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Two things: an account, and an Anthropic API key. The key is what pays for the AI, so nothing runs without it, not even your free runs.

Once the key is saved, create a brand and run any pipeline you like. There is no set order.

Every run needs one, your free runs too. Anthropic bills you for each run at their price, with nothing added on top.

1. Go to console.anthropic.com and sign up, or sign in if you already have an account.

2. Open Billing, add a payment method and add at least $10 of credit. Runs stop when the credit runs out.

3. Open API keys and press Create key. Any name will do.

4. Copy the key. It starts with sk-ant- and is shown only once.

5. In Otto Lab, open Settings, then Personal API key. Paste it in and press Save.

Your Personal API key is kept on our server, encrypted, with a secret that is never in our database, so it works in any browser you sign in on. Only its last 3 characters are ever shown, and you can remove it in Settings at any time.

If it is missing, paste it again in Settings, under Personal API key.

On a team, you need no key of your own. Every run there uses the team's key, and nothing runs until the owner saves one. Media keys for Generate are the exception: each person saves their own.

You do, directly to Anthropic, at their price with nothing added. Every run uses your own key, and Anthropic bills that account.

This is separate from what you pay Otto Lab. If runs stop with a billing or credit message, add credit to your account at console.anthropic.com.

Generate is billed the same way, by Kie AI, Fal AI or Higgsfield, on your own media key.

Type the brand's name in the box at the top and press Create. Everything you make for it lives inside it. The free plan has one brand.

Then open the brand, press Setup, paste your website and press Analyze site. It reads your colors, your fonts and what you sell, so you never paste them again.

Pick the brand's Market there too (the country it sells in). Copy for it is spelled for that market. Analyze site fills it from a .co.uk, .com.au, .ca, .ie, .nz or .za address, and you can change it any time.

Any of them. There is no set order, so start with the one for the job you need. If you want research before you write, Research Pack looks into the product, the market and what customers say. It needs a paid plan.

Whatever a run finds is saved with the brand, and all 19 pipelines can read it, so later runs build on earlier ones.

A run is one pipeline from start to finish. Sending a message is not a run.

A run you have started keeps going to its last stage, even if it was your last free one. On the free plan the run ends once its last stage is done, and it never goes past 60 replies. Changes after that come with a paid plan.

It reads the market before it writes, and it stops after each stage so you can approve it. Runs keep going if you leave, so you can come back to a decision.

Treat every output as a draft. Every finding is labeled verified, stated or inferred, and it lists what it couldn't confirm.

Verified: checked against a page it opened during the run, and it names that page. Stated: someone said it and nothing confirmed it; your own site's claims about your buyer go here. Inferred: worked out from signals, not found, so it can be wrong.

Check claims before you publish, especially in supplements, health, finance or products for children.

Otto Lab doesn't promise sales or ad results. Results depend on your product, offer and market. It gives you research with sources and drafts written from it. You check the drafts and decide what goes live.

A pipeline works through its stages one at a time and stops after each one so you can check it.

Press Approve and continue to move on, or say in plain words what to change and it redoes that stage.

Click a finished stage to jump back up and read it again.

The Shopify Builders show each stage on a dashboard instead, with Ask Otto at the side for questions and changes.

What was already written is kept. Send the word continue and it picks up from there.

If it keeps happening on the same pipeline, write to hello@ottolab.io with the pipeline's name and roughly when.

Yes. A run keeps working when you open another one. A dot beside it in the Chats list shows it is still working.

Otto Lab is built for desktop. It opens on a phone, but most of the app doesn't work well there yet. Use a computer to run pipelines and use the tools.

Open Settings, then Beta features, and switch them on. They are still being finished, so they show only on the browser where you turned them on.

Drag on an empty part of the canvas to draw a box: every card it touches is selected, and dragging any of them moves them all. Hold Shift to add to what is selected. To move around the canvas, hold Space and drag, drag with the middle mouse button or a finger, or scroll with two fingers.

Add your raw takes to a new edit, press Open the editor, then press Automatic Edit in the editor's top row. It reads what is said, takes out the pauses, filler words and false starts, and when a line was said more than once it keeps the cleanest take.

B-roll goes over the sentence it fits. With a voiceover added under the clips, the voice sets the timing instead: each sentence gets the clip that shows it, and the clips' own sound is off.

Reading the words needs a Fal AI key in Media keys. Matching the clips uses your Personal API key.

Pick Drama, then Mini-movie, as the Type of Ad. Otto writes a short screenplay, 60 to 90 seconds, with up to four Avatars talking, and the video model speaks each line in its Avatar's voice.

Each Avatar has a Voice box on their card. What you write there goes into every shot they speak in, so the video model gives them the same voice each time. Send it to the Video Editor and every clip arrives with its own voice.

In the Video Ad Generator's animated looks, the video model speaks each scene's part of the script in one narrator voice, locked so it stays the same in every scene. There is no separate voiceover to make. A Skeleton is the exception: the skeleton says its lines on camera.

A Jingle still gets its song made on its own and laid over the clips.

