Docs · Getting started
Your first night
Ten minutes, one card, no signup required to sit down.
The short version
- Go to the homepage. Tonight’s card is on the table, face down.
- Flip it. Read the constraint. Resist the urge to reload for a better one — there isn’t one, it’s the same card for everyone until midnight.
- Pick up an instrument, or a pen, and give the constraint ten honest minutes.
- If you get stuck, or finish, or want to argue with the card, open the chat and tell Muse where you are. That’s the whole ritual.
What the card is for
The constraint is not an assignment and nobody grades it. It exists because a blank page offers infinite options and infinite options produce nothing. A specific, slightly strange restriction — write the chorus first, use only two chords, say the thing plainly instead of in metaphor — collapses the options down to something your hands can act on.
The card changes at midnight whether you used it or not. Missing a night costs you nothing except the night. The house rules are printed on the homepage: one card, one burn, ten minutes, nobody checks your homework.
Talking to Muse
The chat is free: five chats a night, with a Google sign-in before the first message so the count means something. No password to set, and the count resets at midnight. Open the chat from the homepage after you flip the card, or any time. There is no correct opening line, but concrete beats vague. “I have a verse in E minor and the chorus feels flat” gives her something to work with. “Help me write a song” gets you a question back, because she needs the same thing a bandmate would need: what have you got so far?
- Paste lyrics and ask what’s working and what’s filler.
- Describe a chord progression and ask why it feels unresolved.
- Name the gear you own and ask how to get a specific sound out of it.
- Tell her you’re stuck and let her ask the questions.
For a fuller map of what she’s useful for, see what you can ask.
Free and paid
Free gets you the nightly card, five chats a night, and sessions that live only in your browser. The paid plan ($4.99/month) removes the daily chat limit and syncs your sessions across devices. The card itself is never paywalled — it’s the same card for everyone, paid or not, forever.
Sessions on the free tier are stored in your browser’s localStorage only. Clear your browser data and they’re gone. That’s a real trade-off, not fine print — details in the FAQ and privacy page.
The iOS app
Suede Studio Muse on iPhone is a different animal: an adaptive deck dealt to the creative dimensions you avoid, with recordings, progress tracking, and every session stamped and dated. The web is the shared table; the app is your own practice. Both are covered in the FAQ.