# From a half-formed idea to a clear brief.

Foil is an AI interviewer. You talk through an idea, out loud or typed. It asks the next question based on what you just said, and at the end it writes a project brief you check before anyone sees it.

Live on our Contact page, as "Talk it through with Foil." [Try it on the Contact page](https://nr10.com/contact/)

## A first call, whenever you're ready.

Most ideas start as a feeling: the store should do more, the site is wrong somehow. A form asks you to explain it in a box. Foil asks the questions we'd ask on a first call, one at a time, and keeps digging where your answer was thin. It's for anyone with a project they can't quite put into words yet. We built it for ourselves first, to think out loud on a walk, and now it's the first step for people who reach out to us.

## Ask, listen, ask better.

The interview is a loop. Each question is written after your last answer, not picked from a list.

1. **Your idea.** Pick what it's about (a Shopify store, a WordPress site, design, search and AI) and how you want to talk: tell it all at once, answer questions, or a bit of both.
2. **Foil asks.** One question, read out loud and shown on screen.
3. **You talk.** As long as you need, up to two minutes. Say "I'm done" or tap Done. Silence never moves it on.
4. **It follows up.** The next question comes from what you said. It digs into thin answers and pushes back on easy ones.
5. **The brief.** After six to eight questions, Foil writes a brief: what it is, what matters, open questions and what could go wrong.
6. **You confirm.** You read it, fix anything that's off and send it. Nothing reaches us until you do.

The loop (steps 2 to 4) repeats 6 to 8 times.

## What Foil does while you think.

Being cut off mid-thought is the worst part of talking to a machine. So silence is never the signal to move on.

- **0s: You stop talking.** Foil waits. No beep, no prompt.
- **15s: A gentle check-in.** "Take your time. Say I'm done when you're ready."
- **35s: One more check-in.** Still listening, still not moving on.
- **60s: It pauses.** Your answers are kept, and you can pick up later, on any device.

## A bakery, three questions, one brief.

An invented interview. The owner of a two-location bakery wants online orders for holiday pies. Watch how each question comes from the answer before it.

**Foil:** What do you want to build, and why now?

**Owner:** Every November our phones melt down with pie orders. I want people to order online and pick a pickup time.

_Opens wide. You can say as much or as little as you like._

**Foil:** When the phones melt down, what actually goes wrong: missed orders, wrong orders, or more pies than the ovens can bake?

**Owner:** Mostly the ovens. We say yes to more than we can bake the day before Thanksgiving.

_Follows up on your own words, "melt down", instead of moving to the next topic._

**Foil:** So the real limit is how many pies you can bake each day, not taking orders. Should the site stop selling a pickup day once it's full?

**Owner:** Yes. That alone would save us.

_Pushes back. It names the real problem before you've said it._

### The brief: Holiday pie preorders with pickup times

- **What it is.** Online preorders for holiday pies, with pickup times at both locations.
- **What matters most.** Baking capacity, not ordering, is the bottleneck. Each pickup day needs a limit that closes it when it's full.
- **Open questions.** Do both locations share one bakery? Deposit or full payment up front?
- **What could go wrong.** Limits set too high. Customers who miss pickup. Staff who can't see the day's orders at a glance.
- **Next step.** A short call to size it up.

You see the brief first. Change anything, then send it. Your voice recording isn't kept: it's turned into text and deleted.

## It listens like a good interviewer.

- **Follow-ups, not a form.** Every question is written after your last answer. Thin answers get a second look, and easy answers get pushed on.
- **It never cuts you off.** You decide when you're done. Silence, pauses and "um" are fine.
- **You confirm the brief.** Nothing reaches us until you've read the brief and sent it.
- **Talk or type.** Talking goes deeper than typing for most people, but the same interview works with a keyboard.

## Talking goes deeper than typing.

- **Voice was the big bet, and it paid off.** The question that could have killed Foil was whether talking beats typing to a chatbot. In our first real session it did: talking went further, and it worked while doing something else, like watching TV or walking.
- **Silence isn't a turn signal.** Our first version moved on after a short pause, and people started filling every gap with "um". Now only you end your answer.
- **Waiting feels longer out loud.** A nine-second gap between your answer and the next question felt broken. We cut it to about five and play a short "Got it" right away, so it never feels like the line went dead.
- **Shorter wins.** A long interview loses people. We aim for six to eight questions and cap each answer at two minutes, with a countdown, so a long recording can never be lost.
- **The voice matters.** The first voice sounded robotic. We auditioned several and picked the one with the most personality, then had it speak each line in one or two pieces, because stopping after every sentence sounded jerky.
- **iPhones start silent.** On iPhone the first version recorded nothing, and later the first question played silently. Both came down to how Safari handles audio before you tap. Fixed, but only by testing on a real phone.

### One engine, many apps

Foil turned out to be an engine, not a product. Each use is a set of questions, an interviewer and a place for the result. The same loop turns a spoken brain-dump into a work ticket for our team, and runs a household inventory where you ask where something is.

### The app we didn't build

NeatFreak was an older idea of ours: a voice app for cataloging what you own and where it is. Before building it, we tested demand. The answer was no. Free apps set the price people expect, voice capture is already common, and one wrong answer about where something is breaks trust in the whole thing. So we built a small version inside Foil, for our own house, and kept the lesson: test demand first, and reuse the engine you already have.

## The same patterns, on your site.

Foil is how we start projects now. The pieces inside it are the ones we bring to client work: an AI that asks good follow-ups, and a person who confirms the result before it goes anywhere.

- **Smarter intake.** A quote or project form that asks follow-ups and hands your team a brief instead of a paragraph in a box.
- **Product finders that listen.** Shopping help that asks the next question based on the last answer, not a fixed quiz.
- **Customer interviews at scale.** Ask every customer the same opening question, follow up where it counts and read the patterns.

## Have a half-formed idea?

Talk it through with Foil on our Contact page, or skip the interview and just send us a note. Either way, a person reads it. [Go to Contact](https://nr10.com/contact/) · [See Yuko, our AI inbox](https://nr10.com/labs/yuko/)

Human version: https://nr10.com/labs/foil/