Comprehensive User Guide
A full walkthrough of Verdikt, from workspace setup and live advisory sessions to collaboration, artifacts, analytics, and billing.
Admin Path
Admins create the workspace, choose the industry pack, manage seats, billing, company context, and team settings, then invite members and keep the workspace healthy.
Member Path
Members join with an invite code, complete the quick start guide, run sessions, work from shared context, collaborate on action items, and record outcomes.
Guide Map
- 1What Verdikt DoesUnderstand the core workflow and who does what.
- 2Access and OnboardingSign in, join a team, or create a new workspace.
- 3Navigation and ShortcutsLearn the main areas of the app and how to move faster.
- 4Running SessionsSet up a briefing, launch a debate, and steer the discussion.
- 5Verdicts and Follow-UpReview recommendations, outcomes, and next-step conversations.
- 6Action Plans and DeliverablesTurn advice into tasks and polished documents.
- 7Company Context and IntelligenceUse My Business, industry packs, custom agents, and documents.
- 8Collaboration and PrivacyShare safely, manage visibility, and understand redaction.
- 9Plans, Credits, and Workspace StatesUnderstand costs, limits, read-only states, and admin actions.
- 10Best PracticesImprove briefing quality, team alignment, and follow-through.
- 11TroubleshootingFix common blockers quickly and know where to get help.
1. What Verdikt Does
Verdikt is an AI-powered decision workspace built around a repeatable loop: describe a business dilemma, run an advisory session, review the verdict, turn the result into action items and deliverables, then track what happened so future decisions improve.
Every workspace is centered on an organization. Admins manage the team, billing, and shared business context. Members contribute sessions, collaborate on shared work, and build decision history over time.
Core Workflow
- Create or join a workspace and complete the quick start flow.
- Start a new session from the dashboard or the New Session area.
- Brief the board with your dilemma, constraints, and preferred session depth.
- Watch the live debate, then review the verdict and decision matrix.
- Generate an action plan, artifacts, or exports for stakeholders.
- Share results, record outcomes, and use that history to strengthen future decisions.
2. Access and Onboarding
The app routes you through a few gates before you reach the dashboard: authentication, email verification where required, terms acceptance, and organization setup or invite-code entry.
If You Are Joining an Existing Team
- Sign in or create your account with a supported sign-in method.
- Enter the invite code sent by your admin.
- Open the Quick Start guide so you understand the session flow before your first real debate.
- Once you land on the dashboard, start with shared context and recent team decisions before launching a new session.
If You Are Creating a New Workspace
- Enter your organization name and choose the primary industry pack.
- Add company size and business stage.
- Set your role and the decision areas your team works on most often.
- Optionally add a short company profile so the advisors have baseline context.
- Review the advisory panel preview, create the workspace, then complete the Quick Start guide.
What New Users Should Do First
- Watch the in-app Quick Start guide.
- Run one low-risk session in Quick mode to learn the workflow.
- Invite teammates if collaboration is part of your plan.
- Open Help Center pages directly from the screen-level help icon when you want route-specific guidance.
3. Navigation and Shortcuts
On desktop business builds, Verdikt uses a sidebar. On smaller screens, the same destinations appear in a drawer. The bottom status card shows your tier, seat usage, credit balance, and certain warning states like payment issues or read-only mode.
Main Areas
| Area | What You Use It For | Who Typically Uses It |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | Home base for your advisory board, onboarding checklist, and launch points for new work. | Everyone |
| New Session | Start a new briefing and run a live debate. | Everyone |
| History | Search, filter, reopen, export, bookmark, and review past sessions. | Everyone |
| Shared | Access sessions that other people shared with you or your team. | Everyone |
| Documents | Manage the Deep Context Vault when your plan includes document upload. | Admins and members with access |
| Custom Agents | Create or edit custom personas that can join debates. | Paid workspaces and eligible users |
| My Business | Maintain company profile, strategic context, recent decision intelligence, and advanced business context. | Admins on supported tiers |
| Analytics | Review personal and team activity, usage patterns, and higher-level insights. | Everyone, with expanded admin analytics on higher tiers |
| Team & Settings | Invite or remove members, open billing, export data, view the audit log, and manage workspace settings. | Admins |
| Quick Start / Help Center / Roadmap | Learn the app, get contextual help, or review what is planned next. | Everyone |
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Cmd/Ctrl + K | Open the command palette to jump to pages or recent sessions. |
Cmd/Ctrl + N | Start a new session. |
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + J | Open History. |
? | Show the keyboard shortcuts overlay. |
4. Running Sessions
Sessions begin on the briefing screen. This is where you tell Verdikt what decision you are facing, how much context matters, and how deep you want the discussion to go.
