Help & FAQ
Groundwork is a structured AI thinking partner for first-time founders. This page explains how the product works outside the flow — the model, the money, and where your data goes. If you don't see your question here, email us at hello@dogroundwork.ai.
Jump to: Getting started · Credits & activation · Critique & iteration · Artifacts · Data & privacy · Billing · Support
Getting started
What is Groundwork?
Groundwork turns structured question paths into guided AI conversations. You pick a project type — feature design, financial modeling, a pitch deck, a founder agreement, and more — and work through it with an AI that asks the right questions in the right order. What you produce is a real artifact: a document, wireframe set, spreadsheet, slide deck, or prototype, plus a project summary you can share. Some project types are Decision projects — pure thinking sessions (Solo or Cofounder?, Quit Your Job or Nights-and-Weekends?, Pivot or Persevere?, and more) where there's no artifact at all: you leave with the decision made and a shareable summary of the reasoning.
You can browse every project type at What you can do.
What's a "project"?
Each project is one project type worked through to a deliverable — for example, "Feature Design: onboarding flow." You can run as many projects as you like; credits and your founder profile carry across all of them.
What happens the first time I sign in?
You land in a short conversation rather than a form. Groundwork asks who you are and what you're building, and ends by showing you a paragraph it would like to remember — which you edit and save yourself. That paragraph becomes your founder profile, and every project you start afterwards begins already knowing it.
It's an invitation, not a gate: leave at any point and you'll land on your normal dashboard, with a card offering to pick the conversation back up exactly where you left it.
What's the founder profile for?
One short paragraph about you, your company, your product, its stage, your audience, and where you and your customers are based (that last part matters — it drives the legal and finance project types). Written once in the opening conversation above, then editable any time at /app/profile. Every new project includes it automatically so you're not repeating yourself, and anything you say inside a project overrides it. It's entirely optional.
What is "Ask Groundwork"?
A free, open-ended chat — the box at the top of your dashboard. Unlike a project it has no question tree and no stages: you just ask. It draws on everything you've settled across your other projects, tells you which project each fact came from, and when a question really deserves a structured project it offers to start the right one in a click.
Sessions are free to create, name themselves from your first message, and don't count against anything you've paid for. There's a generous allowance of messages across all your sessions, which grows every time you activate a project; you won't see it until you're close to the end of it. You can generate a document from a session at the normal credit price.
How does a project actually flow?
Onboarding → Discovery → Validation → Brief → Build → (free critique →) optional paid Iteration → Wrap Up. You answer questions in chat; once enough context exists, the AI proposes building an artifact. After the first draft, you get one free critique, then you can choose to buy a round of polishing or wrap up as-is.
Decision projects run a shorter path: Onboarding → Discovery → Validation → Wrap Up. There's no brief, build, critique, or iteration — the questions walk you from mapping your situation to pressure-testing your reasoning, and the wrap-up summary (the decision memo) is the deliverable.
Credits & activation
What are credits?
Credits are Groundwork's single currency for paid actions — buying a credit pack or activating a project both deduct from (or add to) the same balance. Credits are tied to your account and work across every project. Check your balance any time from the settings menu.
What does "activating" a project unlock, and what does it cost?
Every project starts free: unlimited projects, all project types browsable, and the first 5 questions of any project visible. Activation ($19 one-time, or paid from your credit balance) unlocks the rest of that project's questions and unlimited conversation within it. It does not include artifact generation, critique rounds, or the summary — those are separate, per-output charges on top.
What happens when I hit the free-tier limit?
Whichever comes first — your 5th resolved question, or about 15 exchanges in that project — an activation screen appears with a recap of your progress and the unlock price. You can activate immediately (credits or Stripe checkout) or dismiss it; dismissing just saves your progress with no penalty, and you can activate later. A quiet counter appears in the last few exchanges, so the limit never arrives mid-thought without warning.
What actually costs credits?
Only the expensive, generative steps: creating an artifact, buying an iteration (polishing) block, and generating the closing project summary. Everyday chat — answering questions, discussing your idea — is never charged. Typical output costs (credit amounts are admin-configurable and may vary; check /app/billing for current numbers):
| Output | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Document | 10 credits |
| Google Doc / Sheet / Slides | 15 credits |
| Wireframe set | 15 credits |
| HTML prototype | 20 credits |
| Iteration phase (up to 10 rounds) | 10 credits |
| Project summary | 5 credits |
What if I run out of credits?
You'll be prompted to buy a credit pack wherever a credit-gated action comes up (the settings menu also surfaces a "Buy credits" shortcut once your balance drops below 10). Nothing you've already built is affected — you just can't trigger a new paid action until you top up.
Do credits expire, or move between accounts?
