One kitchen, designed out loud from the first wall to the moment it has a name. Where the mouse still does the work, where a sentence is faster, and the four places the planner says no.
The kitchen in this walkthrough is deliberately ordinary: an L, one door in the far corner, a window over what will become the sink wall, a 30″ range and a dishwasher that must not end up opening across the corner cabinet. It takes about twenty-five minutes from an empty file to a plan saved under a name, and most of that is not talking. What follows is the session in order — the parts where you hold a mouse, the parts where a sentence beats three menus, and the handful of moments where the planner refuses and the refusal is the most useful thing in the room.
A voice call is a quick way to move cabinets around a room. It is not a way to find out how big the room is. Four things want settling first, and three of them happen away from the screen.
Then the part people expect voice to have replaced, and it has not: the walls get drawn with the mouse. Not because we ran out of time to build her a wall tool, but because a room is a shape, and a shape is faster to draw than to describe. Four clicks and two typed lengths gives an exact rectangle; the spoken version is four sentences, each of which can be misheard.
So draw the outline, type the real lengths, and set the ceiling height per wall if yours does something interesting. Only then is there anything for her to talk about.
What they search at midnight “design my kitchen with AI step by step” — step one is a tape measure and step two is a mouse. That is not the tool failing you; it is the twenty minutes that makes everything after it true.
Say “what should I do next” into an empty file and the answer comes back as add walls first. That is the correct answer, not a failure — the step planner reasons over your actual layout, and it will not recommend a cabinet into a room that does not exist yet.
Left-click the avatar in the corner of the canvas and the call opens. She goes solid with a ring round her, which is the only status light you need: faded means the microphone is off and nothing is being spent, solid means the line is live. Then say the sentence that does more work than any other: what should I do next?
That one does not go to the language model at all. It runs the planner’s own step logic on the server, over your actual layout, and it is deterministic — the same room gives the same answer twice. It comes back with exactly one of three things.
| What comes back | What it sounds like | What it means | What you say next |
|---|---|---|---|
| A recommendation | One cabinet, which wall, whereabouts, and the reason | It has enough to go on and this is the next move | “Yes, put it in” — or ignore it and do something else |
| A question | Two named options, or a missing fact | There is a real choice here and it will not make it for you | Answer it, then ask again |
| Blocked | A short reason, no recommendation | Something in the room stops it going further | Fix the reason with the mouse |
On an L the first answer is nearly always the corner, and the reason governs the rest of the session. The corner is the only position both runs share. Until it is decided neither run has a fixed starting point, so cabinets placed inward from the open ends meet in the middle with an awkward remainder between them — the four-inch gap that becomes a filler nobody planned. Decide the corner and everything else measures out from a known point.
When there is a genuine choice of corner, it hands you the choice rather than taking it.
The step planner names both and asks. It does not pick for you.
This is the one question where the software has no business deciding, because the answer depends on how you use the corner rather than on geometry. Both fit. They cost you different things.
Say which one you want and ask again. It will not offer that corner a second time — the step planner never recommends the same corner twice. The corner chapter goes through both, and it is worth two minutes before you answer.
You — “Right. What should I do next?”
Emma — “Walls but nothing in the room, and it wants the corner settled first. Two options: a square corner cabinet, or a blind corner. Which?”
You — “Blind corner. I want the window wall to keep running.”
Emma — “Then it recommends a blind corner base in the corner of walls one and two, so the long run carries past it. Want it in?”
You — “Go on.”
Emma — “In. That is item one.”
Note that she asked before placing. She always does: nothing is applied until you agree out loud, and what lands is one step of undo.
The middle of a session is repetitive in the best way. You ask, it recommends, you agree, you ask again. Four or five turns and the base run exists. What makes the loop tolerable rather than infuriating is what happens to the cabinets already there: everything in the room is treated as locked.
Under the recommendation is the same engine that drives the full automatic design: it works out a plan for your room, then returns the next cabinet from that plan which is not already in it. It never quietly moves something you put in by hand. Drop a 36″ sink base under the window because that is where the plumbing is, and the plan bends round it — which is the difference between a step planner and an automatic design that overwrites your afternoon.
You — “What is next?”
Emma — “A thirty-six inch sink base on wall two, next along from the corner — that is the wall with the window and the plumbing. Shall I?”
You — “Yes.”