Save a Kie AI, Fal AI or Higgsfield key in Settings, under Media keys. Then press Generate on any prompt in a chat and pick the model. The result is kept with your uploads. A voiceover needs a Fal AI key. Generate comes with a paid plan.

The service you pick bills your own key for every generation, so check its prices first. Only the last 3 characters of a media key are ever shown, and on a team each person saves their own.

Quick jobs with no stages. Fill in one form and get a report, a prompt or a download. Press Save as document to keep a report in Documents. Tools come with a paid plan. In the sidebar, the Diagnose tools are under Diagnose, Production Briefs and Customer Review Hook under Research & Planning, Ad Copy Writer under Copywriting, Static Ad Recreator and Image Prompt Maker under Statics & Video, and the rest under Tools:

Image Scraper: Paste a page link and download every image on it at full resolution, one at a time or all in a zip.

Creative QA: Checks an ad against the avatar, angle, desire and awareness level on your Growth Board, or a brief you type in. Paste the script, copy or email, or attach a static, and get scores out of 10 and the one fix.

Video Ad Analyzer: Breaks down a video ad: the hook, the pacing, where attention drops, why it works and what to test next. Paste a Meta Ad Library, TikTok or YouTube link or upload the video, and add what you know about its results if you like.

Drop-Off Finder: Imagines five buyers reading your page and shows where each one would leave. Give it the page link, and who the page is for if you want.

Production Briefs: Turns a finished concept or script into the brief your creator, editor or designer works from. Pick a test from the Growth Board (its inspiration statics go with it) or paste a concept description.

Customer Review Hook: Paste your customer reviews and get 30+ ad hooks, written in your buyers' own words. Reviews can also come from a CSV or TXT file or from Review Finder, and the hooks are sorted into five clusters.

Static Ad Recreator: Upload a static you like and get an image prompt that rebuilds it for your product, with your copy and brand. You pick the product and can change the words for each part before the prompt is written.

Image Prompt Maker: Describe the image you need (advertorial, social, email or header) and get one prompt ready for your image tool. You choose the image type and aspect ratio, can add reference images, and can ask for changes.

Ad Copy Writer: Writes three primary texts and three headlines for a product, your brand or a landing page. You pick or type an angle and a length, and can ask for three more in the same direction.

Review Finder: Paste a product or store link to collect its reviews into a spreadsheet you can download. App Store links work too, and saved reviews go to Documents and the Research Workbench; for Amazon, Trustpilot and Reddit, a Grab reviews button reads them from your own browser.

Ad Video Downloader: Paste a Meta Ad Library link to download the ad's video in full quality, along with the copy that ran. Meta's video links expire within hours, so fetch the ad again if a download fails later.

All of a brand's research in one place, searchable, with the customer's own words sorted into tabs. Add CSV files, PDFs and notes, and runs and Review Finder add rows too; export it as spreadsheets or one text file.

Add CSV files, PDFs and notes and each file's quotes are sorted into tabs for you, using your Personal API key, or the Team API key in a team. Runs add rows as they research too, and one box searches all of it.

Every ad test for a brand, from the idea to what it taught. Every run reads this board, so new work builds on what won.

Log each test on Testing, give it the ad names its Meta ads start with, and move it from Idea to Done. Board view shows them by stage. Mark each one Winning or Losing when the results are in, and archive what you no longer need to see. From a test, press Write briefs to open Production Briefs.

The Landing pages, Creators and Daily log tabs keep the pages your ads send people to, the creators you study, and one note a day on the account.

Connect Triple Whale. In Triple Whale, make a key under Data, then APIs, with MCP: Read ticked. The store's Triple Whale plan must be Foundation, Automate or Enterprise. In Otto Lab, on a paid plan, open Settings, then Triple Whale, and paste it next to the brand.

Each test then fills in its spend, ROAS, CPA and purchases, plus hook and hold rate for video ads, from the Meta ads whose names start with its ad names. Press the update icon on Testing to refresh every live test, or Update inside one test to refresh just that one.

Each brand needs its own key. The key is kept with your account on our server, never in your browser and never in an export.

In your account, so it is there on any device you sign in on. It is kept until you delete it.

Your Personal API key, a Team API key if you save one, and any media keys are kept on our server too, encrypted with a secret that is never in our database. Only their last 3 characters are ever shown.

Open Documents in the sidebar (the folder icon). Inside, Documents and Codes are folders you can open or close. Press New folder at the top to make one. Folders can go inside folders as deep as you like.

Point at a document, code or folder to see its icons: the pencil renames it, the bin deletes it, and on a folder the + makes a folder inside it. To move something, drag it onto a folder.

Deleting a folder does not delete what is in it. Those items move up a level. Documents and Codes can be deleted too.

Chats work the same way. Open Chats in the sidebar and press the + at the top to make a folder. Right-click a chat to move it into a folder or out of one, or drag it onto a folder.

On a paid plan, open Settings, then Team, and invite up to 10 people by email. Each gets a link that works once and runs out after 7 days. Everyone on a team needs their own paid plan: somebody on the free plan picks one before the link lets them in.

