> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.ishlabs.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Follow-up interviews

> Ask a finished simulated participant follow-up questions about their session, in the web app.

After a run, you can keep talking to any simulated participant who took part. Ask
them about a moment, the exact wording they read, or why they gave up, and they
answer in their own voice from what happened in their session.

Follow-up interviews live in the ish web app, on the **Chat** tab of a participant.
There is no CLI command or MCP tool for them, and API keys cannot reach them.

> [!NOTE]
>
> This is a conversation with one participant about a run that already happened.
> To put a new question to many people at once, use an [ask](https://docs.ishlabs.io/concepts/ask-and-round.md).
> To ask every participant fixed questions at the end of a run, add
> [interview questions](https://docs.ishlabs.io/concepts/assignment-questionnaire.md) to the study.

## Before you start

* A study with at least one simulated participant whose run has ended: `completed`,
  `failed`, or `cancelled`. Participants still running cannot be interviewed yet.
* You are signed in to the web app. Share links are read-only and do not show the
  Chat tab.

Real (human) participants, participants in an ask, and participants whose person
was deleted cannot be interviewed.

## Open the chat

**1. Open the study's results**

Any results view works: the participants table, the overview, journeys, the
timeline, [frames](https://docs.ishlabs.io/concepts/frames.md), or segments.

**2. Select a participant**

Their details open in a panel.

**3. Open the Chat tab**

The first time, it reads "Talk to the participant" and offers two starter
questions for the study's modality. Tap one to send it, or type your own.

Press Enter to send and Shift+Enter for a new line. Replies stream in; Stop ends a
reply early. If a reply fails or you stop it, **Try again** asks the same question
again. Each message can be up to 8,000 characters of text; attachments are not
supported.

## Ask questions that use what they remember

The participant answers from a record of their session: who they were at the time
of the run, what they did step by step, what they noted to themselves, their answers
to the study's questions, and their own end-of-session summary. A failed or
cancelled run is part of that record, so a participant who barely started says so
rather than inventing a session.

* **Point at a moment.** "Take me to the moment you first hesitated" gets a more
  useful answer than "How was it?"
* **Ask why.** "What exactly made you lose confidence?" draws out the reasoning
  behind a reaction.
* **Ask for the exact detail.** For a price, a label, or a line of copy, the
  participant looks back at the screen, image, page, or clip they saw. If it was too
  small or blurry to read, they say so instead of guessing.
* **Hypotheticals are guesses.** Ask about something outside the session (a change
  you are considering, new copy you paste in) and they answer as themselves but say
  it is a guess, not a memory. Asked about something they never ran into, they say
  they do not recall it.

Each reply sees the most recent 40 messages of the conversation, so in a long
thread the earliest turns stop informing the answers.

## Work on one thread as a team

Each participant has one thread, shared by everyone who can open the study. Reopen
the tab and the conversation picks up where it left off. When your organization
has more than one member, each question shows who asked it. Only one reply is generated at a
time per participant. There is no way to clear or export a thread.

## Cost and limits

| | |
| - | - |
| Credits | Follow-up questions do not draw simulation credits. |
| Message length | Up to 8,000 characters, text only. |
| Pace | Messages are rate limited per user. Over the limit, wait and send again. |
| Who | Simulated participants in a study whose run has ended. |

> [!NOTE]
>
> Answers are generated from the recorded session; they are a reconstruction, not
> a replay. The participant's record is fixed at the run, so they know nothing of
> later iterations, and the conversation does not change the run's recorded
> journey. Read their answers with the same care as the rest of the
> [results](https://docs.ishlabs.io/concepts/reactions-and-results.md).

## Related

> [card] [Reactions and results](https://docs.ishlabs.io/concepts/reactions-and-results.md)
>
> The recorded journey a participant answers from.

> [card] [Assignment and questionnaire](https://docs.ishlabs.io/concepts/assignment-questionnaire.md)
>
> Questions every participant answers at the end of a run.

> [card] [Ask and round](https://docs.ishlabs.io/concepts/ask-and-round.md)
>
> Put a new question to a whole panel instead of one person.


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.