Emma — “Added the thirty-six inch sink base, SB36. It is number two.”
You — “Keep going. You do not have to ask me every time.”
Emma — “Next is a twenty-four inch base to the right of the sink base. I will still ask — one at a time. In?”
You — “In.”
You — “Can you carry on and do the wall cabinets too?”
Emma — “Not with this. The step planner walks the floor — the base cabinets and the tall run. Wall cabinets are the automatic design’s job, or yours with the mouse.”
That is the honest boundary of the whole feature, and better met here than at turn eleven. The step planner walks the floor cabinets only — bases and talls, in order, corner first. After that the uppers are a job for the full automatic design or for your hands, and uppers are where window trim, hood height and sight lines matter — all things that want looking at rather than listening to.
She keeps asking for a yes before each placement even after you have said “keep going,” and that is deliberate. One cabinet per confirmation is what keeps a session recoverable: every change is a single thing you can look at, judge and take back.
Somewhere around the fifth turn you will want something specific: drawers rather than a door, an 18″ base beside the fridge. That is the moment to stop asking what is next and start pointing.
Pointing works by number. Every cabinet and appliance carries one, and it is the same number the planner prints in its own item list on screen — not a private label she invented for the conversation. Ask her to read the list and you get, for each item, the number, the catalogue code and width said the way a person says it (“a thirty-inch base cabinet, B30”, not three letters and two digits), the wall it sits on, and which item is selected.
Then add against it. Every add is a sentence with three parts and no fourth:
“Put a thirty-inch base to the right of number four” is the whole grammar. It maps onto the planner’s own Add Right, so what lands, lands snug against its neighbour with no gap to discover later.
The price is worth stating plainly, because it is the commonest frustration on a first call: there is no absolute-position add. “Put it forty inches along wall two” is not a command and no rephrasing turns it into one. Placement is always relative to something already in the drawing, so in an empty room the first item comes from the mouse or from the step planner — and everything after it can be spoken.
Asking for an edit while you are in the 3D view needs the planner’s Edit 3D mode. The tools switch it on themselves rather than refusing, and she mentions it once when that happens, so a cabinet never appears in 3D alongside a silent change of mode. The full command list is in the reference chapter.
This is where voice earns its place — not the grand gestures, but the fiddly two-inch adjustments that otherwise mean selecting, dragging, and checking you did not nudge the neighbour.
The renumbering and the three-step limit account for most of the confusion on a first session. Neither is a bug; both are obvious once and never again. If a session has gone sideways, the unsticking chapter is the one to read.
The useful version of this feature is not a hands-free kitchen designer. It is a hybrid, and the split stops being subtle after half an hour: the mouse points, the voice repeats. Anything you can see and click is faster to click. Anything you would do eight times in a row is faster to say.
Which leaves the shape of a good session: mouse for walls, selection and anything you want to look at while you decide; voice for repetitive placements, small corrections, the “what is next” loop, and questions you would otherwise open a chapter to answer. On a tablet the balance shifts, because a finger is a worse pointer than a mouse and a microphone is exactly as good.
Ending a session well takes one sentence, and skipping it is the only way to lose an afternoon in this tool.
Saying “save this” with no name saves over the design you have open — the same thing the save button does. Give it a name and it saves as something new, leaving the original untouched. That second form is the most valuable sentence in the chapter: “save this as Plan B” before you try anything drastic. Undo covers three changes; a name covers the whole afternoon, and pulling four cabinets out to see whether the run works better as drawers eats more than three steps.
Loading is the destructive direction. Opening a saved design replaces everything on screen, so she asks first and offers to save the open work. Take the offer. Both saving and opening need you signed in, and if you are not, you hear that plainly rather than hearing that it worked.
Five quiet minutes and the connection closes on purpose. The microphone stays on, but nothing leaves your computer — the page only measures the level locally — and she comes back when you have actually been speaking for a moment, with the thread of the conversation intact. About twenty minutes of silence and she releases the microphone entirely.
Time runs in five-minute blocks. Ten free minutes a day per account, resetting on the Toronto calendar day; after that a block costs 1 GH Coin. A block only renews if you actually spoke during it and spoke within the last minute and a half, so a call you walked away from does not quietly keep going.
