Shift and Enter starts a new line. The answer can take up to a minute; you see the advisors typing while you wait.

When you ask the whole board, each advisor with something grounded to say answers in their own message, under their name. The others stay silent, and a short line says which ones had nothing grounded to add; the answers are never merged into one view. When you ask one advisor, that advisor answers, and says plainly when what we have does not cover your question.

Under the box you see how many questions you have left today. If an answer could not be shown, the reason appears in the chat and your question stays in the box, so you can rephrase it.

A dot in the list marks a chat with an answer you have not opened yet. It is kept in this browser only, so another device shows its own.

On a phone, the list fills the screen; tap a chat to open it, and use the back arrow (or your phone's back) to return to the list.

If you have not done the interview yet, the board still answers from your other records, such as your subscription review, and suggests starting the interview when the answer needs it.

What the board reads

Only what you told us and what is on your records, read with your own account:

• your interview answers and the facts you confirmed;
• your business memory, if you turned it on;
• your project briefs;
• your intern's latest weekly check-ins;
• this month's agent statement (counted from the record, nothing estimated);
• your subscription review: what you pay, in your own figures, and what you cut or kept;
• the open steps on your Tasks list.

"What the board reads", at the top of the Whole board chat, lists which of these the board can read for your business right now. Before anything reaches the AI, names, emails, phone numbers and similar details are replaced with placeholders, as in the interview.

What the notes and answers rest on

Each note and answer shows what it is based on, in your words or as it appears on your records. The advisors never invent a fact or a number: an answer that uses a figure that is not in what you told us or on your records (a yearly total worked out from a monthly price, for example) is thrown away before you see it.

They are suggestions only, not legal, tax, financial or insurance advice. When something needs a professional, the Risk advisor says which kind to ask.

The daily limit

You can ask up to 10 questions a day, counting the follow-ups you ask on the interview page and the questions you ask from your dashboard together. A question to the whole board counts once. The count resets at midnight UTC.

A question is not counted when no answer could be shown: the answer could not be written, it used a figure we do not have, or no advisor had anything grounded to say. Ask again or rephrase it.

During the interview

The advisors read your interview after 4 answers, again after 8 and 12, and once more when you press "Propose projects now". Each reading leaves at most one note per advisor; an advisor with nothing grounded to say stays silent.

If you have answered more since their last reading, press "Ask the advisors to read my answers". Older readings fold away under "After N answers". Press "Ask a follow-up" on a note to ask that advisor about it.

Notes and answers in each chat

The Whole board chat holds the questions you asked the whole board and the notes the board left on your interview. Each advisor's chat holds everything that advisor said: their interview notes (marked "A question worth asking", "An opportunity" or "A risk"), the follow-ups you asked them during the interview, the questions you asked them, and their answers to whole-board questions (marked "To the whole board"). If you have not done the interview yet, the Whole board chat says so at the top, with a link to start it.

Turn a note or an answer into steps

Press "Turn this into steps" on a note or an answer to add one to four concrete steps to your Tasks list, each marked for you or for your intern. See Tasks and "Turn this into steps".

Send a note or an answer to your intern

While an internship is open, press "Send to my intern" on a note or an answer. If you have more than one intern, choose which one. Add a line of your own if you like ("Can we do this before the busy season?"), then press "Send".

Your intern gets an email and reads it on their internship page under "From the owner: the board's note": the advisor, your question, the answer, its "Based on" line and your line. Only that intern (and their mentor, and our team) can read it. Your other notes and answers stay yours.

Your intern checks it against the facts and replies with the steps they propose, or why not. The reply appears under the advisor's message in the chat, and you get an email the first time they reply. Nothing they propose goes ahead until you approve it: an advisor's suggestion is never your yes. Each note goes to each intern once.