Credits are valid for 24 months from the day they land in your account, and we'll email you before any are due to expire. They're spent oldest-first, so the ones closest to expiring always go first. They stay with your account across every project you create, and aren't transferable between accounts. Full terms in §6.3 of the Terms.
Is there a monthly plan?
No. Groundwork has no subscription and no recurring charge — you pay once to activate a project, and buy credits for the outputs you actually generate. Running an accelerator or a studio? Get in touch about cohort pricing.
Critique & iteration (polishing an artifact)
What's free after my artifact is built?
The very first critique of a freshly built artifact is always free — it's a teaser so you can see what the AI would suggest before you decide to pay for a full polishing round.
What does the paid "Iteration" phase actually buy?
One purchase unlocks a block of up to 10 critique → revise rounds. In each round the AI critiques your artifact, you choose how to respond (accept the fixes, walk through issues one by one, or wrap up), the AI produces a new version, and it critiques again — with a recommendation each time on whether to keep going. You're only charged once per block, not per round; if you use all 10 rounds and want more, you can buy another block.
Can I stop mid-iteration?
Yes — "wrap up" is available at every step of the loop, and the AI will also tell you when it thinks the artifact is ready. Stopping early doesn't refund unused rounds in the current block, but there's no obligation to use them all.
Artifacts
What types of artifacts can I generate?
Documents, Google Docs, financial-model Google Sheets, pitch-deck Google Slides, Balsamiq wireframe sets, and self-contained HTML prototypes — the set offered depends on the project type. The Google and Balsamiq types sync directly into a real file in your connected account, in addition to living in Groundwork.
Decision projects (look for the violet "Decision" badge in the picker) are the exception: they have no build phase (and so no critique or iteration). Their deliverable is the wrap-up summary — a decision memo capturing what you decided, why, what you ruled out, and what would make you revisit it.
Do I need to connect anything?
Only for the Google Docs/Sheets/Slides and Balsamiq wireframe types — connect Google Drive and/or Balsamiq from /app/integrations. Plain documents and HTML prototypes need no external connection.
Can I edit an artifact after it's created?
Yes, through the guided critique/iteration loop, or by asking for changes in chat. For Google- and Balsamiq-synced artifacts, edits you make directly in the external file are read back and respected the next time Groundwork touches it.
Can I access my documents from outside Groundwork?
Yes — generate a personal API token from Settings to let your own tools (like an AI coding assistant, e.g. Claude Code) read your finished documents and summaries via MCP. Only finished, already-generated content is accessible — never drafts, chat, or other founders' data. Tokens are free, read-only, and can be revoked at any time.
What happens when I share an artifact?
Sharing creates a public link — no sign-in required for whoever opens it — with a Groundwork attribution footer. You can revoke a share link at any time; the old link stops working immediately, and re-sharing mints a fresh one.
Data & privacy
What happens to what I type into a session?
It's sent to Anthropic (our AI provider) to generate the response, associated only with an internal session identifier — never your name, email, or payment details. It is not used to train AI models. Full detail lives in our Privacy Policy.
Does anyone at Groundwork read my projects?
Only to operate the service or to debug a problem you've reported — never otherwise, and never to train models. See the Privacy Policy's "What we will never do" section for the complete list of commitments.
Can I delete my data?
You can delete individual projects at any time, and you can request full account deletion. See Privacy Policy §6–7 for retention windows and your rights.
Do projects I never finish stick around forever?
Activated projects do — they're yours to keep however long they sit. Projects you never activated are archived automatically once they go quiet: after 14 days with no activity if you never answered a question in them, or 45 days if you did. Opening a project and carrying on resets the clock, and activating it removes the clock entirely.
We email you a warning at least 5 days before it happens, and the project's card on your dashboard shows a countdown from 10 days out. Archiving isn't deletion — an archived project shows up under "Recently archived" on your dashboard and restores in one click for 30 days. Only after that is it gone for good.
Can I turn off the emails about unfinished projects?
Yes — "Reminder emails" in the settings menu. Unsubscribing from product updates switches them off too. The warning that an unactivated project is about to be archived still goes out either way: it's about your own data, so we don't let a marketing preference silence it.
Where can I read the legal details?
The Privacy Policy and Terms of Service cover this in full — what's collected, who it's shared with, and your rights under GDPR/CCPA.
Billing
How do I buy more credits?
/app/billing, or the "Buy credits"/"Billing" links in the settings menu. Credit packs and project activations are both one-time purchases processed by Stripe — there's nothing recurring to cancel. Payment methods and receipts live in the Stripe customer portal linked there.
Is payment secure?
Yes — all payments go through Stripe, a PCI-DSS Level 1 certified processor. Your card details never touch Groundwork's servers.
Support
Something not covered here, or something not working? Email hello@dogroundwork.ai.