Start a Discovery Session

Discovery is where a Modeller Initiative begins, and it happens in the browser at modeller.website — no install, no account, nothing to configure. This page is the deliberate path from "someone asked us to build something" to a recorded Initiative you can work through with a Domain Expert.

You do not need the CLI, the VS Code extension, or a model to do any of this. Those belong to System Design, which an Initiative only reaches if it selects a technology intervention.

Before you start

Have two things ready:

• The original change request, in the words it arrived in. Do not tidy it into a problem statement — the Initiative deliberately keeps the request and the problem separate. "Build us a new approval system" is a perfectly good entry.
• A Domain Expert. Someone who lives with the situation and can answer questions about it. You will send them a link.

You will facilitate: guiding the session, deciding which questions to ask, and accepting what becomes part of the record. See Initiatives for what each role is responsible for.

1. Open modeller.website and create the Initiative

Go to modeller.website and fill in the form on the landing page:

Select Start the Initiative. You land on the Facilitator cockpit at modeller.website/initiative/<id>.

Bookmark that URL. There are no accounts, so the link is the only way back into your Initiative.

2. Send the Domain Expert their link

The cockpit shows a Domain Expert link (.../initiative/<id>/respond). Send it to them however you normally would.

That view is deliberately narrow: it shows the change request and the one question currently waiting for them. Questions you are still drafting, gate findings, and the intervention comparison stay on your side of the session.

3. Work the question loop through Discover and Frame

The cockpit's Discover & Frame section drives the whole conversation with one repeating loop:

1. Pick the field you are trying to fill (problem statement, affected people, desired outcomes, constraints, and so on) and propose a question against it. Leave the question text blank to have the configured agent advisor suggest one — optional, and never required.
2. Send to Domain Expert, or reject the question if it is not worth asking.
3. They answer in their view; the answer arrives back in the cockpit.
4. Accept the response to draft it into the structured field.

The phase indicator moves through Capture Request, Clarify Problem, Identify Impact, Define Outcomes, and Set Boundaries as those fields fill in. Both views update live, so you can run this in a call or asynchronously over days.

4. Check the Discovery Gate, then Shape

The Discovery Gate reports what is still thin — a missing outcome, an unevidenced problem. It is advisory: it never blocks you, and you can record an override with a reason and move on.

In Shape, compare interventions across the fixed taxonomy (process, people, organisation, policy, information, technology, experiment, and no action). Select as many as the outcome genuinely needs, and mark for each whether it continues into a design workspace. The Shape Gate is advisory in exactly the same way.

5. Finalize, or continue into System Design

Finalizing records the Initiative as it stands, including whether it closed cleanly or with open gate findings. You can reopen it later.

If you selected a technology intervention that continues into design, that is the point where System Design starts — and the reason for the design travels with it.

Related

• Worked Initiative example: delayed building variations — follow a complete Facilitator and Domain Expert conversation.
• Initiatives — the concepts and roles behind the session.
• The playground — try System Design's modelling in the browser, no Initiative required.
• Quick start — install the tooling for System Design.