BIG Tools
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Getting Started

Sign in, start your first progression, and understand what each stage is asking you for.

BIG Tools is a hands-on toolkit for the BIG Ideas workshop process. This page gets you from sign-in to your first completed progression.

1. Sign in

Head to bigtools.dev and click Get started. Sign up with email — you'll get a magic link that brings you back to the app. No password to remember.

BIG Tools is free during the student beta. There's no paid tier yet.

2. Open BIG Tools

In the left sidebar, under Tools, click BIG Tools. You'll land on the BIG Tools dashboard. If you've never started a progression, the top card asks you for an idea.

3. Start with an insight

Drop something into the idea box — a sentence, a paragraph, a rough observation. It doesn't have to be polished. The tools will sharpen it.

Examples of good starting points:

  • "I noticed that first-year students struggle to find their writing voice."
  • "AI-assisted systems erode operator agency through abstraction, speed, and opacity."
  • "Remote team standups feel performative even when nothing is actually wrong."

Click Start. BIG Tools launches you into the first stage: NGT.

4. Walk the six stages

Each stage produces up to 5 candidates. You promote 1–5 to carry forward.

  1. NGT — generate a divergent set of ideas
  2. Reframe — shape the keepers into How-Might-We questions
  3. Filter — pressure-test each HMW against your audience, context, and constraints
  4. Steal — borrow proven patterns from adjacent fields
  5. Mixtape — curate the survivors into a coherent set
  6. Pitch — write the narrative you'd share with someone else

At any stage you can pick a different LLM. The default is tuned for each tool, but if you want a second opinion, switch models and re-run.

5. Export your progression

When you hit Pitch, the top of the page shows Progression complete. Click Export to XLS to download the full journey — including the cards you promoted, the ones you didn't, and the final pitch.

You own everything you capture. Export as often as you want.