Minutes count only while the camera is on

This is the rule everything else follows. The clock runs while the camera is on and the co-pilot is watching. With the camera off you can still type questions about the step you are on, and that typed help is free. The panel says "Clock off".

The clock also stops itself. After 60 seconds with no speech, no typing, no step change and nothing moving in front of the camera, the session holds:

"It went quiet, so the clock stopped. Tap Resume or type when you are back."

Leaving the app holds it too, and so does the Hold button. Say "Mog" (or "Meg"), type a word or tap, and it carries on.

Time is charged as the session goes, in blocks of up to two minutes, using plan or trial minutes first and minutes you bought after. If a block cannot start because of a fault on our side, it is not charged. Time left inside a block when you stop is not returned.

What Mog sees

While Live is on, three things leave your phone: frames from the camera, sound from the microphone, and the manual and step you are on. Frames go at most once a second while something moves and every three seconds when the picture is still, as small 640-pixel images. They stream to Google's Gemini Live API, which lets Mog see your build and answer out loud.

When Live is off, no video or audio leaves the phone. We keep no video and no audio by default. The words of the conversation show on your screen and are not saved by us. We keep the length of the session, so the minutes add up. If we ever offer to save a clip, for example to send to support, we ask first, every time. The details are in the privacy policy.

One quirk worth knowing: with the front camera you see yourself mirrored, but Mog does not, so left is still your left.

What Mog says

One or two short sentences at a time. Confident, kind, a little cheeky, never jokey about safety. He keeps you on the current step and tells you what comes next.

His real job is mistakes. When he sees a panel upside down, a raw edge facing out, the wrong screw, a cam lock not turned, a missing dowel or a cable not seated, he says so at once and shows a warning card:

"Hold on. That bottom shelf is upside down. See the raw edge?"

He can point. A ring on the camera picture marks the bag or the part he means, and the same part lights up in the 3D. Ask "which screw is this?" and he answers from the manual's hardware list, with the part number, the size and the count. If he cannot see well enough, he asks you to hold the piece closer, next to something for scale.

What Mog never does

  • A question is never a command. "Which way does the panel go?" gets an answer and moves nothing. "Is this done?" does not move on. "What do I do again?" does not replay. A polite request still counts ("can you go back?"), and "what's next?" is the one question that means Next.
  • He never invents. No made-up steps, fasteners, sizes, torque values or part numbers. If the manual does not say, he says he is not sure and points you to the paper manual.
  • He never finishes your build for you. Steps play by themselves but never move on by themselves. Only "done" on the last step, or the Finish button, ends a build.
  • He never marks a step checked on a guess. A step turns green on the progress bar only after the camera has looked at it.
  • He never skips safety. Power and water off before repairs, two people for heavy lifts, tall furniture anchored to the wall.

5 free minutes, and 10 more to earn

Every account gets 5 Live minutes once, to try it. Finish your first build and you get 5 more. Share a build and you get another 5. Our guess is that the moment that sells Live, Mog catching a flipped board before the cam locks go in, takes two to four minutes, so five is enough to see it.

After that you buy minutes. A Top-up is $2.99 for 10 minutes, about 30 cents a minute. A Project Pass is $5.99 for 35 minutes plus one custom manual. Pro is $9.99 a month for 120 minutes a month, about 8 cents a minute. Minutes you buy never expire. Pro minutes reset each month.

With a minute of free time left, Mog says so: "One free minute left. A Project Pass gives you thirty-five more." When the minutes run out, the camera turns off and the line is:

"That is the end of your minutes, so the camera is off. I can still answer what you type, and the 3D manual stays free."

Where it stands

As of 22 October 2026 the Live engine is built and has been tested against a stand-in server. The co-pilot in the web app is still a demo that reads the manual instead of your camera, and it says so: "Demo mode, so I am reading the manual, not your camera." Camera sessions open when the cloud side launches.