The assistant in the planner used to explain your kitchen to you. Since August she can also change it — add a cabinet, slide one along the wall, take one out, undo, save. Here is every command, and every refusal.
Something in the planner changed in August, and it is easy to miss because the screen looks identical. The small avatar in the corner used to be a very good explainer: she could tell you that the wall cabinet on wall two was sitting eight inches off the floor and that this was why the toe kick had vanished — and then the fixing was still your job, with a mouse, while she watched. Now, on a voice call, she can reach in and do it. Not everything. Not in any way that will surprise you. But she can add a cabinet, slide one along a wall, take one out, undo the last thing that happened, and save the whole design under a name — and every one of those is a button that was already on your screen.
The tool list is short on purpose, and nothing on it is a new capability invented for the microphone. Each command maps onto something the planner already does when you click: Add Right, a nudge along the wall, delete, undo, save. She is pressing your buttons, not drawing freehand. That is the whole design philosophy, and it is why the results are predictable enough to trust while you are looking somewhere else.
Two things about getting into a call catch almost everybody out at least once.
She works in English, Mandarin Chinese and French. Speak the way you would to somebody standing behind your chair: she is built for one or two sentences at a time, and every command in this chapter is one sentence long.
This is the one concept the whole feature stands on, and it takes about ten seconds to learn. Every cabinet and every appliance in your design carries a number. It is not a name she made up for the conversation and it is not “the third one from the left” — it is the same number the planner prints in its own item list on screen, which means you can read it off your display, point at it with a finger, and say it out loud. Every command that touches an item takes that number as its address.
Which makes the first sentence of most calls the least interesting one. Ask her to read the list, and you get back:
There is a second look-only command: ask her to select or highlight a number and she will, and nothing else happens. It edits nothing. Use it as a confirm step before a command you are not certain about — “show me number seven”, look at the screen, then tell her to move it. Two seconds to avoid moving the wrong cabinet is a trade worth making every time.
The mouse is still the better pointer for anything you can see and reach: clicking a cabinet puts it into the selection, and the selection is part of what she reads. Numbers earn their keep when clicking is awkward — two identical boxes in one run, something hidden behind a tall cabinet in the 3D view, or your hands busy with a tape measure. The phrasing chapter goes further on pointing with the mouse instead of with words.
What they search at midnight “add a cabinet by voice” — usually on the third round of “no, the other one.” Learn the numbers and that round disappears.
Ten commands, and that is the complete list. Nothing here is phrased as an incantation, because none of it is: she is listening for intent, not for exact words. The column that matters most is the last one — what has to be true before the command can work at all.
| The job | Say something like | What happens | What it needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read the list | “Read me everything you’ve got.” | Every cabinet and appliance, with its number, code, width and wall, and which is selected | Nothing |
| Point at one | “Show me number seven.” | Selects and highlights it. Changes nothing else | Nothing |
| Add a cabinet | “Put a thirty-inch base to the right of number four.” | The planner’s own Add Right, snug against number four, no gap | An item already there to sit beside |
| Slide it along | “Move number six three inches left.” | Slides along its own wall by the amount you named | Room on that side |
| Change its height | “Raise number nine two inches.” | Changes a wall cabinet’s height off the floor | A cabinet that hangs |
| Remove one | “Take out number eleven.” | Deletes it. Everything after it renumbers | A number that exists |
| Undo | “Undo that.” | Takes back the last change — hers or one you made with the mouse | Something to undo |
| Save | “Save this.” / “Save it as Plan B.” | No name saves over what you have open; a name saves it as something new | Signed in |
| Open a design | “What have I got saved?” / “Open Plan B.” | Lists your saved designs, or replaces what is on screen with one of them | Signed in |
| Ask what is next | “What should I do next?” | Runs the planner’s step planner and returns one recommendation, or one question | Nothing |
Three of those behave in ways people do not expect, and they are worth spelling out before you are mid-call and confused.
Not the language model. The planner’s own step logic.
This command does not go to the model at all. It runs the planner’s deterministic step planner over your actual layout and comes back with one concrete recommendation, or with the one question it needs answered before it can recommend anything. She reads you the result in plain language and asks whether you want it placed — and if you say yes, she places that, and only that.
It is the right first sentence in an empty room, the right sentence when you are stuck, and the only one on the list where the answer is not something you already decided.
“Make that one a thirty-six” sounds like a single instruction, and in the tools it is not. There is no swap command. What happens instead is that she removes the old cabinet and adds the new one into the gap it left — and you will hear her describe it that way, which surprises people the first time.
The reason is the numbering, and once you see it you would not build it any other way. Every removal renumbers everything else. Take number four out of a run of nine and the old number five becomes four, six becomes five, and every number you wrote down thirty seconds ago is now off by one. A swap built as “delete number four, then add beside number four” would be adding against a number that stopped meaning what it meant a moment earlier — which is exactly the class of bug that puts a cabinet somewhere baffling and destroys your trust in the whole feature.
So the removal hands back the gap it created: a fresh number, plus a side. She uses that immediately, in the same breath, before anything else can shift underneath it. Two operations, one sentence from you, no stale addresses in between.
These two are asymmetric on purpose, because one of them is destructive and the other is not.
Saying “save this” with no name saves over the design you currently have open — the same thing the save button does. Give it a name and it saves as something new, leaving the original exactly where it was. That second form is the most useful sentence in this entire chapter: “save this as Plan B” before you try something you might regret. Undo takes back the last change. It is not a time machine for the last twenty minutes, and a name is.