Briefing Checklist
- Describe the dilemma. Include context, constraints, numbers, deadlines, and the actual decision that needs to be made.
- Choose a mode. Quick mode is designed for fast guidance. Strategic mode uses a premium model and consumes a credit.
- Set the context sliders. Budget, risk tolerance, and timeline shape how conservative or aggressive the board becomes.
- Choose the stakes level and rounds. Lower stakes produce faster sessions; deeper stakes allow longer deliberation.
- Review the panel. Verdikt selects advisors automatically, but you can swap them if you want a different mix of perspectives.
- Start the session. The live debate screen opens and the advisors begin speaking in rounds.
During the Debate
- Use playback speed controls to move faster through the conversation.
- Enable text-to-speech if you want the debate read aloud.
- Add interjections when you need to steer the discussion or introduce new facts.
- If you leave a session while it is active, the debate can keep running in the background. Re-entering may restart visible streaming from the beginning.
5. Verdicts and Follow-Up
When the debate ends, Verdikt assembles the advisors' positions into a structured verdict. This is where you compare options, review tradeoffs, and decide what to do next.
What You Will See on the Verdict Screen
- Advisor recommendations with summaries, reasoning, caveats, and bottom lines.
- A decision matrix that compares the options across core scoring dimensions.
- A Verdikt synthesis or unified strategy that blends the strongest parts of the discussion.
- A session input summary showing the dilemma, category, sliders, stakes, and participating advisors.
Key Dimensions in the Matrix
- Financial Sense for ROI, cash flow, and margin impact.
- Emotional Satisfaction for morale, confidence, or stakeholder comfort.
- Long-Term Value for strategic leverage and future upside.
- Risk Level for downside exposure and compliance concerns.
- Practicality for implementation effort and feasibility.
After the Verdict
- Open follow-up chats with advisors on supported plans when you want clarification or a tighter recommendation.
- Record the actual outcome so your team can learn from what happened in the real world.
- Use reconvene when the situation changes and you want the same board to re-evaluate with fresh context.
6. Action Plans and Deliverables
Verdikt is not only for analysis. The post-verdict workflow is designed to help your team execute.
Action Board
The Action Board turns the verdict into trackable next steps. Depending on the generation mode, you can get a faster quick plan or a deeper strategic one.
- Assign actions to teammates.
- Set status, priority, effort, and due dates.
- Drag and reorder items to reflect real-world priority.
- Filter the board to focus on what matters right now.
- Share the session so collaborators can review the same plan.
Deliverables and Artifacts
Artifacts are polished AI-generated outputs built from the session. The exact catalog depends on plan tier, but common examples include:
- Decision Briefs and Executive One-Pagers
- Risk Registers and Scenario Analyses
- Implementation Timelines and Project Charters
- Board Memos, Comparison Matrices, and Stakeholder Outlines
- Budget Proposals, Compliance Checklists, and Scope of Work documents
Editing Deliverables
- Use follow-up conversations on supported plans to request revisions.
- Review changes in Review Mode before applying them.
- Applied edits create new document versions, so you keep a visible evolution of the artifact.
7. Company Context and Intelligence
The more durable context you give Verdikt, the more company-specific its recommendations become. There are three main context layers inside the app.
My Business
Admins can maintain organizational context beyond the initial onboarding profile. This screen is where you keep your business current.
- Company basics like size, stage, and leadership role.
- A reusable company profile for the advisors.
- Strategic context such as competitors, upcoming events, and the competitive landscape.
