Bridge is aytm's chat-driven study setup surface. Instead of building a survey field by field, you describe the research you want to an AI assistant called Skipper, and it builds the study alongside the conversation in a workspace you can read and check. What comes out the other end is a real aytm survey with a real aytm report.
In This Article
- Terminology
- What Bridge Is
- Getting Around
- How a Study Gets Built
- What Skipper Does—and What It Won't
- Bridge and the Rest of aytm
Terminology
Bridge uses a small, consistent set of words, and they mean the same thing in the interface, in this help center, and in any support conversation you have. These five will get you through your first session—the full glossary covers the rest.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Study | The work itself—one piece of research, from first brief through to finished report. |
| Chat | A conversation in Bridge. Every study has one, and it lasts as long as the study does. A chat can also stand on its own, with no study attached. |
| Skipper | The AI assistant that proposes the methodology, builds the audience, prices the study, writes the survey, and generates the report. |
| Card | One tile on the study canvas. Each card shows a piece of the study—your audience, your quote, your survey draft—and carries its own status. |
| The dock | The column down the left holding the work you have in progress. Studies appear as stones, study-free chats as pearls, all in one order. |
What Bridge Is
Bridge puts two things side by side. On one side is a conversation with Skipper. On the other is the study canvas—a set of cards showing exactly what has been decided so far: your methodology, your stimuli, your audience, your quote, your survey draft.
Nothing you do needs saving. Your work is stored as you go, so you can close the tab and pick up where you left off.
Bridge replaces the manual survey editor for building new studies. It doesn't replace the aytm dashboard, your reports, or anything else you already use—a Bridge study becomes an ordinary aytm survey when it launches.
Getting Around
Three things orient you.
The dock is the column down the left. It holds what you're actually working on—studies as stones, chats with no study as pearls, in one order you control. Opening something doesn't dock it; working on it does. That's why the dock never fills up with things you merely looked at, and why it has no limit.
The header carries your team picker, a studies tile with All studies and Search in it, the Support pill, and the Bridge logo—which is also the New chat control. New study is the pearl at the foot of the dock.
All studies opens a table of every study you can see, plus your own chats, with filters, sorting, grouping, and row actions. It's how you find anything that isn't currently in the dock.
💡 Tip: Press ⌘K (or Ctrl K) anywhere to open the search palette. With the field empty it shows what you touched most recently; type and it matches titles as you go. Ask it a question and it offers to put that question to Skipper in a fresh chat.
Each browser tab shows whatever its own address names, so you can keep two studies open in two tabs and they won't fight over which one is on screen.
How a Study Gets Built
A study moves through three phases. You only converse through the first one; the rest run themselves.
- Design. You and Skipper agree the methodology, collect your stimuli, build the audience, settle the quote, and draft the survey. This is the conversational part, and it's where all of your input happens.
- Fielding. You pay at checkout, the survey collects responses, and the data is cleaned and prepared.
- Report. Your results are written up as a report you can read, ask questions about, and refresh.
You'll see each study's current phase as a status in the All studies table—Design, Ready to Launch, Fielding, Analyzing, Report, or Refund if it was stopped early. Studies in Bridge explains what each one means.
⚠️ Note: Paying for your study completes your order, but it doesn't put your survey into the field on its own. Our panel team reviews every Bridge survey before it starts collecting, so your study will read Fielding while the response count is still at zero. That gap is expected.
What Skipper Does—and What It Won't
Skipper does the building. Over the design phase it proposes a methodology and explains why, translates what you want into a real audience definition, puts a quote in front of you, drafts the survey, and later generates your report.
You direct it by asking. The design cards are there for you to read and check rather than to type into—your stimuli are the one thing you add directly. Everything else changes because you asked for it in the conversation, which keeps the chat a complete record of how the study reached its current shape.
There are things Skipper won't do, and it's worth knowing them up front:
- It won't edit a study you don't own. If you open a colleague's study, Skipper will answer questions about it but won't change it—changes belong in the owner's chat. To work on it yourself, clone it.
- It can't stop a study, issue a refund, or copy a study—not yours, and not a colleague's. Stopping is in the All studies table, copying is Clone, and Skipper will point you to support for a live survey or a refund.
- It isn't in your support conversation. When you ask for a human, you get a human—Skipper isn't a participant there at all.
Bridge and the Rest of aytm
A Bridge study is an aytm study. When it launches, it runs on the same panel, follows the same launch checks, and produces data you can work with the same way you always have.
- Teams carry over. A new study belongs to whichever team is selected in the header, and who can see it follows your normal aytm visibility rules. Studies in a confidential team stay inside that team.
- You can reuse past work. Any study you can see can be copied—either the design alone, to run something similar, or the whole thing with its results, to work with the data. See Copying a Study in Bridge.
- Human support is built in. Press Support in the header and you're talking to an aytm person without leaving Bridge.