The Intake Wizard
Start a project from a client, a name and a paragraph, then add components, environments, stakeholders and personas step by step, resuming any time.
By the end of this page you will have started a project from a client, a name and a paragraph, walked its record through the components, environments, stakeholders and personas it needs, and know how to leave the wizard half-way and pick it up again from any device.
The intake wizard is how a project is born in Zuse Bifrost. It asks for as little as it can up front, writes every row it collects into the module's own table through the module's own rules, and remembers which steps you saved or skipped, so the record grows in the order the later phases read it: what the project is, what it is made of, where it runs, who it answers to and who it is built for. Nothing you add in the wizard is special: a component added here is the same component the Components page shows, and it can be edited there afterwards.
Before you begin
| You want to | You need |
|---|---|
| Start a project | project:create on your team role, or to own the team. Admins and project managers have it by default. |
| Resume a project's setup | project:update on the project, through your role on it or your team role. A client guest never has it. |
| Add components or environments | component:create and environment:create on the project. |
| Add stakeholders or personas | stakeholder:create and persona:create on the project. |
| Name a client on the project | The client to exist already; add it on the Clients page first. |
The wizard has two doors. New Project on the registry opens it empty, to start a project. Setup in a project's sidebar opens it on that project, at the first step not yet saved; the entry stays in the sidebar, with a count of the steps saved, until the setup is finished. The project overview carries the same reminder.
Start a project
- Press New Project on the registry. The wizard opens on the Basics step with nothing filled in.
- Type the Name and pick the Client, or leave Internal project for work the team does for itself.
- Write the Description: one paragraph on what is being built, for whom and why. This is the brief Heimdall reads when it drafts the rest of the record, so a paragraph now saves an afternoon later.
- Leave the Key empty and one is proposed from the name: three or more words give their
initials (Customer Relationship Management becomes
CRM), fewer give the first three letters (Loyalty Platform becomesLOY), and a key the team ever used gets a digit appended. Type your own if you prefer; it is upper-cased as you go. - Set how it runs, name the leads you know and the dates agreed, or leave them for later; the same fields as the registry's editor are here, and every one can change afterwards.
- Press Create Project.
The project is created, project.created goes out, and the wizard moves on to the
Components step of the new project. From here on you are resuming, and everything on this
page applies.
A paragraph is enough
A client, a name and a key are what a project needs to exist. The paragraph is what makes the rest of the setup fast: it is the brief every later draft is read from, and the wizard's presets already assume the house stack unless it says otherwise.
Walk the steps
The steps run across the top of the page: Basics, Components, Environments, Stakeholders, Personas and Review. Each shows its state: the step you are on, a step saved (a tick), a step skipped for now (a dashed outline) and a step not reached yet. Press any step to open it, in any order.
Under every step except the review, the footer offers:
- Continue marks the step as saved and opens the next one. For the basics, the button is Save and Continue and writes the fields first.
- Skip for now leaves the step open and moves on. A skipped step keeps counting as unfinished in the sidebar and the overview until it is saved.
- Back returns to the previous step.
Every row you add is written the moment you add it, so there is nothing to lose by leaving: close the tab, open the project on another device, and Setup in the sidebar brings you back to the first step still open. The step you were on also travels in the page address, so a link to a step can be shared with the colleague who owns it.
Components
What the project is made of; stories and requirements tag the components they touch, and every release carries a version per component.
- Press Add the house set for a Web App and an API on the house stack, the Laravel stack the team builds on. Each is added once; pressing again when both exist changes nothing.
- To add a component by hand, type its Name, pick its Kind and adjust the Tech Stack, filled in with the house stack for a web app, an API or a service, then press Add Component. The slug its versions carry is derived from the name.
- Press the bin on a row to remove a component added by mistake. A component an environment already runs is refused; move the environment or archive the component on its page instead.
Everything else about a component, its owner, its description, archiving, lives on the Components page.
Environments
Where the project runs; environments feed releases, deployments and health checks, and hold the addresses the client is shown.
- Press Add the standard set for Development, Staging, UAT and Production, shared across components, with production marked protected so a deployment into it will need a promotion approval once deployments land. Each is added once.
