One brief, several directions at once. Variants sends the same brief into lettered lanes — Option A, B, C — each built in parallel inside the project. Then blind compare puts the results head-to-head without telling you which is which, and you pick the winner by eye, not by which run you liked the idea of.
Set the lanes
Choose the lane count when you create the project (or add variants to an existing run) — two to four lanes is the working range. Each lane is an independent build of the same brief on the same template, so differences in the results are real differences in direction, not noise.
The footer reports the set's totals — e.g. "Set total: 3 runs · 124.5k tokens" — so the cost of exploring stays visible as the lanes work.
Blind compare
When the lanes are ready, Compare side by side opens the judging view: two anonymous panes per pair, the lanes shuffled, and the pair counter ("pair 1 of 6"). Judge each pair:
- ← Left is better / Right is better → — a verdict; then pick a reason chip ("stronger hierarchy", "better color") and Record
- Tie — equal; skips the reason step
- Skip — can't call it; the pair doesn't count
The keyboard matches: ← / → for verdicts, T for tie, S for skip, Esc to leave the round. Blind names stay hidden until judging is done — you're ranking what you see, not which lane you expected to win.
Tip: Judge on the direction, not the polish — all lanes are rough drafts of the same brief. The lane that feels right gets promoted and refined; a prettier build of the wrong direction is still the wrong direction.
The result and promote
When the rounds are done, the result card names the winner — or, on a shared lead, a tiebreak lets you call it between the tied lanes. Promote as is makes the winner the project's main result and marks its lane with ★ on the strip; the decision card lands in the transcript ("Promoted — Option B"), and the other lanes stay on the strip for reference.
The lane strip
The variant strip on the project tracks the lanes — Main, then A / B / C — with status glyphs (building, ready, promoted ★). Step between lanes with [ and ], jump with 0 (main) and 1–4 (letters), or click a segment. The All toggle swaps the single-lane view for the grid of every lane at once.
What a lane is
Each lane is a full build: its own files, its own gate run, its own transcript. They're cheap to make — the point of variants is that three rough directions cost less than one over-specified brief trying to guess the right one.
When to use it
- Early in a project, when the direction isn't settled
- When two competing ideas in the brief deserve a fair fight
- Before a final pass — promote the winner, then run Council on it
Skip it for follow-ups and fixes — variants answer "which direction?", not "is this right?".