SESSIONS

HER BROWSER ASKS

Install the apps — start here

These apps belong on the home screen, not in a browser tab. In the browser, tap Share, then More, then Add to Home Screen — once for iRIS Voice and once for NEON ENGINE. Installed, each app runs like a real app, full screen under its own icon, and it can receive push notifications, so task results and reminders arrive even while the app is closed. A browser tab cannot receive push.

The teleport button — the round button in the corner that switches between iRIS Voice and the game — works only when both apps are installed on the home screen, each as its own app.

Getting started

Type in the box at the bottom, or tap the microphone and talk, then press SEND. iRIS answers in text on screen, and out loud in Talk mode. She only states facts — if she doesn't know something, she says so instead of guessing.

Just ask her — typing does things

Most of the app works by asking, in plain words:

• "Remind me to call the garage tomorrow at 9." — sets a task.
• "What's the weather this weekend?"
• "Search for winter tire prices."
• "What's new today?" — opens your feed's stories.
• "Check my email."
• "Read this page:" followed by a link — she fetches and reads it.
• "What does this video say?" with a YouTube link — she reads the transcript.
• "Find pictures of lighthouses." / "Find a video of…"
• "What are my tasks?" · "Mark that task done." · "Delete that task."

Links in her answers are tappable. Story links open in the app's reader; every other link opens in your browser.

Tell her to do it

The whole app takes orders. Type or say what you want done:

• "Open my feed." · "Open the studio." · "Open my tasks." · "Open Config."
• "Start a new chat." · "Switch to my recipe chat." · "Pin my recipe chat."
• "Change the skin to crimson." · "Turn the sound effects off."
• "Add ferries to my interests." · "Read me the ferry story."
• "Open the manual." — this page, hands-free.

Two things always ask for a confirming tap inside the app instead: deleting a chat (hold the chat, then Delete) and resetting your feed interests (in YOUR INTERESTS).

The tray

Under the message box sits the tray — always there, one tap each: TALK (hands-free voice), CAM (photos), ATTACH (files), VOICE (her spoken replies, on or off), CONFIG (settings), STUDIO (photo editing), VIDEO (video editing), TASKS, and FEED.

Photos

CAM stages up to six photos — tap a staged photo to see it full-screen before sending, tap its ✕ to remove it — then press SEND and she looks at all of them together. Ask in words: "What's in these photos?" "Read the text on this label." "Make it brighter." "Make it black and white."

Or edit by hand in STUDIO: the stations LIGHT, COLOR, TEXTURE, FILTERS and FRAME, and the tools TEXT, CALLOUT, WAND, LASSO, CROP and FX. FOCUS folds the controls away so the photo fills the screen. Every adjustment previews on the photo in real time as it is made — and for TEXT and FX, what shows while tuning is exactly what ADD keeps; leaving the tool without adding puts nothing on the photo. Edits you make yourself are always free.

Everything you add to a photo in STUDIO is a layer: each piece of text, each callout, each drawing and each effect sits on its own layer, in the order you added it. Tap LAYERS in the Studio tools to see the stack. From there you can hide a layer so it leaves the picture without being deleted, bring it back, move it up or down the stack, rename it, or remove it — and the stack is saved with the photo, so it is still there when you open the photo again. An effect also has a mask — the set of areas it touches. With an effect layer picked, you can add more areas to its mask, take an area away, flip the mask so the effect covers everything except the areas you picked, and soften its edges so it blends in. An effect's mask can also be painted: with the effect layer picked, tap PAINT beside the mask controls — BRUSH paints the effect on where you drag, AIR lays it on gently so each pass builds on the last, and ERASE takes it back off, which is what you want along fur and hair, where a colour pick grabs too much at once. SIZE makes the brush wider or finer, SHOW tints the whole mask over the photo so you can see exactly where it reaches, and FILL and CLEAR cover everything or nothing in one tap. Every stroke is a single step, so undo takes back exactly that stroke and nothing else. Words in a piece of text can carry their own colour too: with the text picked, tap ACCENT in the text controls, pick a colour, then tap words in the text on the photo to give them that colour — tap an accent word again to give it back the text's own colour. Text wider than its picture breaks neatly at the word boundaries into lines that fit the picture, keeping your size and colour — nothing runs off the edges. To fix the words in a piece of text, tap the text on the photo (or pick it in LAYERS): its words appear in the wide WORDS box above the text controls — type there to change them, and the photo updates as you type. Moving the text to a new spot keeps its words in the box, so a typo can be fixed right after a move. When you drag a picture or a piece of text, it snaps to the middle, the edges and the third lines of the photo, and lines up with the edges and middle of the other pictures. A piece of text lines up with the other pieces of text too — edge to edge, middle to middle, and line to line, so two headlines dragged near each other settle onto the very same line — and with the card's divider line when it is turned on. So things sit exactly where you mean them to — a guide line shows the line you are on while it holds. The SNAP chip in the CALLOUT and TEXT controls turns snapping off, and the Studio remembers your choice.

