A full walkthrough of the actual flow, step by step — from a blank idea to deployable Terraform or Kubernetes config.
1. Start a project
From your dashboard, click + New Project. Give it a name, then describe your idea in the Product Idea & Contextbox — a few sentences is enough ("a marketplace app connecting local tutors with students, expecting a few thousand users in year one"). If you're modernizing an existing system rather than starting from scratch, check I have an existing system to describe it or upload a short .txt/.md brief. Click Launch Brainstorm Workspace to begin.
2. Brainstorm the details
You'll land in the Interactive Discovery Chat. A guided conversation asks the questions that actually shape the architecture — expected scale, budget, team size, compliance needs — often with clickable suggested replies so you don't have to type everything out. Answer at your own pace; when enough detail has been gathered, a banner reading "Discovery complete" appears and your answers are automatically turned into structured requirements.
3. Review your requirements
The Your Project Details tab shows what was extracted: what the product does, plus how it should perform — expected traffic, read/write pattern, data types, latency, budget range, team maturity, and security/compliance needs. Anything you want to correct or fill in is editable directly — click Edit, adjust a field (AI suggestions are offered per field), and Save Requirements. When it looks right, click Go to Architecture Diagram.
4. Generate and explore the architecture
Click Generate Architecture Design and Archwise reasons through a real design — not a generic template. The Multi-Cloud Design Board that follows lets you switch between AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and a private/on-prem view of the same design, and between several ways of looking at it:
- Diagram — the interactive topology, with a cost breakdown and an overall Architecture Health Score.
- Compare Clouds — the same design side by side across providers.
- User Journey — a plain-language walkthrough of how a real request flows through your design.
- Migration Roadmap — shown only if you flagged an existing system, a step-by-step path to get there.
The Security Findings panel lists a deterministic security/compliance audit of the design. Curious what a design decision would change? The What-If Simulator lets you try alternatives without committing to them.
5. Fix security findings in one click
Many findings in the Security Findings panel show a Fix this button. Click it, confirm with Yes, fix it, and Archwise applies the fix directly to your architecture — no manual editing — and shows you exactly what changed as a before/after diff, scoped to just the affected component.
6. Export what you need
When you're ready to build it for real, export options are on the same screen:
- Export Terraform / Export Kubernetes Config — real, deployable
.tffiles or Kubernetes YAML manifests, zipped, matching whichever provider tab is active. - Export Image — a PNG/SVG of just the diagram.
- Executive Summary — a non-technical PDF (no diagrams or code) for sharing with stakeholders who just need the cost/security picture.
Every export can also be emailed to yourself instead of downloaded directly.
7. Report a change later
Your architecture isn't frozen once it's generated. Go back to the same chat and describe what changed — "scale increased to 50k users," a new feature, a bigger budget — using the Report a change input. Archwise analyzes the impact and proposes specific updates in a Chat-Proposed Changes panel, where you can accept or reject each one individually (or all at once) before anything is applied. Every change is versioned, so nothing is ever silently overwritten.
Free vs. paid usage
The free plan renews every 7 days with enough brainstorm sessions, architecture generations, and updates to try the whole flow above. The paid plan gets its own daily allowance instead. See pricing for exact numbers, or the Help & FAQ pageif something doesn't match what you're seeing.