Step-by-step guides for every feature, from your first recording to advanced project management.
Set up your account and run your first interview
Sign up for free. No credit card required. You get 3 hours of recording time to experience how StorySeeker tracks your growth across multiple interviews.
Start by clicking "New Interview" from your dashboard. Write your questions in the Interview Questions tab, fill in Story Setup with your interviewee's background and story angle, select your audio source, and press Start.
As you record, watch the Transcript panel for live transcription, check the Coaching tab for AI-generated follow-up suggestions, and monitor Live Notes for auto-structured notes with notable moment flagging.
When you're done, press Stop and run the post-interview analysis to get a summary of strengths, missed opportunities, and patterns. Export everything as Markdown, CSV, or SRT.
I was a police officer for 21 years. Seven years undercover in the drug squad...
Then they moved me to a desk job in technology crimes, which I had no background in whatsoever.
Your dashboard is the home base for all your interviews. It shows every interview you've created, with status badges (draft, recording, completed), duration, and creation date.
Use the search bar to find interviews by transcript text, questions, goals, notes, or coaching suggestions. Filter by status, project, or tags, and sort by recent, oldest, name, or duration.
The usage widget in the sidebar shows your remaining recording time for the month with a visual progress bar.
Prepare questions, context, and scheduling
Click the "Interview Questions" tab to prepare before you record. Use the built-in rich text editor to write your questions, organize them by topic, and format with headings, bold, italic, and lists.
During the interview, you can reference your questions in a read-only view and cross them off as you cover each topic.
Before recording, select your conversation type from the dropdown in the top bar. StorySeeker supports Video Interview, Pre-Production Interview, Testimonial, Podcast, and Technical Demo. Each one tailors the AI coaching tone to match your format.
Before you hit record, click "Story Setup" to brief the AI about your interviewee, your story objective, and your target audience. This context shapes the coaching suggestions and notes the AI generates during your conversation.
You can also set the estimated duration (15 to 240 minutes) so the AI paces its suggestions accordingly. The more context you provide, the more relevant your coaching will be.
Click "Schedule Interview" from the dashboard to set up a future interview. Choose your date, time, and timezone, and set the meeting duration (30 minutes to 2 hours).
For virtual interviews, paste your meeting URL (Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams) and StorySeeker auto-detects the platform. For in-person or local interviews, leave the meeting URL blank.
StorySeeker warns you about scheduling conflicts with existing interviews. Once scheduled, your interview appears on the dashboard with a countdown timer.
Important: Virtual interview scheduling requires a Pro or Studio plan.
Within a Project, click "Generate Prep Brief" to get an AI-generated research summary based on your previous interviews in that project. The prep brief highlights key themes, unresolved questions, and areas to explore in your next conversation.
Prep briefs are automatically generated from your most recent non-completed interview in the project, giving you actionable context before your next recording session.
Record, transcribe, and get real-time AI coaching
Choose your microphone from the Audio Source dropdown in the top bar. For best results, use an external microphone plugged directly into your computer. If your subject is speaking through your computer's built-in mic, make sure they're close enough for clear capture. Poor audio quality leads to poor transcription results.
Due to OS-level security restrictions, StorySeeker cannot capture audio from apps like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or Google Meet directly. For remote interviews, use the built-in Virtual Call feature (Pro+) which sends a Recall.ai bot into the meeting and records everything for you.
Audio recording: if you leave "Save audio recording" on in Story Setup (default), a copy of the full session is saved to your account so you can play it back, download it, or share it later. Free trial recordings are kept for 30 days; paid plans keep them as long as your subscription is active. This is archival quality, good for review and personal sharing; for broadcast use, run a dedicated recorder alongside.
Press Start and your transcript will begin appearing within about 15 seconds. The AI needs a moment to warm up. Use Pause to temporarily stop recording during breaks, and Resume to continue. Press Stop to end the recording session.
The top bar shows your elapsed recording time, a real-time audio level meter, and a REC indicator. If no audio signal is detected for 3 seconds, a "no signal" warning appears.
I was a police officer for 21 years. Seven years undercover in the drug squad...
Then they moved me to a desk job in technology crimes, which I had no background in whatsoever.
