Ask The W
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Getting started

Your First Day With Ask The W

Get from sign-in to first source, first signals, and first decision.

This page walks you from sign-in to your first decision in about 15 minutes. Skip ahead if you have already done a step.

Ask The W is the judgement layer for AI-native product teams. The first-day goal is simple: connect one useful source, capture the why behind the first product decision, and confirm it ladders up to the North Star.

Sign in and pick a workspace

Workspaces isolate decisions and signals by team or project. The first workspace is created at signup. If you belong to multiple workspaces, switch before connecting sources.

Use private for focused work and shared for cross-team visibility.

Use workspace boundaries when products have independent goals or teams need secure separation.

Product reference

Product reference: Connectors overview with active GitHub, plugin, paste, and URL sources

Find it in Ask The W by opening Connectors from the left navigation. Start in the connected-sources strip, confirm one source is active, then add the next source only after the first signals are useful.

Connect your first source

Start with GitHub for code work, Paste Context for strategy notes, or the Ask The W Plugin for Claude Code or Codex.

Connect one source first. The goal is not volume. The goal is a dependable signal stream that maps product judgement to concrete outcomes quickly.

For most teams, connect in this order:

  1. GitHub if code, PRs, and reviews are your clearest decision source.
  2. Paste Context for strategy notes, PRDs, customer notes, and planning artifacts.
  3. One hosted connector such as Notion, Slack, or Linear if operational context is spread outside source control.
  4. The Ask The W Plugin if coding-agent work should appear in the same decision trail.

Avoid connecting everything at once. Noisy input can hide signal while the graph is still learning.

Wait for your first signals

Signals are timestamped records from traceable sources. Ask The W parses them, identifies decision-like facts, and links relevant signals to outcomes.

Good early signals mention what changed, who owns it, why it matters, or what happens next.

The first useful signal is often small: a pull request that changed direction, a pasted launch note, a customer-call excerpt, or a plugin checkpoint that explains why an implementation moved.

Make your first decision

Open /next and review the decision feed. Ask The W creates decisions when source material contains a clear, business-relevant choice.

Each decision has a status:

  • Proposed: a tentative or exploratory direction.
  • Committed: the default for accepted plans and newly created decisions.
  • Shipped: the work has launched, merged, deployed, or gone live.
  • Abandoned: the direction was cancelled, dropped, sunset, or marked as not a decision.

If the decision is linked to the wrong outcome, fix the link from the card. If something is not really a decision, expand the card and choose Not a decision? to demote it back out of the feed.

Ask The W can also create decisions from W chat or from signal review actions. Either way, the useful judgement record is the same: a choice, a reason, an owner, a source trail, and an outcome link when one is known.

Set your North Star

The North Star is the workspace-level aim Ask The W uses to interpret outcomes and risk. In Decisions, open North Star, click Edit, then set the metric, current value, target, owner, target date, and rationale.

North Star updates affect outcome triage, freshness scoring, and how W frames risk, so make the first version specific enough to guide the next week of work.

Quality checks before adding more sources

Before connecting a second or third source, check:

  • Are outcomes specific and decision-linked?
  • Are top decisions mapped to a likely owner?
  • Does each new signal reduce ambiguity?
  • Do you see clear next-move recommendations per outcome?
  • Are stale or duplicate outcomes corrected?

If the first source does not produce useful links, narrow the source material rather than adding more volume.

Manage workspaces as you grow

Open /settings/workspaces when you need to view, switch, or create workspaces.

After switching, outcomes, decisions, signals, makers, connectors, notifications, and exports all follow the active workspace. Use private for tight team loops and shared when product partners need visibility.

Where to go next