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Design Mode

The guided AI prompt builder that reads your selected image, annotations, and references to help you craft a strong render prompt — via a step-by-step wizard or a conversational chat.

Design Mode is a guided AI prompt builder. Instead of writing a render prompt from a blank box, you let INTER\STITIAL read the image you’ve selected — plus any annotations or references attached to it — and help you assemble the strongest prompt, whatever your experience with AI.

When to use it

  • You’re turning a CAD export, sketch, or plan into a photorealistic render and want help describing it.
  • You have a photo or render and want to edit it with clear, structured instructions.
  • You know roughly what you want but aren’t sure how to phrase it.
  • For a quick tweak, typing straight in the prompt bar is faster — reach for Design Mode when you want guidance.

Open Design Mode

Design Mode is always anchored to the image you have selected — each image keeps its own Design Mode state.

  1. Select an image on the canvas — a drawing, sketch, render, or photo.
  2. Click the wand button on the prompt bar.
  3. Design Mode reads the image — it works out whether it’s a plan, elevation, section, sketch, photo, render, or empty frame, and picks up the materials and elements it can see. A small badge shows what it detected.
  4. From there, choose a path: the guided wizard or Chat about it.

Two ways to build a prompt

Both paths end the same way — a finished prompt handed to the generator — so pick whichever fits how you think.

The guided wizard

The wizard walks you through a short series of choices and adapts the questions to what it found. For a drawing, you typically move through Style, Atmosphere (time of day, weather, lighting, mood, tonality), Materials, and a few Details, then land on a Review step. For a photo, the steps shift to concrete edits instead — Add, Remove, Replace, Change, Transform, and Adjust.

  • Sensible defaults are pre-filled from what Design Mode detected, so you can accept, swap, or skip each choice.
  • The Review step shows the assembled prompt as editable chips — remove a piece, retype it, or send it straight to Generate.

Chat about it

Prefer to talk it through? Choose Chat about it and refine the prompt conversationally — say “make it warmer at dusk” or “use exposed concrete” and Design Mode rewrites the proposed prompt. Each reply comes with quick Try chips for common next moves, and when you’re happy you click Go to review to take the prompt to the Review step and generate. The chat can also answer “how does this work?” questions about the app while you’re in it. You can Start over to clear the conversation or Re-analyze image to re-read the current image, annotations, and references at any point.

Style presets

On a photo or existing render, Design Mode offers one-tap style presets so you don’t have to describe a look from scratch — for example Clay Render, White Render, Flat Shading, Architectural Miniature Model, Concept Diagram, and Blueprint, alongside painterly looks like Watercolor, Oil Painting, and Marker Rendering. Tap one to send it straight to Review, or keep refining in chat.

For a CAD drawing or sketch, the guided wizard’s Style step instead offers core rendering looks — Photorealistic, Watercolor, Marker Rendering, and Miniature Model. And for plans, elevations, sections, and axonometrics, Design Mode surfaces named presentation registers tuned to that drawing type as starter chips.

Fold in annotations and references

Design Mode reads more than the base image:

  • Annotations — sticky notes, arrows, shapes, text boxes, and pinpoint comments you’ve drawn on the image are folded into the prompt, so a scribbled “more glazing here” becomes part of the instruction. You can fold newly added marks in mid-conversation.
  • References — reference images attached to the image (from the prompt bar, the canvas, or Are.na) steer style and materials. Attach one while chatting and it’s picked up too.

Tips

  • Leave Smart Suggest on. With it enabled, Design Mode quietly analyzes each image as you select it, so the wizard and chat open ready to go.
  • Trust the badge, then correct it. If the detected type looks wrong, override the choices — your picks always win over the guess.
  • Start with a preset, finish by hand. A style preset gets you most of the way fast; the Review chips and chat handle the last details.
  • A few strong references beat many weak ones — the same rule that applies everywhere applies here.