Objective

The Objective step is where you tell Gather what you want to learn. It has two panels that work together: an AI-Guided Setup chat on the left, and a Manually Edit panel on the right.

AI-Guided Setup

Start by describing your research goal in the chat. Gather asks you for a few customer headlines you want to validate, then turns them into a dynamic interview guide with adaptive follow-up questions — no manual survey writing required. A few shortcuts to get going faster:

• Start from a template to begin with a proven structure.

• General feedback spins up an open-ended feedback project.

• Add a Project Overview to summarize your goal in a sentence or two.

• Upload Reference Documents — product docs, FAQs, brand guidelines — to give the AI context. Documents may take up to 2 minutes to become available.

Refining your project

Use the Manually Edit panel on the right to fine-tune the agent directly — whether you started from the AI-Guided Setup chat or are writing the project from scratch:

• Role, Context, and Instructions — define who the agent is, the background it should know, and exactly what it should say and ask.

• Initial Message — the first thing the agent sends when a conversation starts.

• Conversation Examples — add sample exchanges to steer the agent's tone and style.

Project settings

A few optional settings let you tailor how this specific project runs:

• Blind Mode — when enabled, respondents won't see your brand name or logo during the conversation, so you can collect unbiased feedback.

• Documents — upload reference material the agent can draw on as context during respondent conversations.

• Escalation Contacts — set SMS and email contacts to be notified when a conversation from this project needs a human.

• Customer Incentives — manage incentives and discount codes this project can offer respondents.

When you are happy with the setup, click Confirm Objective & Continue.