They work in your workspace. Click the sliders icon (Access) next to each person to choose which brands they see. A brand you mark Personal is seen by you only. If someone can see none of your brands, your team drops off their lists until you share one.

Members can delete only what they made, and can leave a brand shared with them. Only you, the owner, can see the plan, connect Triple Whale, use Backup, or manage the team and its Team API key.

You can save one Team API key there too. It is kept on our server, encrypted, and every run in your workspace uses it, so your team needs no keys of their own.

Somebody who already has their own account keeps it, and can still run a team of their own on a paid plan. Their own brands and the brands each team shares with them are listed in groups on the Brands page and in the brand menu at the top of the sidebar. One person can be on up to 5 other teams.

Open the brand and press Export brand. It saves everything in that brand to a file on your computer.

For everything at once, open Settings, then Backup, and press Export.

To bring a file back, press Import in Settings, Backup, and pick the file.

Export brand and Backup come with a paid plan.

Only you, anyone you invite to your team, and anyone you send a review link. What you send a pipeline or a tool goes to Anthropic to be answered, on your Personal API key or your team's Team API key. If you press Generate, the prompt and any pictures, clips or sound it builds on go to Kie AI, Fal AI or Higgsfield instead, on your own media key. We do not sell your data or share it with anyone else.

The Privacy page lists exactly what is stored and where.

You own everything you create, including on free runs. Otto Lab doesn't train on your work or sell your data.

Three, on one brand, and Otto Lab asks for no card. A free run goes to its pipeline's last stage. The run ends once that stage is done, and it never goes past 60 replies. The Research Pack, the Video Ad Generator, the Shopify Builders, the Code Builders, the tools, Generate, Backup, the Winning ads library and Triple Whale come with a paid plan. Whatever you make is yours to keep. You still pay Anthropic for the AI on your own key.

$12.99 a month, or $2,500 once. Both include every pipeline and tool, unlimited brands, teams, the Winning ads library, Growth Board, Research Workbench and Triple Whale, plus every pipeline and feature added later. The only difference is how you pay.

The AI itself is billed separately by Anthropic, to your own key.

A run you have already started keeps going to its last stage. To start another, pick a plan in Settings, under Plan.

Buy with the same email address you signed up with and you land straight back in your account with everything you made.

Open Settings, go to Plan and press Your billing. That opens your billing page on Whop, where you paid, and you cancel there.

You do not need to email us or give a reason. Canceling stops the next payment, and you keep access until the end of the month you have already paid for.

No. The payment lives with Whop, not with us, so cancel it there first (Settings, Plan, Your billing). Otherwise, you keep being charged for an account you can no longer sign in to.

No. It does not renew, so there is nothing to cancel.

On the monthly plan, yes, if you ask within 3 days of your first payment: write to hello@ottolab.io and it is refunded in full. Renewals are not refunded, and you can cancel any time.

The one-time payment is not refunded. The Refunds page has the details.

If something is actually broken, like being charged twice, write to hello@ottolab.io.

Write to hello@ottolab.io with the email address on your account and roughly when it happened, and we will sort it out.

If you paid with a different email address than the one you signed up with, say so. That is the most common cause.

Press Unsubscribe at the bottom of any email from us. It stops getting-started emails and team invites. The ones you need, like a sign-up link, a password reset or a change to your plan, still come. Changed your mind? The page you land on has a button to turn them back on.

To stop only the getting-started emails, open Settings, go to Account and turn off Getting-started emails. If you used Unsubscribe, turning them back on there undoes it. They stop by themselves once you're on a paid plan.

On the sign-in screen, press Forgot your password? and enter your email address. A link to set a new one arrives by email.

You may have signed up with Continue with Google. If so, sign in the same way.

Otherwise, use Forgot your password? on the sign-in screen to set a new one.

The sign-up screen and Forgot your password? both check that you are a person first. Some browsers stop that check, often the one built into the Facebook or Instagram app.

Open the page in Safari or Chrome and try again.

In the EU, the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, a bar asks before we use ad cookies or record visits. The cookies tell us which of our ads brought you, and let us tell Meta once when you sign up. Microsoft Clarity records how visits to the homepage go, never the app. Decline, or ignoring the bar, means none of that happens.

Wherever you are, you can turn them off at any time on the Privacy page, under Our ads, with Turn off ad cookies and recording. It works on the browser where you press it and does not sign you out.

Open Settings, then Account. The button there emails you a link, and you set the new password from that link.

Open Settings and go to Delete this account. You type your email address and password to confirm. After that, the email address can't be used for a new free account or free runs again, only on a paid plan.

It deletes your account and all your data right away: brands, chats, documents, codes, uploads, share links, your Personal API key, the Team API key if you own a team, and Triple Whale keys. It cannot be undone, and our backups drop it within 30 days. If you are on the monthly plan, cancel that first.

On a team: if you own it, its workspace is deleted for every member too. If you are a member, what you made in the owner's brands belongs to their workspace and stays there.

Email hello@ottolab.io. Include the email address on your account and, if something went wrong, roughly when and which pipeline. With those details we can usually answer in one reply.