A conversation with your guest. A little help for your team.

Can I use private AI during a SideQuest interview?

Yes. Interview rooms provide text-only Team Q for the host and explicitly invited interviewers. Guests can join without an account after host admission, speak, and send room messages. Viewers can watch, listen, and read after admission. Neither role can access Team Q. Private means private to the interview team, not a separate assistant for each interviewer.

Give the interview one question to explore

For a customer workflow interview, choose a recent event: the last weekly report, the last handoff, or the last time someone tried your setup flow. Ask the guest to bring an example they are comfortable discussing. A focused question gives the team something concrete to listen for without scripting the guest’s answer.

Write down what you know and what you are assuming before the call. Use Q for question quality and factual organization. The people in the room remain responsible for interpreting the conversation; a fluent summary should not become a judgment about the person being interviewed.

In a founder or venture conversation, ask Q to organize stated milestones and unanswered factual questions. In recruiting, use it to organize the steps someone describes in a project or suggest a clarifying question. People make the decisions: Q should not score or rank candidates, assess suitability for a role, or recommend investments.

Choose each person’s access deliberately

Sign in, open Rooms → New room, and choose Interview. The room type is fixed when you create it. In People, choose an invitation based on what the recipient should be able to do. Company membership alone does not grant interview-team access.

• Interviewer: a signed-in colleague who can speak, send room messages, and read and ask Team Q. This includes existing Team Q history, so review that boundary before inviting them.
• Guest: someone who can speak, use camera or screen sharing, and send room messages after admission. No account is required, and they have no Team Q access.
• Viewer: someone who can watch, listen, and read the room conversation after admission. They cannot publish media, send messages, or use Team Q.

Make arrival and transcription clear

Create guest and viewer links close to the session: each permits one enrollment and expires after one hour. The recipient enters a display name and waits for the host to admit them. Waiting does not grant access to the call or conversation. Guests and viewers receive only retained room messages timestamped after their admission.

Explain how your team will use Q. Microphone transcription is optional for each participant and starts off. Someone can speak while leaving transcription off. When enabled, browser speech recognition captures that person’s microphone; finalized captions join the shared human conversation and can inform Team Q. Turning transcription off stops future captions, not text already shared.

Ask Q for one useful follow-up

Keep the guest’s story moving. One interviewer can lead while another asks Team Q a short question. Human room messages supply context but do not automatically invoke Q; an interviewer must submit a question. Team Q answers in text without speaking over the guest.

• “Suggest one open question about the handoff they just described. Do not assume why it failed.”
• “List the steps the guest explicitly mentioned. Mark any missing step as unknown.”
• “Separate direct observations in this discussion from our team’s interpretations. Point out where we need clarification.”

Check notes with the guest and close the session

Read back the important facts in ordinary language: “You export the report on Thursday, then wait for another team’s numbers. Have I got that right?” Correct the record together. Review Q’s notes against the actual discussion before using them. Keep private Team Q outside any screen or window you share.

Use End interview to close access for everyone; leaving disconnects only your browser. The team retains read access to the saved room and Team Q conversations. The session also expires eight hours after its interview state is first initialized, normally when the host first opens it or creates a guest invitation. Later admission does not reset that deadline. Create a new interview for a later session.

Common questions