Getting started

Open the app (live demo or your own instance) and either load an example or start a description of your own. Everything begins with the narrative — your plain-language account of the business.

Describe your business — a conversation, not a form

The first stage (Business Narrative) is a single dialogue. Write a description of your business in your own words in the one input — or paste a meeting transcript / notes, or upload a .txt/.md file. No headings, no jargon.

Click Understand and Kiln reads it back to you: a plain-language summary of what it understood, a sense of how well it understands your business, and the open questions still worth answering. From there:

• Continue the conversation hands off to a friendly business analyst who picks up the first open question and helps you fill the gaps — your own words carry straight into the chat.
• Describe again to start over, or Edit directly to hand-edit the structured text (Purpose, Customers, Business Outcomes, Core Activities, Constraints) — the text is always the source of truth.

Example. "We are a solar installer. We find customers, design a system for their roof, order the parts, install it, and send the invoice."

Working through the layers

Use the left rail to move through the layers in order — it doubles as a progress guide, highlighting the recommended next step with an arrow. Each layer opens with a short, dismissible note explaining what to do there: Generate with LLM builds a fully worked-out version, Enrich adds building blocks typical for your industry, and you can click any item to edit it. You can stop at any point — a half-built model is still useful.

The Home screen (click the flame, top-left) is your project's mission control — an overview, not a repeat of any single layer's screen. It shows, at a glance: the project and its stack; an overall state (in progress · points to address · ready to export); a status board of every layer — done ✓, needs attention (with its open-point count), or not yet built — where each item is clickable to jump straight in; roll-up cards for progress, open points, and this session's spend; and a row of actions (your recommended next step, view app, export model, projects, settings). A brand-new project shows a short welcome instead, with a one-line explainer and buttons to start a description or load an example.

A note on cost

Each Generate, Enrich, or AI Review action asks an AI model to do the work, which costs a small amount per click (shown as a spend estimate). The Business Narrative summary is one such small call, made once per project and then cached. Browsing and editing are free. Running your own instance requires an Anthropic API key; the public demo is keyless and pre-baked.

A running total of this session's tokens and estimated cost sits at the bottom of the sidebar (next to the version); it resets when you reload the page.