One more thing before you talk freely: voice calls are not recorded. The audio goes from your browser straight to the speech provider, never reaches us, and no transcript is kept. Typed conversations are kept. That asymmetry is deliberate, and it is written out on the privacy page.
Twenty-five minutes in, the file contains something real: genuine frameless boxes at catalogue sizes, with full-overlay doors and adjustable feet. The plan is made of things that exist rather than rectangles that approximate them, which is why you cannot accidentally design a 34″ base cabinet that no factory makes.
What you should have on screen:
Then the part no assistant does for you. Neither she nor the step planner has seen your room or met your plumbing. Three checks stand between this file and an order:
Run the layout audit. Open every door in your head — fridge, oven, dishwasher, and every cabinet next to them. Walk the aisles for the 36″ minimum. Find the filler at every wall and every inside corner. The twelve mistakes chapter is the checklist, written for exactly this moment.
Confirm the appliance openings. Against the manufacturer’s rough-opening dimensions for the exact model you are buying — not the marketing width. Chapter reference here.
Get a human to look at it. Ours, or anyone who has installed kitchens. The honest reason is our own limit: the step planner is good at order and adjacency and knows nothing about your building. Her DIY answers are grounded in the written guide on this site, and when the lookup comes back with nothing relevant she says she is not certain and points you at a person rather than inventing an answer. That is the behaviour to want — and the reason the last check is not software.
Next in this cluster: how the step planner decides what to recommend — the corner-first rule, the locked-items rule, and why it sometimes answers with a question instead.
Draw the walls with the mouse first, because the assistant has no wall tool and a shape is faster to draw than to describe. Then start a voice call and ask what you should do next. The planner's step logic answers with one cabinet, which wall and why; you agree, she places it, and you ask again. Correct anything you do not like by number, then save under a name. The measuring and the final check against a real layout audit stay yours.
You draw them. Walls are the one part of the room the voice assistant has no tool for, and four clicks with a mouse gives an exact rectangle where the spoken version takes four sentences that can each be misheard. If you ask what to do next before any walls exist, the answer is add walls first, which is correct rather than a failure: it cannot recommend a cabinet into a room that does not exist.
Ask what you should do next. That sentence does not go to the language model at all: it runs the planner's own deterministic step logic over your actual layout, on the server, and comes back with exactly one of three things, a specific recommendation with its reason, a question it needs answered first, or a statement that it is blocked and why. Most of a session is you responding to that.
Because the corner is the position both runs share, and until it is decided neither run has a fixed starting point. Cabinets placed inward from the open ends meet in the middle with an awkward remainder between them. The step planner works corner-first on an L, and when there is a real choice between a square corner cabinet and a blind corner cabinet it hands you that choice as a question with two named options rather than deciding for you. It never recommends the same corner twice.
No. Everything already in the room is treated as locked. The step planner runs the same engine as the full automatic design, then returns the next cabinet from that plan which is not already in your room, so it designs around your decisions instead of overruling them. A sink base you put under the window by hand stays under the window.
No, and you would not want to. The walls are drawn with the mouse, colours, finishes and countertops are not wired to voice at all, and anything you can see and click is faster to click than to describe. The working posture is a hybrid: mouse for pointing and drawing, voice for repetitive placements, small corrections and questions. The step planner also only walks the floor cabinets, so wall cabinets are the automatic design's job or yours.
Say undo. It is the planner's own undo, so it takes back the last change whether she made it or you dragged something by accident. The history is three changes deep by design, so the browser is not holding a large scene many times over, and anything older than that cannot be undone. That is the reason to save under a name before trying anything drastic.
Ten minutes a day per account, resetting on the Toronto calendar day, after which time runs in five-minute blocks costing 1 GH Coin each. A block only renews if you actually spoke during it and spoke within the last minute and a half, so a call you walked away from does not keep spending. After five quiet minutes the connection closes on purpose and returns when you speak again, with the thread intact.
No. What you have is a plan made of real catalogue cabinets at sizes that exist, which is a far better starting point than a sketch, but neither she nor the step planner has seen your room. Before ordering, walk the plan through a layout audit with every door opened in your head, confirm every appliance opening against the manufacturer's rough-opening dimensions for the exact model, and have a human who has installed kitchens look at it.
Twenty minutes with a tape measure, four clicks for the room, then one sentence out loud. Everything after that is yes, left of, right of, and undo.
Open the 3D planner →