decision helper

the insight: "Sides" (a decision-making tool) is not really helping decide, just confusing. a better modality: AI asks you a series of questions in a forms-style UI (like a therapist diagnosing a situation), picks at your motivations, then boils down to the 3 most important factors and compares only those. the forms-style approach and the distillation-to-essentials approach are not mutually exclusive.

this is the decision process complement to the comparison engine which focuses on displaying options side-by-side. the decision helper is about understanding your own priorities.

spreadsheet evaluation: originality 8/10, excitement 5/10, MVP 1-2 weeks. competitive landscape: Rationale by Jina AI analyzes a stated decision but never asks sequential diagnostic questions, AI therapy chatbots (Woebot, Wysa) probe feelings but don't distill decisions — no product combines forms-style UX + sequential probing + factor distillation. core challenge is prompt engineering the diagnostic flow. could ship as a single-page web app. tech depth 3/10, labeled [ARCHIVE] ("prompt engineering project").

timeline

• [2026-02-20] captured — critique of existing decision tools, therapist-style AI approach
• [2026-04-10] google sheets evaluation — 8/10 originality, 5/10 excitement, [ARCHIVE] tier