The first hour

You do not arrive at an empty house. Sixteen pieces are already hanging in a collection, the house has already looked at them, and there is one thing in front of you worth doing next. This page is what happens, in order, and how to leave any part of it.

Your first frame, before you have uploaded anything →

Where the door opens

Signing in for the first time takes you to Collections, not to a menu. The room you land in is the one where the work starts.

Every later sign-in goes wherever you left off. This is the first arrival only.

The pieces are ours; the rows are yours

The collection is already full. Above the tiles, one line:

FROM THE HOUSE

ours. develop them like your own, delete them like your own.

They are real garments, photographed badly on purpose: phone shots off a stockroom rail, tags still on, a bag in the corner of two of them. Nothing about them is a demo. They are rows in your house — develop them, rename them, delete them, and none of it costs a token or asks anyone's permission.

Your own dropzone is on screen the whole time. Drop your files in whenever you like; the FROM THE HOUSE line collapses the moment one of your own pieces is in the collection, and from then on the house names your piece by your name for it.

Name it — one keystroke

The name field is already filled with the season a house in this month would be working (Resort 27, in July 2026). Type over it or press Enter.

Enter renames the collection that is already full. It does not make a second folder and it does not move anything.

The reading is free

Once it has a name, the house reads what is in it and says what it sees:

Most are phone photos off a stockroom rail: hung on a pole, tags still on, a bag in the corner. Not studio work.

That's fine. That's exactly what I'm for.

There is no button for this and never will be. It costs nothing, it happens on every import, and it cannot hold up your first frame — walk away mid-read and it finishes without you.

On your own uploads it says less, because it only reports what it can actually see. "Read. Nothing here needs fixing before it develops" is a real answer, not a failure.

One question

Exactly one, in the whole hour:

One thing before I start — how many pieces go out in a month?

under 20 · 20 – 100 · 100+ · just looking

show me instead →

show me instead → costs you nothing. Same size, same weight as the four answers. Take it and nothing is withheld, and the house never mentions it again.

Your answer changes the work, not the wording. It is not a warmer sentence over the same job:

You are holding 120 trial tokens when you arrive, so any of these is affordable on day one.

The question is asked once, ever — including if you skip it. See what we hold.

The price is on the button

The first time a number appears, the house says this once and never repeats it:

Everything with a number on it waits for you. Nothing else here costs anything.

That is the whole rule. A button that carries a number spends when you press it and not before. Everything else — the reading, being moved to another room, undoing something — is free. See quality and cost for what a frame costs at each size.

It asks before it moves you

While the frame develops:

It's developing — about a minute. Want to watch it come up?

Say yes and you go to the Darkroom. Say no and the offer folds away, costs nothing, and that destination is not proposed again for the rest of the session. The house does not ask twice.

Nothing you were in the middle of is dropped by a move. If a room holds something that only lives in this browser tab, it says so in that room rather than trapping you with a dialog — /workflows carries its own line the moment anything is on the canvas: Nothing here is saved yet — it lives in this tab. / save this line.

Your frame comes up where you are

The frame appears in the conversation itself, not only in the Darkroom. Then one of two things:

• Nothing is wrong with it. "It came out clean — nothing I'd flag. Look at it: anything you'd change?"
• The house marked it. "Something's off — the left hand. What do you see?"

Either way it asks you. Say what you see, in a sentence, while you are looking at it. What you write is carried into the next pass, so the redraw is aimed at the thing you named rather than rolled again. What the marks mean: the judge.

Your answer changes nothing about the frame's price or its score. It is how we find out whether our own flag was worth trusting.

Keeping it

Keep it — it hangs in Resort 27 and the rest follows it.

Keep the frame and it hangs in the collection you named. That set is a lookbook, and it is the only time in the hour the house uses the word — after you have one, never before.

At that point the house stops offering. The composer is what is left: type what you want next and it sets it up. You were talking to it all hour; now you have the keyboard.

If you ignore all of it

Nothing here is a checklist and nothing is modal. There is never more than one offer on screen, it never blocks anything, and it fades the moment you start doing something else. Wander off, open a different room, come back an hour later — the offer is still there, updated to wherever you now are.

There is no progress bar, no step counter, and no reward for finishing. Skipping costs you nothing and is never mentioned.

What we hold, and how to change it

One fact, from the one question: how many pieces your house puts out in a month. It belongs to the house, not to your seat — the next person who joins inherits it rather than being asked again.

Settings shows it back to you as one line:

You told us: 100+ pieces a month. change

If you skipped, the line reads tell us instead. Either way it is one field, and changing it changes what the house offers you next.

Related

• The collection itself, and how pieces are filed: Collections.
• Where frames land and develop: the Darkroom.
• What a mark on a frame means, and what a redraw costs: the judge.
• Doing it all yourself, end to end: Quickstart.