- Recent decision history and, on supported tiers, deeper intelligence settings and financial profile data.
Industry Packs and Custom Agents
- Every workspace gets a universal C-suite layer plus industry specialists.
- Custom Agents let you add your own personas with defined thinking style, lens, bias, and voice.
- Premium workspaces can go deeper with broader industry coverage and persona memory.
Deep Context Vault
When document upload is enabled on your plan, the Documents area becomes a persistent context system rather than a one-off attachment tool.
- Team documents are shared organization-wide and are usually managed by admins.
- Personal documents belong only to the uploader and feed only that person's sessions.
- Each document can be toggled active or off, so stored context does not have to be injected into every session.
- Text-based business files such as PDFs, DOCX files, markdown, CSVs, and other structured documents are the best fit.
8. Collaboration and Privacy
Verdikt is designed for team decision-making, but it also gives you control over who sees what.
Sharing
- Sessions start private by default.
- You can share a session so teammates can review the dilemma, verdict, action plan, and related artifacts.
- Shared work appears in the Shared area and in the team's broader history views where applicable.
Session Detail and Team Discussion
- Use the session detail view to revisit the full context around a decision.
- Team comments and discussion threads keep follow-up conversation attached to the decision itself.
- Bookmarks are personal, so you can save important sessions without changing anyone else's view.
Privacy and Redaction
- Verdikt uses automated redaction to protect sensitive details in shared contexts.
- Redaction is especially important when non-owners review a shared session.
- Organization data, document scope, and persona memory remain isolated to your workspace.
9. Plans, Credits, and Workspace States
Admins manage billing and seat health, but everyone benefits from understanding how usage works.
Credits and Paid Actions
- Quick sessions are the low-friction path for fast guidance.
- Strategic sessions use premium analysis and consume credits.
- Artifacts and certain enhanced outputs also consume credits.
- Monthly credits are used before purchased top-up credits.
What Happens When Something Changes
| State | What Users Experience | What Admins Should Do |
|---|---|---|
| Trial expired | New premium activity may be blocked and the app may redirect to billing-aware screens. | Choose a paid plan or renew access. |
| Payment failure | Workspace warnings appear and new session creation can be limited. | Update payment details in billing. |
| Cancellation / read-only | Users can usually review existing work but cannot continue normal creation flows. | Resubscribe during the grace window to restore full access. |
| Seat limit exceeded | New session creation or team growth may be constrained after grace rules expire. | Reduce seats or move to a plan with a higher seat limit. |
Where Billing Lives
Admins reach billing through Team & Settings and the dedicated billing screens. This is also where plan changes, renewals, downgrades, and cancellation flows are handled.
10. Best Practices
- Write dilemmas as decisions, not as vague topics. Include tradeoffs, timing, and constraints.
- Keep My Business updated so every session starts from better context.
- Upload stable, high-signal documents instead of dumping every file you have.
- Use shared sessions when a decision affects multiple teammates or functions.
- Turn strong verdicts into action items immediately so momentum does not fade.
- Record outcomes consistently to improve the quality of future recommendations.
- Use the command palette and shortcuts if you live in the app all day.
11. Troubleshooting
I cannot get past sign-in or onboarding
- If you signed up with email, verify the email address first.
- If you are joining a team, ask the admin for a fresh invite code.
- If you already belong to another organization, you may need that relationship resolved before joining a different one.
I cannot start a strategic session
- Check whether the workspace has credits available.
- Look for admin-only billing or payment warnings in the status card.
- If the workspace is in read-only mode, only admins can restore normal access.
I expected to see documents or custom agents
- Some areas are tier-gated and only appear when the workspace plan supports them.
- Documents can also be paused or restricted by workspace state.
I cannot find an older session
- Check filters and bookmarks in History.
- Look in Shared if the session belongs to another teammate.
- Remember that history retention varies by plan tier.
How to get help fast
- Use the help icon on the current screen to open the most relevant help page.
- Re-run the Quick Start guide anytime from the sidebar.
- Use Feedback & Support inside the app to report bugs or request help.