Start here

Getting started with EcoDesign

What the app does, in what order, and what the first hour looks like. If you already have a project, the page you want is your Project Map — it always knows what your next step is.

1. The journey, in four stages

Every project in EcoDesign walks the same four stages, in the order the work actually happens. Your Project Map draws them as four labelled regions and keeps score inside each one.

Stage	What happens	How you get in
Research	Climate, soil, water, hydrology, topography, vegetation and community analysis of your actual site, plus the AI insights built on them.	Included. It runs on your credits, and a new account starts with 200 free ones.
Design	The site studio, element and zone selection, the Plant Guild Designer, the passive-solar floor plan pipeline and the seasonal garden planner.	Unlocked once per project. See what Design includes.
Application & Construction	The implementation plan: tasks, budget and the as-built record of what you really put in the ground.	Opens with the same Design unlock, from the accepted design work.
Farm	The Farmer Hub: farm profile, crop planning, practice library and field records — day-to-day operation once the site exists.	A subscription per project, with a 30-day free trial on your first hub. The Farmer Hub

You do not have to remember this

The Project Map holds the whole journey for you, and its banner names one step at a time and says why that one. Read Your Project Map once and you can stop reading help pages.

2. Your first hour

Create the project. From My Projects, use New Garden for anything up to roughly 1,000 m² — urban, terrace, home, community gardens and green roofs — or New Eco Project for farms, eco-villages, restoration and reforestation from 1,000 m² upwards. Either way the first screen is a map: search an address or click the point. The full walkthrough
Open its Project Map. This is the step most people skip and then miss. Click the project card on My Projects — the whole card is the link, and its footer reads Open Project →. You land on a map of your own project, with every step it contains marked done, next, available or locked. Come back here between every other step.
Fill in what you know in Project Settings. Nine sections, each with a green check when it is complete. Nothing is mandatory and everything can be changed later, but the research agents read these fields, so what you fill in is what they reason over. The nine sections
Run the AI analysis. Research covers your site's climate, soil, water, hydrology, topography and vegetation and takes roughly 30–60 seconds per run. Ask follow-up questions in the same conversation — every conversation is saved. AI research tools

3. The AI agents you will meet

EcoDesign runs a catalogue of 89 configured AI agents, not a handful of chatbots. You never pick one from a list of 89 — each tool calls the family that belongs to it. It is worth knowing which family is answering you.

Research

Handbook advisors that answer in prose and cite the knowledge base, the multimodal sector analyst that reads your site map image alongside your project data, and the findings extractor that turns a long conversation into structured findings your later steps can read.

Design

Component and zone selection pipelines, the ten-agent Plant Guild pipeline that composes and cross-checks guilds, the eight-agent seasonal garden planner, and the eight passive-solar agents behind the floor plan pipeline.

Farm

The Farmer Hub agents, which write strict structured output rather than prose because the hub renders their answers as crop plans, practices and records — plus the nine-agent potato transition chain.

Guidance

The wayfinding agents, including the project guide you can open from your Project Map with the speech-bubble button. It knows the state of your project and answers questions about it.

Meet the research agents

4. What things cost

Three different things get paid for, and they are worth keeping apart. A project space is what a new project consumes — run out and the creation buttons tell you "You need at least 1 project space available", and more are bought from your user profile. Credits are what AI answers cost. Unlocks are Design and the Farmer Hub, and both belong to one project.

How an AI answer is priced

Every AI response is charged on the tokens it actually used. The formula in credit_service.py is round(total_tokens / 1000), with a minimum of 2 credits for any answer — so a one-line reply and a short one cost the same, and a long analysis costs more. A new account starts with 200 free credits, and your balance is in the top navigation bar on every page.

Unlocks are the other kind: Design is bought once for a project and stays bought, and a Farmer Hub is a subscription attached to one project. Prices, top-ups and what each unlock includes are on How credits work, which always shows the live numbers.

5. Common first questions

How accurate does my location need to be?

As accurate as you can make it. The point you pick drives the climate data, the satellite and contour layers, the weather feed and every region-specific recommendation. Drawing the actual site boundary — or importing it as KML — on the Site Map in your Research Hub is better still. The point itself is chosen once, when the project is created, and there is no screen for moving it afterwards, so it is worth a second look at the satellite view before you press Continue.

What if I do not have the soil or climate figures?

Leave them empty. The AI analysis estimates topography, climate, vegetation, hydrology and soil from the site itself and writes its estimates into your settings, and you can correct them afterwards. Filling in what you do know first makes the estimates better, not mandatory.

Can I change project settings later?

Yes, all nine sections, at any time. The green completion check simply follows what you have filled in.

Which agent should I ask?

You do not choose. Open the tool for the question — a soil question in the soil tool, a climate question in the climate tool — and the right family answers. If you are not sure where to start, open your Project Map and follow the banner.

Do I have to buy anything to try it?

No. Creating a project and running its research is included, and the 200 free credits are there for exactly that. Design and the Farmer Hub are the paid steps, and both are per project.

EcoDesign