Loading is the destructive one. Opening a saved design replaces everything on screen — so she asks before she does it, and offers to save what is currently open first. Take the offer. It is one word, and the alternative is a run of cabinets you spent forty minutes on that now only exists in your memory of it.
Before you pull four cabinets out to see whether the run works better with drawers, say “save this as Plan B”. Then experiment freely. If the new version is worse, ask what you have saved, open Plan B by name, and you are back where you were with no undo history to unwind.
Both saving and loading need you signed in. If you are not, she says so plainly rather than telling you it worked and quietly dropping it.
An assistant that quietly does something adjacent to what you asked is far worse than one that stops and tells you why. Anything you cannot see happening is something you will find three days later, in a quote, wondering how it got there. So four rules govern every edit, and none of them bend.
The reasons you will actually meet are short and specific: no room on that side, when the neighbour or the wall is in the way; nothing by that number, which almost always means you are reading from a list taken before a removal renumbered things; and not signed in, which only ever affects saving and opening.
One behaviour worth knowing so it does not look like a glitch: editing in the 3D view requires the planner’s Edit 3D mode. The tools switch it on for you rather than refusing, and she mentions it once when that happens — so a cabinet appearing in 3D never comes with a silent change of mode you did not notice. The buttons and modes are all in the designer chapter.
This is the shape of a real session once you know the numbers. Note how little of it is talking, and that the talking happens in the moments where a sentence beats a menu.
You — “Read me the list.”
Emma — “Eleven items. Wall two, left to right: one, an eighteen-inch base, B18. Two, a thirty-six inch sink base, SB36. Three, the dishwasher. Four, a twenty-four inch base, B24. Wall three has the fridge and three wall cabinets. Number four is selected.”
You — “Put a thirty-inch base to the right of number four.”
Emma — “No room on that side. Do you want it on the left instead?”
You — “Yes, do that.”
Emma — “Added a thirty-inch base, B30, to the left of number four.”
You — “Make number two a thirty-three instead.”
Emma — “That’s a remove and an add — the thirty-six inch sink base comes out and a thirty-three goes into the gap. Go ahead?”
You — “Go ahead.”
Emma — “Done. Everything after it has renumbered — want the list again?”
You — “Hang on — undo. I dragged that one by accident.”
Emma — “Undone. That was your move, not mine.”
You — “Save this as Plan B.”
Emma — “Saved as Plan B. The one you started in is untouched.”
Three things in there are the whole argument for voice. The refusal came with a reason and an alternative instead of silence. The swap was described honestly as two operations rather than pretending to be one. And the undo covered a mistake made with the mouse, because it is the planner’s undo — not a private history of things she happens to have done.
This list is short and it is not going to be much shorter soon. Reading it now is cheaper than discovering it mid-sentence.
One more honest note: none of this replaces reading your own quote. Nothing is ordered by voice, deliberately, and the numbers that cost money stay on screen where you can go through them line by line.
Yes, on a voice call, one cabinet at a time. You name the cabinet, the item it goes beside and the side: left, right, above or below. It is the planner's own Add Left and Add Right, so the new cabinet lands snug against its neighbour with no gap. What you cannot do is add a cabinet at an absolute position along a wall.
Both, but only on a voice call. The voice assistant in our planner can add, move, remove, undo, save and open designs, and can run the planner's step planner for a recommendation. The typing panel is a different thing: it answers questions, needs no account and no microphone, and has no tools at all, so it cannot change anything in your design.
No. Placement by voice is always relative to something already in the drawing, so there is no way to say forty inches along wall two. The upside is that adjacent placement lands snug with no gap to chase later. In an empty room, ask what you should do next instead: the step planner names a first cabinet and can place it, and everything after that can be spoken as left of or right of.
By number. Every cabinet and appliance carries a number, and it is the same number the planner prints in its item list on screen, so you can read it off your own display. Ask her to read the list and you get each item's number, catalogue code, width and wall, plus which one is selected. Clicking an item also works, because the current selection is part of what she reads.
You ask for the swap in one sentence and she performs it as two operations: the old cabinet is removed and the new one is added into the gap it left. There is no single swap command, because every removal renumbers the remaining items, so a two-step swap using the old number would be pointing at the wrong place. The removal hands back the gap as a fresh number and a side, and she uses it immediately.
Yes. Undo takes back the last change to the design regardless of who made it, so a cabinet you dragged by accident can be undone by saying so. It takes back the last change, not the last twenty minutes, which is why saving under a name before an experiment is the better safety net.
Yes, and both need you signed in. Saying save with no name saves over the design you have open; giving a name saves it as a new one and leaves the original alone. She can also list your saved designs and open one by name. Opening replaces everything on screen, so she asks first and offers to save what is currently open before she does it.
English, Mandarin Chinese and French. Speak normally rather than in commands: she is listening for what you mean, not for exact wording, and she is built for one or two sentences at a time rather than long instructions.
She cannot place a cabinet at an absolute position, cannot change a door colour, finish or countertop, cannot resize a cabinet or move a wall, cannot judge whether your kitchen looks nice, and cannot measure your real room. She also cannot edit anything from the typing panel. Everything she does change is one cabinet at a time, described in one short sentence, and undoable.
Draw your room, click the avatar in the corner, and say the one sentence that does the most work. Everything after that is left of, right of, and undo.
Open the 3D planner →