Settle the concept
before the drawings.

No, and it is worth being direct about it. Storyflow does not model, does not produce drawings, and does not open Revit, ArchiCAD, Rhino, or Vectorworks files. Those tools own documentation and coordination, and they are not going anywhere. Storyflow is the surface upstream of them, at the stage where the character of the project is being decided and there is no model yet, only references, adjectives, and a client with expectations. You can pin plan exports, massing screenshots, and render drafts onto the board so the current design sits beside the intent that drove it, which most teams find is the fastest way to notice drift.

Six sections, and boards that skip the last two tend to produce a concept that only exists in elevation. Precedents, each annotated with the specific move you are taking rather than left as an admired building. Materials, grouped into complete palettes including the landscape material. Light and atmosphere at different hours and orientations. Landscape and site context, including the neighbouring buildings you have to sit beside. Details and junctions, because character lives at the edges. And interior atmosphere, because that is what the client will actually inhabit and it is the section most often deferred until it is too late to influence.

Not during early access. Storyflow is paid-only right now, with plans starting at $9.99 a month, and a Free plan for solo use launches before the end of 2026. Anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free today, so a client, an engineer, or a consultant can review and comment without paying anything. If you need free this minute, Miro's free tier gives you a real canvas within its board limit, Figma's free tier works well for boards, and Pinterest is free and still the best way to find precedents you would not have thought of. None of them will lay a concept board out from a project description.

Send the link before the meeting, not during it. Clients form better opinions with twenty quiet minutes than they do being walked through slides while trying to be agreeable. Structure the board so the top-left region carries the concept statement and the two candidate directions, because that is where people start. Annotate every precedent with what you are taking from it, so nothing gets read as a promise to reproduce a building. Then run the meeting on the live board rather than an export, zooming into the material palette when the conversation gets to materials. Comments left on specific references give you a review record far more actionable than meeting minutes.

Yes, and it is the single most useful thing an infinite canvas does at concept stage. Build a complete board per direction, precedents, palette, light, detail, and place them next to each other at the same scale. Clients are good at choosing between two visible options and unreliable when asked to react to one option in isolation, where the only available response is a general worry. Side-by-side also protects you: it makes clear that the direction you prefer was chosen against a real alternative rather than being the only thing you happened to present.

You describe the project in a prompt: typology, site, client, budget bracket, constraints, and the character you are aiming for. The AI lays out a structured board from that, with sections for precedents, materials, light, landscape, detail, and interior, plus cards ready to fill. You start with a board that has a shape rather than an empty canvas, which matters because the difficult part of concept work is not collecting images, it is knowing which categories of image the decision needs. From there it uses the whole board as context, so you can ask it to add a planting section or a second cooler palette, and re-prompting builds around what you have already placed.

Yes. Send a view-only link and a structural engineer, a services consultant, a landscape architect, or a planning adviser opens the whole board in a browser with no account, and can sign in to comment directly on the reference they are responding to. That is usually the right level of access for an external consultant. If someone should genuinely contribute, a project architect, a collaborating practice, invite them to the canvas instead, and invited collaborators join free, so widening the team does not cost a seat. Sharing, commenting, and reviewing work on every paid plan.

They overlap, and the difference matters. A precedent study is analytical: it takes a building apart to understand how a specific problem was solved, usually with plans, sections, and diagrams alongside the photographs. A moodboard is directional: it says what this project should feel like, using whatever images communicate that, including ones with no analytical content at all. Most good concept boards contain both, which is why Storyflow lets you annotate a precedent with the move you are borrowing and pin your own section sketches beside it. Studies without direction produce a competent building nobody loves; direction without studies produces a rendering that cannot be built.

Yes. Export the canvas as a high-quality image or PDF and place it in the stage report, the design and access statement, or the planning pack. In practice, the live link does most of the work during design development, because the board is far bigger than a page and reviewers need to zoom into a material or a detail at full resolution. The export becomes the record: the version attached to the agreed concept so there is no later argument about what was signed off. Both are one click, and because the link stays live the export never quietly becomes the outdated source of truth.