As you talk, the AI Coaching panel suggests follow-up questions based on what's being said. These appear every few minutes, with the most recent suggestion at the top. Use them to dig deeper into moments that matter for your story.
Coaching suggestions are shaped by your Story Setup context. The more detail you provide about your interviewee and story angle, the more targeted the suggestions become.
You said Marcus could play anything by ear. What happened to him? Did music change his path?
Twenty-six years is a long time. Was there a year you almost walked away?
The Live Notes panel auto-generates structured notes as the conversation progresses. Notes are organized into titled groups with bullet points and timestamps.
Key moments are flagged as notable moments. Look for the gold dot indicator. These are the most compelling, emotional, or surprising moments the AI identifies during your interview. You can quickly find them later in the Highlights view.
Click the star icon in the top bar during recording to bookmark a key moment. You can optionally add a label to describe what made the moment notable.
The bookmark counter in the top bar shows how many bookmarks you've added. View all bookmarks in the Highlights modal along with notable moments for a complete picture of your interview's best content.
"That moment when I realized I couldn't go back. That changed everything."
Label: Turning pointSubject reveals previously undisclosed personal sacrifice for the community project.
StorySeeker supports interviews in 50+ languages. Simply speak in the language of your conversation and the app adapts automatically. Transcription, AI coaching suggestions, live notes, and post-interview analysis will all respond in the same language being spoken.
This works because the underlying speech-to-text (OpenAI Whisper) and AI models natively understand dozens of languages. You do not need to change any settings. StorySeeker detects the spoken language from the audio and adjusts accordingly.
A few things to keep in mind: the app interface (buttons, labels, menus) remains in English. Transcription accuracy is highest for widely spoken languages like French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Japanese, and Mandarin, and may be less accurate for lower-resource languages. Mixed-language interviews (switching between two languages mid-conversation) generally work but may occasionally affect coaching context.
When a scheduled virtual interview starts, StorySeeker sends an AI bot to join your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams call. The bot transcribes the conversation in real-time and streams the transcript back to your StorySeeker session.
The virtual interview page shows the connection status (joining, in call, recording), live transcript, and coaching suggestions, just like a local recording. You don't need to share your screen or install any additional software.
Important: Virtual interviews require a Pro or Studio plan. The bot joins at the scheduled time and automatically ends when the meeting concludes.
You mentioned the community pushed back at first. What changed their minds?
It wasn't one thing. There was a moment at a town hall where a mother stood up and said her son finally had somewhere to go after school. That shifted everything.
Was she someone you'd spoken to before, or was that completely unexpected?
I'd never met her. I didn't even know her name. And she just... she just said what I'd been trying to prove for three years. In front of everyone.
Analyze, export, and review your best moments
After stopping your recording, click "Analyze" to generate a comprehensive AI analysis. The analysis identifies your strengths, missed opportunities, and patterns across the conversation.
Each analysis includes coaching scores for 6 skill areas: Question Quality, Follow-Up Depth, Tension & Stakes, Evidence, Active Listening, and Emotional Depth. These scores feed into your Insights dashboard to track growth over time.
"The kids know if you're faking it."
On "play it back perfect": ask what happened to Marcus after her class. Did music change his life?
You move on when subjects name specific people. Stay with the person. That's where the story lives.
Click the Export button in the top bar to download your interview data. Choose which sections to include: transcript, coaching suggestions, interview plan/questions, live notes, and analysis.
Export in three formats: Markdown (.md) for formatted documents, CSV (.csv) for spreadsheets and data analysis, or SRT (.srt) for subtitle files with timestamps. Preview your compiled document before downloading.
Open the Highlights modal from the top bar to see all your bookmarked moments and notable moments in one unified view. Each highlight includes a timestamp so you can quickly reference when it occurred.
Export your highlights as a Markdown file for easy sharing or reference. This is a great way to pull together the key moments from an interview for editorial review or story planning.
"That moment when I realized I couldn't go back. That changed everything."
Label: Turning pointSubject reveals previously undisclosed personal sacrifice for the community project.
Manage interviews, tags, projects, and imports
The dashboard provides powerful tools for managing your interview library. Use the search bar to find interviews by transcript content, questions, goals, notes, or coaching suggestions.
