Showreel Studio Help
Help · Connecting your app

Tell Showreel about your app

An About page for each app gives the writers what the screens don't say, such as the product's real name when its screens show a customer's brand.

Showreel Studio writes scripts, decks and audience versions from what it can see: your app's screens and its code. Some things the screens don't say, or say wrongly. The About page is where you tell it. The storyboard, deck and audience writers all read it, and so does Claude when it writes for you in Claude Code.

It matters most when the screens show someone else's brand. A white-labelled product shows each customer's name and logo, and a demo account often belongs to a sample company. Without an About page, a script would call your product by that company's name.

When Showreel asks

When you connect or explore an app, Showreel notes what its screens call it: the page titles, the site's name, the logos and the web address. If those don't add up with the About page, it asks one question, with what it saw. For example: We think this app is Northwind Films, from a logo. But the page title and the address say Harbour Hire. Which is the product?

Your answer goes on the About page, so the same question isn't asked again. It appears on the Apps page under Check what we understood, and in the terminal after showreel connect and showreel explore. To see it at any time:

showreel about --check
showreel about --answer 1

What goes on it

  • Product and Made by: what to call the product, whatever the screens say. Also called lists its other names.
  • What it is, Who uses it and Who the films are for: a sentence or two each.
  • What the screens show: for example, "a demo account that belongs to a sample customer".
  • Never ours: brands on screen that are not yours, such as that sample customer. Writers never present them as your product, and a kit made from the app passes over their logos.
  • Never say: words and phrases your films and decks must not use. They are added to the words that never appear, for this app's films and decks only.
  • The product's words: terms and what they mean, and how to say one when it isn't said the way it's spelled.
  • People on screen: who the names in the demo data are, such as "Simon: a sample crew member".
  • A kit made from it takes its brand from: the app's screens, the product's own website, a kit you already have, or a brand guide you've added.

In the app

  1. Open Apps.
  2. Find your app under the apps the project has, and press About.
  3. Fill in what is useful. Every field can stay empty.
  4. Press Save.

In the terminal

showreel about
showreel about --product "Harbour Hire" --not-ours "Northwind Films" --never-say "unlimited"
showreel about --add-term "prep" --means "getting a booking ready" --say "prep"

The first shows the page. The others change it and save it in the app's profile. An empty value, such as --maker "", clears a field. Run showreel help for every option.

Fill it in from a document

You can let a document fill the page in: a product overview, a sales one-pager, a help page or a brand guide. It can be Markdown, text, PDF, Word (.docx) or HTML, up to 20 MB and 100 pages, or a web address.

  1. On the About page, under Fill it in from a document, choose a file or give a web address.
  2. Press Read it. The writer reads it once and suggests answers. Each one shows the words in the document it comes from, and where they are.
  3. Tick what you want and press Accept the ticked.

New answers and additions to a list come ticked. A change to an answer that is already there, whether you wrote it or another document did, is never ticked for you. Nothing changes until you accept.

The document is kept with the app in your project, five at most, and nowhere else. Remove one with Remove; answers already taken from it stay.

A brand guide can also give the brand for kits made from the app: tick Brand, for kits made from this app to use its colours and fonts. The logo can't be taken from a guide, so upload it on the kit's page.

In the terminal:

showreel about --read harbour-overview.pdf
showreel about --accept all
showreel about --accept what,brand

--accept all takes what is new or adds to a list. Name a field to change an answer that is already there, or brand to use a guide's colours and fonts. --review shows what is waiting, and --remove-doc <name> takes a document away.

What next