- To add one by hand, type its Name, pick its Kind and the Component it runs (or leave it shared), add its Address if it exists, and press Add Environment.
- Press the bin on a row to remove an environment; nothing else is removed with it.
The branch, the hosting, the health check and the flags live on the Environments page.
Stakeholders
Who the project answers to; the approver flags decide who signs off requirements, UAT and releases, and the weights shape the status reports.
- Type the Name and Title, pick the Side (client, Zuse or a third party) and the Role, and add the Email if you have it; it is needed before the person can be invited as a guest.
- Switch on Approves requirements, Signs off UAT and Approves releases as they apply. These are the flags the approval policies read when they name their approvers.
- Press Add Stakeholder. Press the bin on a row to remove one.
Contact details, the influence and interest weights, the RACI default and the linked account are on the Stakeholders page.
Personas
Who the project is built for; a persona is the subject of every story and the actor of every use case.
- Type the Name and the Role Title in the words the client uses, a one-line Tagline, and the Goals the persona is trying to reach.
- Press Add Persona. Press the bin on a row to remove one.
The full sketch, demographics, frustrations, habits, devices and a quote, is written on the Personas page.
Review and finish
The Review step shows one card per step: the project's key, client and methodology for the basics, and the names and the count for the rest, each marked saved, skipped or untouched. On a card, Revisit or Fill in opens the step, and Open the page leaves for the module's own page.
Press Finish Setup when the record is as complete as you need it today. The wizard closes, Setup leaves the sidebar, the overview's reminder goes, and you land on the project overview. Finishing freezes nothing: every row stays editable on its page, and the wizard itself can be reopened from its address at any time.
What happens next
- Every row the wizard writes is announced the way its page would announce it:
project.createdfor the project, thencomponent.created,environment.created,stakeholder.createdandpersona.createdfor each row, and the matching*.deletedfor a row removed. The progress itself is bookkeeping and goes out to nobody. - Every write is in the project's activity history with who did it and where from.
- The glossary, the data entities, the designs, the repositories and the settings have pages of their own under the project; the planning record follows them.
Heimdall on this page
The fastest path from the client's words to a planning record is the brief import: paste the brief on the project's Brief Import page once the wizard has made the project, and Heimdall drafts the epics, stories, requirements, rules, terms, personas, stakeholders, risks and decisions for you to accept from a review queue.
Heimdall reads the record the wizard builds through the same tools the MCP server offers, and the paragraph you wrote in the basics is the brief it drafts from.
From the API and MCP
The wizard has no API of its own: an integration creates the project and its rows through the module endpoints, and the project then shows Setup in the sidebar until a person finishes it.
Projects API
Create and change the project record the basics step writes.
Components API
Create the components the wizard's components step adds.
Environments API
Create the environments the wizard's environments step adds.
Stakeholders and Personas
The people endpoints the last two steps write through.
Permissions
| Action | Permission |
|---|---|
| Start a project | project:create on the team |
| Resume, skip, review and finish | project:update on the project |
| Save the basics again | project:update |
| Add or remove components | component:create and component:delete |
| Add or remove environments | environment:create and environment:delete |
| Add or remove stakeholders | stakeholder:create and stakeholder:delete |
| Add or remove personas | persona:create and persona:delete |
A client guest never opens the wizard and never sees the sidebar entry or the overview's reminder.
Frequently asked
Related
- Brief import — the scope, the words and the risks drafted from the client's brief
- The registry — where the New Project button lives and the project is edited afterwards
- The project overview — the reminder to finish the setup, and where finishing lands
- Components, Environments, Stakeholders and Personas — the pages every wizard row belongs to
- Project settings — the knobs the wizard does not touch
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The Registry
The Projects page: every project you may see with its filters, starting one in the intake wizard, editing it, moving its status, archiving, restoring and deleting it, and reading its history.
The Project Overview
Opening a project from the selector, the registry or a Heimdall button; what the overview shows: the key, status and health, the lifecycle strip, the Heimdall suggests rail, the client, dates, leads, budget, description and recent activity; and what a client guest sees of it.