Filter interviews by status (draft, recording, completed, archived), by assigned project, or by tags. Sort by most recent, oldest, name, or duration to quickly find what you need. Rename interviews inline by clicking their title.
Add tags to any interview from the sidebar menu. Right-click an interview or use the three-dot menu. Tags help you organize interviews across projects by topic, subject, or any custom category.
Filter your dashboard by tag to see all related interviews at once. Combine tag filters with status and project filters for precise organization.
Archive interviews you're finished with to keep your dashboard clean. Archived interviews move to a separate section in the sidebar and can be restored at any time.
If you accidentally delete an interview, visit the Account page to find your recently deleted interviews. You can restore them before they're permanently removed.
Projects let you group related interviews under a shared goal. Click "New Project" from the dashboard and provide a title, goal/objective, and success criteria.
Assign interviews to a project from the sidebar menu or from the project detail page. Each project tracks its own interviews, generates cross-interview reports, and provides prep briefs for upcoming sessions.
Document the human impact of climate change through personal stories of displaced communities.
From a project's detail page, click "Generate Report" to get an AI-generated cross-interview analysis. The report identifies themes, patterns, and insights across all interviews in the project.
Reports are saved with timestamps so you can track how your project evolves over time. View previous report versions or export any report as Markdown.
Import transcripts from Zoom, podcast platforms, or other tools into any project. Click "Add External Transcript" from the project detail page, paste or upload your transcript text, and it becomes a full interview in your project, available for analysis, reports, and coaching metrics.
Track your interviewing skills over time
Once you've completed and analyzed at least 2 interviews, the Insights section appears on your dashboard. It shows trend cards tracking your coaching metrics over time, plus your overall coaching score.
The insights dashboard requires analyzed interviews. Make sure to run the post-interview analysis after each recording to build your data.
Trending upward. You're becoming a systems-to-human interviewer. Biggest gap: consistency across segments.
"Walk me through as if you're telling me the story like I've never heard it before."
Letting "heat in the room" pass without mining it. When a sharp line drops, you don't stay long enough with the discomfort.
"Stop. Take me to that moment. Who said that, where were you, and what did you say back?"
StorySeeker tracks 6 interviewing skills across every analyzed interview: Question Quality, Follow-Up Depth, Tension & Stakes, Evidence, Active Listening, and Emotional Depth.
Each trend card shows a mini line chart of your scores over time. Click any skill to learn what it measures, why it matters, and see examples of good vs. poor performance. Use these metrics to identify which areas to focus on in future interviews.
Generate a Progress Report from the Insights section to get a comprehensive AI analysis of your interviewing journey across all analyzed interviews. Reports highlight improvement trends, persistent patterns, and specific recommendations.
Progress reports are usage-capped by plan: Free plans get 0, Starter gets 2/month, Pro gets 10/month, and Studio gets unlimited. View your saved report history with timestamps on the dashboard.
Manage your plan, preferences, and data
Visit the Account page to choose your preferred AI model for coaching and analysis. StorySeeker supports ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Claude (Anthropic), with the available models depending on your plan.
Pro and Studio plans include auto model failover. If your primary model is unavailable, StorySeeker automatically switches to the secondary model so your recording isn't interrupted.
Switch between dark mode and light mode from the Account page or the sidebar menu. You can also choose "System" to automatically match your operating system's theme preference. Your choice persists across sessions.
StorySeeker offers five plans: Free (3 hours lifetime trial), Family Project pass ($69 CAD one-time, 20 hours over 12 months, Oral History only), Starter (5 hours/month), Pro (10 hours/month), and Studio (15 hours/month). Higher tiers unlock Projects with prep briefs and reports, interview scheduling, virtual meeting integration, model failover, health dashboard, and increased progress report limits. The Family Project pass is designed for one-off family history projects and can be topped up with 5h, 10h, or 20h bundles.
Check your current plan and usage on the Account page. Visit the Pricing page to compare plans and upgrade.
When you delete an interview, it's soft-deleted (moved to a recovery area rather than permanently removed). Visit the Account page to find your recently deleted interviews and restore any that were removed by mistake.
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