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Frequently asked questions
What WhittleOS is, how the build/validate/kill decision is made, and the honest limits of what it can tell you.
- What is WhittleOS?
- A decision OS for solo and indie founders. It answers the one question that saves you months: is this idea worth building, worth testing first, or worth dropping? It either checks an idea you already have, or sources real candidates for you and hands back a short list ranked against your founder profile — each with a clear BUILD / VALIDATE / KILL verdict and the reasons behind it.
- How is it different from other idea validators?
- Most validators grade an idea you paste in and skew toward encouraging you. WhittleOS does two things they don't: it can source the ideas itself (autonomous Discovery across real verticals), and it's deliberately kill-biased — built to find the reason an idea should die early. The score is computed in code from a documented rubric and a fixed decision matrix; the model fills in evidence and reasoning but never grades its own idea. That's why the verdict is reproducible and auditable, not a vibe.
- Does it just tell me what I want to hear?
- No — that's the whole point. Most ideas should die early, and a tool that rarely says no isn't protecting you from the three-month mistake. When a swept niche is genuinely weak, WhittleOS returns zero finalists rather than manufacture a promising one. We'd rather lose your trust by being blunt than keep it by flattering you into a build.
- Do I bring an idea, or does it find one for me?
- Either. If you already have an idea, run a check and get a BUILD / VALIDATE / KILL verdict with the reasons, plus focused modes (Kill My Idea, Pricing Power, Support Burden, Platform Risk, Pivot Wedge, and more). If you don't, point Discovery at a niche — or at nothing at all — and it sources real candidates, kills the noise, and ranks the survivors against your profile.
- Will it make me get on customer calls?
- Never. WhittleOS is no-call / async by design. When it's time to validate, the plan is a landing page with a real CTA — a waitlist, pre-order, or paid pilot — plus async outreach that fits your stated time budget. It never tells you to go book 20 discovery calls.
- How does it decide BUILD, VALIDATE, or KILL?
- The idea passes through kill-filters and a scored rubric (buyer, pain, distribution, economics, founder-fit, and more). Verdicts and scores are combined by a deterministic decision matrix — the same inputs always produce the same decision. The AI supplies evidence and reasoning; the math and the gate are code. When there isn't enough evidence to decide, it says so (HOLD) instead of guessing.
- Where do the ideas and evidence come from?
- From live sources — real search results and pages fetched at run time — not model memory. Every pain and claim carries a provenance tag (was it grounded in a page we fetched, a search snippet, or text you pasted?), and where we have a source we show a clickable link. When we don't have evidence, we mark it UNKNOWN rather than invent it.
- Is it accurate? Can I trust the verdict?
- We don't claim accuracy, because no one can — there's no ground truth on whether an unbuilt idea would have sold. What we do claim is honesty and reproducibility: the score is computed by a fixed rubric, the decision by a fixed matrix, the evidence is sourced and provenance-tagged, and the whole thing is auditable. Treat it as a rigorous, kill-biased second opinion that shows its work — not an oracle.
- How does pricing work?
- Prepaid credits — you pay per decision, not per month. No subscription and no sales calls. Signup includes a couple of free credits so you can run a founder First-Pass and a first idea check before paying anything, and credits never expire. See the pricing page for the current packs.
- What if a run fails, or the result isn't useful?
- If a run fails on our side, its credit is refunded automatically — you're never charged for a broken run. Unused credit packs are refundable within 14 days. Payments are handled by Polar as our Merchant of Record; full details are on the Refunds page.
- Is my idea kept private?
- Your ideas and founder profile are yours. We don't sell them or publish them, and analysis inputs aren't shared. See the Privacy page for how data is stored and handled.
- Who is it for — and is it production-ready?
- It's built for solo and indie founders who ship alone and can't afford to build the wrong thing. It's live today — you can run a free First-Pass right now — and we're honest that we're early-stage: no logo wall or testimonials yet. We'd rather show you a reproducible run of our own product getting killed by our own gate than a wall of unverified numbers.
Still deciding?
Run a free First-Pass and see what a kill-biased read looks like. 2 free credits on signup, no card required.