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Pathways

A pathway is a guided conversation your sidekick leads inside its normal chat. You write a few waypoints, each one something to find out and something to give back. The person always has a next step to tap, and leaves with a page to keep. Use one when people arrive not knowing what to ask.

Pathway or wizard?

Both are written on the Wizards tab of the sidekick's Sheet. New asks which you want.

	Wizard: collect answers	Pathway: guide a conversation
Who it is for	You. It gathers answers you will use.	The person. It gives them insight.
Where it runs	On its own page, with only the wizard's questions.	In the sidekick's normal chat, with its knowledge and abilities on.
Order	The questions, one at a time, in order.	A suggestion. The sidekick follows the person and comes back.
Other questions	Kept to the wizard.	Answered properly; the pathway stays open.
At the end	A thank-you, a score or a recommendation.	A takeaway page the person keeps.

Switching it on

Pathways is an ability. On the sidekick's Abilities tab, add Pathways. Until it is on, a pathway you write is saved but the sidekick cannot lead it. The ability has no settings of its own: everything is written on the Wizards tab.

Creating a pathway

On the Wizards tab press New and pick a template under Guide a conversation. Four are ready to adapt, plus a blank one.

Template	Use it to
What gives you the most doubt?	Help someone name the doubt they carry about the future, see what bears on it, and leave with something to do. 5 waypoints.
The future of your work	Look at where someone's own field is heading and what they would want to be doing in it. 5 waypoints.
Meet your future self	Have someone picture a day ten years on that they would love to be living, and what made it possible. 4 waypoints.
Ready for the AI transition?	A plain look at how someone uses AI today, what worries them, and where their judgment still counts. 5 waypoints.
Blank pathway	Start from one waypoint.

The Opening has four fields:

Name and Purpose. The sidekick uses the purpose to decide when to offer the pathway, so say who it is for and what it helps them do.
Starting point: the card people tap, at most 60 characters. Untick Show this card to keep the pathway for links and for the sidekick to offer.
What the sidekick says to begin (optional).

Waypoints

A pathway holds up to eight waypoints. Write intent, not a script: the sidekick finds its own words.

Field	What to write
Find out	What you want to learn from the person. "What they fear losing if the future goes badly."
Give back	What they receive once they answer. "Show them two credible developments that bear on that fear, from the knowledge base, and say what each changes." The sidekick gives this before it asks anything else.
Depth	Light: one exchange is enough. Deep: the sidekick stays with it until it is really answered.
Required	An optional waypoint can be left out if the conversation goes elsewhere. At least one must be required.
Keep	By default a one-line note of what was learned. Choose an answer type (yes or no, one of a list, a scale and so on) when you want a value you can count in the responses.
Their name and email	Choose this under Keep when you need to reach the person. In chat a short form appears for them to fill in; in a call the sidekick takes the details aloud and reads the email back. The sidekick never fills it in itself. A takeaway is emailed to this address.
A photo	Also under Keep. An upload box appears with the sentence they must tick first, which is saved with the photo. Their takeaway then carries a portrait of them in the future they described, made from that photo. Make it optional unless the pathway is about the portrait.
Lean on	Optional. Knowledge topics to favour, and abilities to reach for, such as prediction markets for odds or web search for this week's news.

The order you write them in is a suggestion. The sidekick may take them in another order, cover two with one reply from the person, or answer something unrelated first and come back.

Starting points

Where a conversation begins, the person sees a line that says what to do, Choose your starting point:, then up to four cards and or ask anything. Write your own line in the pathway's Opening, under Line above the cards; all of a sidekick's cards share one line, taken from the first pathway shown that has one. They appear in text chat and on the voice and video start screens.

Each live pathway with a starting point shows as a card.
Someone with an unfinished journey gets Pick up where you left off first, with the last thing they said that mattered.
You can also add plain starting points with no pathway behind them: on the Sheet, under the chat bubble settings, fill in Starting points, one per line. A tap just sends the line as the first message.

If you have more than four pathways, a signed-in person who has agreed to share their Lore with this sidekick sees the four closest to their own goals and work. Everyone else sees them in the order you wrote them.

A live pathway also has a link that opens the chat already inside it. Copy it from the pathway's card on the Wizards tab.

What the person sees

Each reply gives something back first, grounded in the sidekick's knowledge with its sources, then asks one question. Under the reply are two or three next steps to tap, plus Ask my own. Typing or speaking always works instead.

In a voice or video call the next steps are on screen only. The sidekick asks its question aloud and never reads the options out.

On channels with no screen, such as Telegram, there are no cards or tappable replies: the sidekick offers a pathway in conversation and ends each reply with two things the person could say next. A form or photo waypoint cannot be completed there; the sidekick says it can be done in the chat on your site.

There is no progress bar and no "question 3 of 6". To the person it is a conversation. You see the progress in the responses.

Pathways can meet people in real distress. The sidekick is told to stop guiding, respond to the person first and point them to people who can help. If your pathway asks about fear, loss or the future, add your own wording for that moment to the sidekick's instructions before you set it live.

The takeaway

With Give the person a takeaway ticked, the person gets a page when the waypoints are covered:

what they brought;
what was found, each point tied to a source that was actually shown in their conversation;
their vision, in their own words;
three next steps and one question to sit with;
the pictures from an Immersive session, or one picture drawn from their vision after a text conversation;
a portrait of them in that future, when the pathway asked for a photo and they gave one.

It arrives as a card in the chat a few moments after the conversation ends. The other switches in Closing decide the rest:

Email it to the person when their address is known (signed-in people).
Remember it in their Lore, so the next conversation starts from it. Guests get nothing written.
Add one picture when the conversation had none.
Instruction for the takeaway, for example "end on what they can do this week".

The person can print their page. Sharing is off until they switch it on from the page themselves; the shared version shows the headline, vision, next steps and pictures, and leaves out what they brought and what was found.

A point that rests on a source the person was never shown is not sent: the takeaway is written again, and if it still cannot be sourced the response shows Action failed instead.

Testing and going live

Try it opens the sidekick's real chat already inside the pathway, drafts included. Your test journeys are hidden from responses unless you tick Show test runs.
Set live publishes it: its card appears and the sidekick may offer it. Back to draft takes it down. Journeys already under way keep the waypoints they started with.

Visitors without an account need guest chat. The cards show only once someone is in the chat. Turn on Allow guest chat on the sidekick's Connections tab, or only signed-in members will reach them.

In the desktop app's local mode, pathways run when the conversation goes through the cloud with your own model serving it. A sidekick running entirely on the desktop cannot keep a journey and does not offer pathways there.

A sidekick on a Mind Module answers every turn with the module's heavier model while it has live pathways. Keeping each person's place needs that model's reasoning, so replies take a little longer than its ordinary chat.

Reading responses

Click the response count on a pathway. Each card shows how the person came in (tapped the card, offered in conversation, came by link, picked it back up), where they are, and the note kept for each waypoint.

Completed, At waypoint N or Gone quiet. A journey can always be picked up again, so nothing is marked abandoned.
Where people get to is a funnel: started, each waypoint, finished, takeaway opened, shared. It shows where people stop.
Export CSV downloads every journey. Email me each response works as it does for wizards.