Your First Discovery
Time: 15 minutes Prerequisites: DecisionBox running (Quick Start), a data warehouse with data, an LLM API key
This guide walks through creating a project, configuring it, running a discovery, and understanding the results.
Step 1: Create a Project
Open http://localhost:3000 and click New Project.
Basics
- Name: A descriptive name (e.g., "Puzzle Quest Analytics")
- Domain: Select your industry. Available: Gaming, Social Network
- Category: Select your sub-type. For gaming: Match-3, Idle/Incremental, Casual/Hyper-Casual. For social: Content Sharing.
The domain and category determine which analysis areas and prompts are used. For example, a Match-3 game gets churn, engagement, monetization analysis (shared across all games) plus level difficulty and booster usage analysis (specific to match-3). A social network gets growth, engagement, retention analysis (shared) plus content creation and monetization analysis (specific to content sharing).
Data Warehouse
Select your warehouse provider and enter connection details:
BigQuery:
- Project ID: Your GCP project ID (e.g.,
my-gcp-project) - Location: Dataset location (e.g.,
us-central1,US,us-east5) - Datasets: Comma-separated dataset names (e.g.,
analytics, features)
Amazon Redshift (Serverless):
- Workgroup Name: Your Redshift Serverless workgroup (e.g.,
default-workgroup) - Database: Database name (e.g.,
dev) - Region: AWS region (e.g.,
us-east-1)
Filter (optional): If your warehouse has data from multiple apps/tenants, set a filter:
- Filter Field: Column name (e.g.,
app_id) - Filter Value: Your app's ID (e.g.,
my-app-123)
The agent will add WHERE app_id = 'my-app-123' to all queries.
AI Provider
Select your LLM provider:
| Provider | Model Example | Auth |
|---|---|---|
| Claude (Anthropic) | claude-sonnet-4-20250514 | API key |
| OpenAI | gpt-4o | API key |
| Ollama | llama3.1:70b | None (local) |
| Vertex AI | claude-sonnet-4-20250514 | GCP ADC |
| AWS Bedrock | us.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-20250514-v1:0 | AWS credentials |
Type the model name as free text — model lists change frequently, so we don't restrict to a dropdown.
For provider-specific configuration (Vertex AI project ID, Bedrock region), additional fields appear when you select the provider.
Click Create Project.
Step 2: Credentials
The project-creation wizard already collected the credentials it needs and stored them as project-scoped secrets:
llm-credentials— your LLM API keywarehouse-credentials— your warehouse SA key / DB password (skipped when the warehouse uses the cluster's cloud identity)embedding-credentials— your embedding provider key (required — schema indexing and/askboth depend on it)blurb-llm-credentials— only present when you configured a separate per-project Blurb LLM
To rotate any of these later, open Settings → Data Warehouse or AI Provider and re-save the field.
Step 3: Fill in Your Profile (Optional but Recommended)
Go to Settings → Profile tab.
The profile tells the AI about your product — its genre, mechanics, target audience, monetization model. This context dramatically improves insight quality.
For a match-3 game, you'd fill in:
- Basic Info: Genre, platforms, target audience
- Gameplay: Core mechanic (match3), session type, difficulty curve
- Monetization: Model (freemium/ad-supported), has IAP, has ads
- Boosters: Name, description, consumable/permanent, purchasable
- IAP Packages: Name, SKU, price, contents
- KPIs: Target retention rates, ARPU, DAU
The form is generated from the domain pack's JSON Schema — different domains have different fields.
Step 4: Run Discovery
Wait for Settings → Schema Index to reach Ready — the Run discovery button stays disabled until the schema index is built. Then click Run discovery in the top bar.
The dropdown lets you configure:
- Exploration steps: More steps = more comprehensive (default: 100). Start with 50-100 for your first run.
- Estimate cost: Check this to see estimated LLM and warehouse costs before running.
- Run All Areas: Runs all analysis areas (churn, engagement, monetization, etc.)
- Select areas: Run only specific analysis areas.
Click Run All Areas to start.
What Happens During a Run
The live progress panel shows each step:
- Schema Discovery — The agent lists your warehouse tables and reads their schemas
- Exploration — The AI writes SQL queries, executes them, analyzes results, and writes more queries based on what it finds. Each step shows:
- What the AI is thinking
- The SQL query it wrote
- Row count and execution time
- Whether the query was auto-fixed (SQL errors are retried with corrections)
- Analysis — For each analysis area (churn, engagement, etc.), the AI reviews all exploration results and generates insights
- Validation — Each insight's affected count is verified against the warehouse
- Recommendations — Based on all validated insights, the AI generates specific action steps
Step 5: Review Results
Click the completed discovery card to see the full results.
Insights
Insights are displayed in a table with:
- Name: Specific finding (e.g., "Day 0-to-Day 1 Drop: 67% Never Return")
- Severity: Critical, High, Medium, or Low
- Area: Which analysis area found this (churn, engagement, etc.)
- Players Affected: How many users are impacted
- Confidence: How confident the AI is (based on data quality and validation)
Click an insight name to see:
- Full description with exact numbers
- Key indicators (specific metrics)
- Risk score and confidence
- Validation results (claimed vs. verified count)
- The actual SQL queries that discovered this insight
Recommendations
Each recommendation includes:
- Title: Specific action (e.g., "Send Extra Lives After 3 Failures on Level 42")
- Impact estimate: Expected improvement (e.g., "+15-20% retention")
- Effort: Low, Medium, or High
- Target segment: Exact criteria for who to target
- Action steps: Numbered implementation steps
- Related insights: Which insights this recommendation addresses
Feedback
Use the thumbs up/down buttons on insights and recommendations:
- Like: Tells the agent this finding is valuable — it will monitor for changes
- Dislike: Tells the agent to avoid similar conclusions — add a comment explaining why
Feedback is used in subsequent runs. The agent won't repeat disliked insights and will track liked ones for changes.
Step 6: Run Again
After reviewing results and providing feedback, run another discovery. The agent will:
- Not repeat previously found insights (unless data changed)
- Avoid patterns you disliked
- Monitor insights you liked for changes
- Focus on new patterns and unexplored areas
Each run builds on previous context, making discoveries more targeted over time.
Next Steps
- Configuring LLM Providers — Detailed setup for each provider
- Customizing Prompts — Edit how the AI reasons about your data
- Project Profiles — Improve insight quality with context
- Architecture — Understand how the system works