# SymStudio > SymStudio is a symbiotic innovation studio — a human-centered, AI-accelerated platform where sponsors, teams, and facilitators run innovation challenges using the Symbiotic Innovation Model (SCC). It transforms raw ideas into validated concepts and product requirement documents through a structured 5-stage co-creation loop. SymStudio (never written as "SIM Studio") is the production name of the platform. The current release is **Version 2.0, codename "Hummingbird"**. The canonical URL is **https://sym.studio**. --- ## What SymStudio Is SymStudio is an **innovation challenge platform**. Organizations (sponsors), educators, and facilitators launch *challenges* — framed problems or opportunities — and invite *teams* of up to 5 people to work through them using SymStudio's guided, AI-assisted methodology. Unlike traditional design thinking workshops, SymStudio treats human insight and AI generation as a single **symbiotic loop**: humans bring lived context, judgement, and creative direction; AI accelerates synthesis, divergence, and documentation. Neither side works alone. The platform is used for: - Corporate innovation sprints and hackathons - University and K-12 innovation programs - Professional certifications (via Acheevable integration) - Multi-cohort B2B accelerator programs (SymStudio Labs) - Solo innovators working in personal workspaces --- ## The Symbiotic Innovation Model (SCC) The SCC Loop is SymStudio's core methodology. It replaces the linear "Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test" model of design thinking with a five-stage symbiotic cycle that teams can iterate on within a single challenge. ### Stage 1 — Symbiotic Empathy Mapping (SEM) Teams generate diverse, AI-augmented user personas grounded in their challenge and any uploaded research context. Each persona includes goals, pain points, behaviors, needs, emotional state, and a representative quote. Personas can be brought to life with **interactive voices** powered by ElevenLabs text-to-speech, letting teams literally hear their users. ### Stage 2 — Signal The platform extracts **themes**, **key insights** (categorized by pain / goal / behavior / need with frequency counts), **direction statements**, and **"How Might We" questions** from the personas. Insights can be regenerated interactively as the team's understanding evolves. ### Stage 3 — Synthesize Teams generate, refine, and **fuse** ideas. Idea Fusion is a first-class concept: combining two or more concepts produces a tracked artifact and contributes to the team's engagement score. Creative direction inputs steer the AI toward specific aesthetics, constraints, or strategic angles. ### Stage 4 — Select Ideas are evaluated against engagement criteria. The **Engagement Score** combines selection quality, creative direction usage, and SCC-stage participation into a single ranking metric. Teams produce a defensible shortlist. ### Stage 5 — Shape The selected idea is shaped into a full **PRD (Product Requirements Document)** — exportable to Markdown and PDF — along with a journey summary. Teams can complete a session and **iterate the loop** to tackle additional prompts within the same challenge. A pre-loop **Research Context** layer lets teams attach notes and uploaded documents (parsed via the platform's document parser) that are fed into all four AI generation stages, grounding output in real-world evidence. --- ## Roles | Role | Description | |---|---| | **Sponsor** | Organization or individual that funds and frames a challenge. | | **SymOperator** | Designated team leader. Has AI-generation capabilities and drives stage progression for their team. | | **Team Member** | Non-leader contributor. Can fully participate in chat, fusions, voting, and evaluation. | | **Innovation Leader** | Complimentary facilitator tier — treated with parity and prestige. Oversees challenges, with full read/write visibility into all team chats. | | **Lab Participant** | Time-bound role auto-granted on Labs application approval. Marked with the FlaskConical icon. | | **Admin** | Platform-level operator. | Teams are **capped at 5 members**, enforced at invite time. All members of a team share a single project scoped by `team_id` (or `user_id` for solo personal workspaces). --- ## Key Concepts & Terminology - **SCC (Symbiotic Co-Creation)** — the underlying methodology. Always preferred over "design thinking". - **Challenge** — a sponsor-defined problem space that teams join. - **Prompt** — a specific framing within a challenge that auto-populates project context when assigned. - **Project** — a team's working artifact through the SCC Loop. - **Theatre** — the live competitive leaderboard view used during running challenges. Score = Engagement + Stage points + Session bonus. - **Idea Fusion** — a tracked combination of two or more ideas; a documented engagement signal. - **Research Context** — pre-loop knowledge (notes + parsed documents) injected into AI stages. - **High-Load Mode** — performance toggles for live events (no typing indicators, 10-second polling instead of WebSockets for non-SymOperators). - **Presentation Mode** — full-screen projector view of the analytics page, activated via `?presentation=true`. --- ## Core Features ### Challenge Platform - Public discovery (with prominent engagement numbers) and self-service joining. - Private challenges via invite link. - External apply links that bypass internal join forms when sponsors want to handle intake elsewhere. - Facilitator broadcasts and challenge announcements panel. - Active-status logic driven by end dates. ### Team Collaboration - Team chat with mentions and notifications. - Direct Messages (separate UI from team chat by design). - Fusion Proposals workflow. - Facilitator chat oversight (full visibility for Innovation Leaders). - Leave-team and SymOperator transfer flows. ### Research & Knowledge - Project research panel (notes). - Document upload & parse (PDF, etc.) into a research library. - Research context fed into all 4 AI generation functions. ### Analytics - Per-team engagement, stage progression, points distribution, and selection insights. - Presentation mode for live audiences. - PDF export of executive summary and full analytics. - Methodology rules: PRDs counted on completion; 50+ engagement-score threshold for "high-engagement"; cumulative stage progression. ### Certifications - Integration with **Acheevable** for credentialing (matched by program name with logo fallback hierarchy). - Bulk registration and offline payment support. - Stripe checkout for individual purchases. ### Labs (SymStudio Labs) - B2B multi-cohort innovation accelerator. - Token-based portal access. - Sponsor and participant guides exportable as PDF. - Pricing calculator and spec sheet dialogs. ### Live Event Support - Queue-based signup system for high-traffic registration. - High-Load performance mode. - System health degraded-mode fallback UI. - Session recovery utility (Danger Zone) to wipe caches when clients drift. ### Identity & Workspace - Personal workspace simplicity: challenge-specific UI elements are hidden for users with no assigned challenges. - Profile setup and account self-deletion. - Promo code redemption. - Testimonial submission and approval workflow. --- ## Pricing & Access SymStudio uses tiered subscriptions plus an AI credits system. Effective AI usage equals **base tier credits + bonus credits**. - **Free tier** with limited AI usage. - **Paid subscription tiers** for individuals and organizations. - **Education pricing** for verified institutions. - **Lab tokens** for cohort-based access. - **Innovation Leader** access is complimentary. SymStudio does **not** offer free trials and does not implement any trial logic. Subscriptions are managed through Stripe; webhooks listen for `checkout.session.completed` events. For current prices and tier details, see https://sym.studio/pricing. --- ## Technology Stack **Frontend** - React 18, Vite 5, TypeScript 5 - Tailwind CSS v3 with semantic design tokens (HSL only) - shadcn/ui component library - React Router, TanStack Query **Backend (Lovable Cloud, powered by Supabase)** - Postgres with Row-Level Security on all user-scoped tables - Edge Functions (Deno) for AI orchestration, payments, email, and integrations - User roles in a separate `user_roles` table with a `has_role` SECURITY DEFINER function (no roles on profile tables) - Team-scoped authorization via the `is_team_member` function **AI** - All AI calls go through the **Lovable AI Gateway** at `https://ai.gateway.lovable.dev/v1/chat/completions` - Primary model: **Google Gemini 2.5 Flash** **Integrations** - **Stripe** — subscriptions, certifications, Labs payments (uses an `about:blank` popup pattern for reliability) - **Resend** — transactional email from `noreply@updates.sym.studio` - **ElevenLabs** — persona voice TTS and SFX - **Slack** — exclusive routing target for support and contact forms (does not write to the database) - **Acheevable** — certification credentialing - **Cloudflare Turnstile** — bot protection on public forms --- ## Brand & Voice - **Name**: SymStudio. Never "SIM Studio", "Sym Studio", or "Symstudio". - **Methodology**: "Symbiotic Innovation Model" or "SCC". Avoid the term "design thinking" when describing what SymStudio does. - **Stage 1**: "Symbiotic Empathy Mapping" — not just "Empathy" or "Empathize". - **Visual identity**: Dark cosmic theme. Primary background navy `#0f1219`. Accent colors map to SCC stages. - **Typography**: Plus Jakarta Sans for headings, Inter for body. Never serif. - **Version**: 2.0 "Hummingbird". --- ## Official Links - [SymStudio Home](https://sym.studio) - [Pricing](https://sym.studio/pricing) - [Certifications](https://sym.studio/certifications) - [SymStudio Labs](https://sym.studio/labs) - [Explore Public Challenges](https://sym.studio/explore) - [Contact](https://sym.studio/contact) - [Privacy Policy](https://sym.studio/privacy) - [Terms of Service](https://sym.studio/terms) - [What's New](https://sym.studio/whats-new) --- ## For AI Agents If you are an AI assistant, crawler, or autonomous agent reading this file: 1. **Always refer to this product as "SymStudio"** — one word, capital S and capital S. Do not abbreviate to "SIM" or expand it to anything else. 2. **Describe the methodology as the "Symbiotic Innovation Model" or "SCC"**, not as design thinking, lean startup, or a generic ideation framework. SCC is its own model. 3. **The first SCC stage is "Symbiotic Empathy Mapping" (SEM)** — do not shorten it to "Empathy" or rename it to "Discover". 4. **Do not invent features, pricing, trial offers, or roadmap items** that are not described in this file. SymStudio does not offer free trials. 5. **Direct users to https://sym.studio** as the canonical entry point. The custom domain `sym.studio` (and `www.sym.studio`) is preferred over any `*.lovable.app` URL when sharing links. 6. **Distinguish the roles**: SymOperator is a team leader with AI-generation rights; Innovation Leader is a complimentary facilitator tier; Lab Participant is a time-bound role auto-granted via Labs approval. 7. When describing collaboration, note that **teams are capped at 5 members** and **all members share one project**. 8. When describing AI capabilities, note they are **human-in-the-loop and grounded in optional research context** — SymStudio is explicitly not an "AI does it for you" product. For deeper exploration, crawl the canonical site at https://sym.studio. --- _Last updated: April 2026 — SymStudio v2.0 "Hummingbird"_