You can also ask iRIS in the chat to work on a photo's layers for you. Ask her to list them, rename one, hide one, bring one back, fade one, move one up or down the stack, or take one away — and to add new words, drawings, callouts and masked effects of her own. The picture re-saves with the change, so what she did is right there on the photo. A card's panels are still managed in the Studio itself.

STUDIO can also make a card: two photos side by side that melt into a background colour. In the Studio, tap ADD A PHOTO and choose LAYOUT, pick the background colour, and tap CREATE CARD. Tap each side of the card to add its photo, then drag the picture inside its side to aim it and pinch to zoom it. The MELT control in the LAYERS panel sets how far both photos fade into the background. The LINE control in the LAYERS panel draws a divider line under the photos — turn it on, give it a colour and a thickness, and it glows in its own colour: the GLOW control beside it makes the glow stronger or softer. Tap BADGE to set a round badge in the middle of the line: pick any photo and it is cropped into the circle for you, the line stopping for the circle and carrying on after it. NO BADGE takes the badge away and leaves the plain line. Add your words with the text tool, as on any photo. The card saves whole — reopen it and both photos are still in their sides; tap one and choose CHANGE PIC to swap it. If a photo is already open in the Studio when you tap CREATE CARD, the card starts with that photo in its first side. A picture iRIS brought into the chat — one you asked her to fetch, or one she made — can fill any side or panel too: tap the side, choose FROM IRIS in the ADD A PHOTO sheet, and tap the picture.

A card can instead be FREEFORM: photos placed anywhere you like instead of two fixed sides. On the card sheet, choose FREEFORM beside SIDE BY SIDE; or open a photo in the Studio and choose FREEFORM there to make that photo the card's base; or turn a side-by-side card you already have with MAKE FREEFORM in the LAYERS panel — that way is one-way, though undo covers a mistaken tap before you save. In the callout tool, tap ADD PANEL and pick a photo: it lands in the middle of the card. Drag a panel by its middle to move it — it sticks to the card's edges, centre lines, thirds and the other panels as it passes them, and the SNAP switch turns that sticking off — drag its edge to size it, and pinch to zoom the picture inside it. A card holds up to six panels. In the LAYERS panel each panel can be moved up or down the stack, renamed or removed, and the X, Y, W and H steppers place the picked panel exactly, one percent at a time. MELT still sets how far the photos fade into the background, now at each panel's own edge: MELT EDGE flips the melt to the panels' top edges, which is how a card with its photos at the bottom melts them upward. The divider line still works on a freeform card, and LINE POS steps it to any height. Panels are the card itself; words and pictures placed on top of them are layers, as before.

Video editing

VIDEO in the tray opens her editing bench. Hand her a clip there — up to 64 MB and four minutes — and it waits in your video store. Then tell her the edit in chat, in plain words: "Cut out 0:04 to 0:07." "Keep 0:02 to 0:05 and 0:09 to the end." "Make it VHS RETRO." She cuts in as many places as you name — not a single trim — adds timed effects (blur, grain, warmth, glow, glitch, chroma shift), callouts, and whole looks by name (WARM PROMO, CINEMATIC, CLEAN BRIGHT, GOLDEN HOUR, SOFT GLOW, FILM GRAIN, VHS RETRO, VINTAGE FADE, MOODY DARK, COLOUR POP), and can join two stored clips end to end. Renders run one at a time on the server and take a little while; the finished video lands back in the VIDEO panel, where you can watch it and save it to your device. The same words ride the suggestion strip above the message box while you type.

Chats & sessions

The button at the top left opens Sessions. + NEW starts a chat. Hold any chat for its options: pin, archive, delete. The search box finds chats by name or by what's in them. The list stays exactly where you left it when you come back. Chats back up to your account automatically.

Your feed

FEED in the tray is a personal front page. It learns from what you search for, the chats you start, the stories you open, and the ones you like:

• The heart on a card is a LIKE: it teaches her more of that — and the story's category. A like does not save the story.
• The bookmark on a card SAVES it: SAVED at the top of the feed lists everything kept, newest first, and a save stays there until its bookmark is tapped again — even after the story has left the feed itself.
• Hold any card for the reaction row (thumbs up, thumbs down, heart, laughing face, surprised face, sad face — the heart teaches her more than the thumbs up, and the sad face and the thumbs down count against the story's topics) and for ASK iRIS ABOUT THIS, which opens a chat with that story as its subject.
• Hold any of her chat messages for the same reactions — there they are ANSWERS: a thumbs up on a yes-or-no question means yes, a thumbs down means no, and she continues from it. A reaction on a message that shares a story is a verdict on the story, never on her. The + in the row opens the full set. Over many reactions a taste pattern forms — see HOW YOUR REACTIONS LAND beside YOUR INTERESTS — and she can react back, now and then, with the same symbols.
• Reading a story: the gold eye at the top centre of the reader opens iRIS in a window over the story — ask her anything about it; she has the story's whole text. Closing the window returns to the exact spot in the story. A story already asked about reopens its existing chat.
• ✕ hides a story and cools its topic.
• The share button in each card's top row — heart, share, bookmark, hide — and in the reader, between Aa and the back arrow — shares the story's headline and link. The link is copied in the same tap, so it survives whichever app it is shared into.
• Cards say why they're there ("Because you asked about…").
• Tap a headline to read the story inside iRIS, cleaned of ads and popups. OPEN ORIGINAL at the bottom goes to the source.
• YOUR INTERESTS shows the whole profile: add a topic, mute or remove one, or reset it. Tap a topic's name to read only that topic.
• Long summaries get a SEE MORE control. The weather rides on top. The feed refreshes when you open it — it never pushes stories at you.
• The Aa button (here and in the reader) picks the reading font — System, Montserrat, Atkinson Hyperlegible or Source Serif — and the text weight, from thin to thick. It covers the feed, saved stories and the reader, and stays set on this device.
• The half-disc button beside Aa in the reader picks the reader's theme — Light (warm paper), Evening (warm dark) or Dark — and stays set on this device. The feed keeps its own colours.
• Small dots rest in the reader's margins at every paragraph — a pair for each one, the left and right dots level with the paragraph's first line — glowing steadily in the theme's accent colour. The Aa sheet's READING DOTS controls dim them (DOTS OPACITY) or switch them off altogether.

Tasks & reminders

Ask her in words, or use the TASKS panel. Tasks can repeat — daily, weekly, monthly, or every few hours. Action tasks do real work while you're away (searches, news, weather, mail) and post the result to your chat. Turn on PUSH NOTIFICATIONS in Tasks or Config to be alerted when the app is closed.

Make her yours — Config

• Skin — six skins recolor the whole app.
• Pin Style — how pinned chats are marked: a pin, a ring, or a rail.
• Reading Font — the typeface and text weight for the feed, saved stories and the reader.
• Backgrounds — your own photo behind the conversation and behind the sessions list.
• Sound Effects — the interface sounds, on or off.
• Cloud Backup — backup status, SYNC NOW, and your Device ID.
• UPDATE APP — picks up the newest version.

Credits

A text answer costs 1 SI credit, a photo question 2, reading a file (PDF or text) 3 — refunded if the read fails. Your own photo edits cost nothing. Free accounts get 5 SI a day, added at midnight, and unspent SI banks up to 25; Premium is unlimited for $8 a month. A guest pass makes everything unlimited until the pass runs out, free — if someone gives you a code, enter it under GUEST PASS in Config.

Her own posts

iRIS posts for herself too. Her build updates land on her build log as they ship, and wait as drafts for her Facebook Page and her Bluesky. When NEWS is switched on in her Promotion panel, the lead stories from her own news feed are drafted for her Facebook Page and her Bluesky the same way — one draft, both places, posted together on the one tap. Nothing in the draft queue goes out on its own — every draft waits for a POST IT tap in the panel, and can be edited or held instead — unless its desk is set to post on its own in the News Control Room below. A story that is skipped is never drafted again, and a story that has gone stale while it waited will not post.

Her news is run from the News Control Room in the same panel, where her frequency, hours, desks, wires and word lists are set. There is no daily news limit unless one is set, and no wait between posts unless one is set; you choose how many news drafts may wait at once. Facebook and Bluesky each carry their own daily posting limit in the same room — every post she makes counts against its channel's limit, news, build updates and clips alike, and the limit binds at posting, never at drafting. Each stands at 4 a day until you change it, and either can be set to no limit at all. When a post is held by one, the draft says which channel and which limit, and the slider that moves it is right there in the room. You can give her hours — she drafts and posts news only inside them, on the days you pick. Each of her desks (the subjects she follows) can be switched off, and each can either wait for your tap or post its stories on its own the moment they draft; the panel says plainly which desks post on their own. Her wires — the feeds her stories come from — can be switched off one by one, and you can add your own wire by pasting a news feed address; she checks it before it is added. You set how long a story stays fresh, whether her posts name the wire a story came from, and two word lists: a story matching a blocked word never drafts, and a story matching a watch word drafts to the front of the queue. A breaking word on a story less than an hour old puts it at the front marked BREAKING. And at the time you choose each day, she can compose one roundup draft from the day's posted and waiting stories — it waits for your tap like everything else.

What she won't do

She won't guess. She can fill in forms on pages she's browsing — only with your approval first, every time. She can't create accounts or get past CAPTCHAs and verification codes — those need you in a browser. When she can't do something, she says so plainly.