The Studio Guide at /welcome sets your studio up one decision at a time — five steps, and nothing the AI drafts goes live until you approve it. Progress saves across devices; if you leave mid-way, a Finish Studio Guide card appears under Settings & Brand with Resume setup →.

The five steps

1. Visual brand — Studio name, Accent color, Logo (Upload logo). Watch the Customer Studio preview, then Save visual brand →.
2. Concierge — answer how you serve; ✦ Draft with AI organizes it into an editable draft (it saves nothing); review every field, then Approve concierge profile →.
3. Wake phrase — keep Hey Vectiform or type your own; Test with microphone, then Save wake phrase → (or Skip for now).
4. Inventory — Upload tray photo, Try sample tray, or Open full Intake; review, then Approve inventory → (already stocked? you'll see Inventory is ready →).
5. Shopper test — Run shopper simulation: five shopper questions run against your real inventory and approved policies; each answer shows where it came from.

Everything saves as you approve it, and the guide reopens exactly where you stopped. Nothing publishes without you.

Dashboard → Settings & Brand. Two cards save separately: Brand Studio (Save brand) and Concierge rules (Save concierge rules).

Brand Studio card

• Studio name, Brand accent color, Logo / profile photo (Upload).
• Brand voice — the same voice drives product naming, design stories, SEO descriptions, and every concierge answer. Write it like direction to a new employee: "Glass is the hero. Declarative, slightly defiant. Never say gemstone."
• Voice wake phrase — Test phrase once listens a single time. Then Save brand.
• The Customer preview shows how a shopper meets your name and voice.

Concierge rules card — your guardrails

• Banned words — quick-add chips or your own, comma-separated. A violating reply is rewritten; if it still violates, the shopper gets your escalation contact instead.
• Required phrases, Hero material, Naming pattern, Concierge welcome.
• Lead-time, Return, and Custom-order policies — the concierge only ever states what's written here.
• Human escalation — the safety net whenever it can't answer reliably. Then Save concierge rules.

Changing your voice updates everything AI-written from that moment on; already-written text stays until you regenerate it. Voice is direction; banned words are a hard gate.

Set it in Settings & Brand → Brand Studio → Voice wake phrase (or Studio Guide step 3). Default is Hey Vectiform — short, distinctive, two-word phrases work best.

• Test phrase once — the mic listens a single time and shows what it heard; then Save brand.
• Turn on always-listening with the 👂 wake button in the header — off until you enable it, per browser. Matching is on exact word boundaries, so near-misses don't trigger it.
• Mic testing and always-listening need Chrome or Edge; elsewhere, save the phrase and use push-to-talk where supported.

Privacy, plainly: no audio is stored by Vectiform. Recognition runs through your browser vendor's speech service, the test is one-shot, and always-listening is opt-in per browser — one click turns it off.

The concierge answers shoppers only from your live inventory (with real prices), your approved policies, and your voice + guardrails. It never invents stock, policies, availability, lead times, or prices.

• When a question falls outside what it knows, the shopper gets your Human escalation contact instead of a guess — so that's the single most important field to fill.
• Keep inventory honest: it recommends by exact inventory names and current quantities, so approving scans and recording sales is training.
• Test it: Design Board → AI Concierge card → ask a question exactly as a customer would → Ask.
• Prove it: /welcome → Shopper test → Run shopper simulation — five questions run against your real stock and policies; each answer shows "Grounded in:" the pieces and prices it used.

Shopper messages are treated as untrusted — they can't override your rules. Prices come only from your inventory records; no price on file means no price quoted.

Every partnership follows one arc: apply (or you invite) → review → set terms → sign → work → settle. Dashboard → Partner Portal opens the Partner Hub, with tabs: Applications, Active, Needs attention, Settlements.

Two ways a partner enters

• Invite partner → choose Creator, Wholesale, Consignment, or Gift → Configure terms → Create partner.
• They apply: open a program's public page via Application settings and share it. Every application still requires your approval — applicants get no portal access until you approve.

Review → terms → sign → active

1. Applications → Approve (creates the partner) or Decline.
2. Configure terms (only supported fields show) → Save terms.
3. The partner activates via a one-time secure email, sets a password, and signs in at /login → Partner. One account works across every studio they partner with.
4. In their Documents tab they read the agreement and click I agree and sign.

By program

• Consignment — assign pieces under Add assigned pieces (Name @ retail price) = Exhibit A; the partner records each sale at their agreed share; settle with Settle selected / Settle all unpaid (a permanent receipt each time).
• Creator — deliverables, milestones, usage terms, compensation; the creator confirms participation after signing.
• Wholesale — assign a catalog with prices and any minimum order; the partner requests orders; buyouts decrement real stock in the same transaction as the sale.
• Gift — zero-payment by design; the recipient claims and confirms receipt.

Change anything material — pieces, prices, share, names — and the stage flips to Terms updated: the partner re-signs the accurate version before new sales. History and receipts are untouched.

A platform-level suspension closes every door at once — it is not deletion. Inventory, designs, orders, partner records, agreements, and receipts stay intact; unsuspending restores everything exactly. (Different from the live-selling pause claims button, which only briefly holds live claims.)

• Customers see the studio as unavailable — no half-experience, no order into a void.
• Owners & staff are refused sign-in with "this studio is suspended"; open sessions stop too.
• Partners find that studio's portal unavailable, but their account and memberships with other studios keep working.
• Paid orders still reconcile: a card-paid settlement confirms against its locked intent; a paid live claim is fulfilled or held as a clearly flagged exception — never dropped.

Owner action: contact support. Unsuspension restores customers, staff, and partners in one step — no rebuilding.