How to use Poisely

Every button, what it does, and when to use it. If you only read one thing: open Poisely on the computer you take the call on and hit Start interview or Start meeting. Poisely captures the call's audio and gives you a spoken-ready answer the moment a question lands in an interview, or a live transcript and summary in a meeting.

Quick start (60 seconds)

Open the Poisely desktop app on your computer. A phone can't capture call audio, so use a computer for the call itself.
Set your profile once in Profile & interview setup: paste your résumé or a short bio so answers sound like you.
Add this interview's details (optional): in the same setup, drop the role, company, or a study brief, answers get tailored to it.
Pick your mode: Research, Behavioral (job), or Coding.
Tap Start interview. The app captures the call's audio straight from your computer, no share picker needed.
Talk normally. When the interviewer finishes a question, Poisely transcribes it and shows a spoken-ready answer. Take it in, then say it in your own words.

In a meeting instead of an interview? Same flow, no profile needed: open Meetings, tap Start meeting, and Poisely captures the call plus your mic into a live transcript, then a summary and action items when you end. Full detail in Meetings below.

Which setup should you use?

Situation	Use this
They ask you to share your entire screen, or you want full stealth	The desktop app stays hidden at the system level, so your answers never show.
You want answers on a second device	Pair phone Max, answers show on your phone, a second device.
Audio-only call, no screen shared	The desktop app captures the call audio cleanly.
You're in a meeting, not an interview	Open Meetings and tap Start meeting, nothing joins the call and you get a live transcript, summary and action items.

Poisely only ever listens to the call's audio. Nothing is shown on the interviewer's side or in a meeting's participant list, and your camera is never used unless you tap Read screen for a coding problem.

Start / End interview

Button	What it does & when
▶ Start interview	Begins a session and starts capturing the call audio. Tap it right before (or as) the call starts. On a plan this counts toward your daily interviews; on pay-as-you-go it opens a credit pass.
Use a credit · full interview	Appears on the free trial or when you have credits. Spends one credit to run a full Max-feature interview (a resumable 24-hour, 90-minute pass) instead of the short trial.
■ End interview	Ends the session. Use it when the call is over. On pay-as-you-go you can re-start the same pass for free within its 24-hour window.
⚙ (gear)	Opens Profile & interview setup to change your profile, mode, study notes, length, or language before/between interviews.

Every control button

These sit below the live conversation once an interview is running.

Button	What it does	When to use it
🎧 Re-share call audio	Reconnects the call audio.	If the call dropped or audio stopped being captured.
💬 Answer now	Forces an answer to the current question immediately.	When you don't want to wait for the auto-pause, or the interviewer paused mid-thought and you're ready.
📷 Read screen Max	Takes one screenshot of a screen or window you pick and answers whatever question is on it. It works in every mode, not just Coding, and replies in the voice of the mode you're in: a coding problem gets a solution, a question on a slide in a job interview gets a spoken candidate answer. An aptitude or assessment test comes back as a compact list instead, one line per question with the option first and short working, and it answers several questions at once when the page shows more than one. Each capture uses 40 seconds of your trial or pay-as-you-go pass.	Any question shown on screen rather than spoken, including a whole page of a test. Pick the window that actually shows the problem, not the video-call window. If it can't find a question it says so instead of guessing, and on a test it says RESHOOT for any question that is cut off.
🧹 Clear	Clears the current question and answer.	To reset before a fresh question, or to clear a garbled transcription.
■ Stop	Stops listening but keeps the session.	For a break or an off-topic moment. Poisely hears only the call's audio, never your mic, so you don't need to stop while you speak.
📱 Pair phone Max	Shows a QR/code to open answers on your phone while this computer keeps listening.	When you would rather read answers on a second device than on your computer.

Answer panel buttons

On the "Your answer" card:

Button	What it does	When to use it
↻ Regenerate	Generates a fresh take on the same question.	The answer missed the point or you want another angle.
✂️ Shorter	Cuts the answer to about half its current length. Tap it again to halve it again.	The answer is too long to say naturally. Each tap is measured against what's on screen, so it always comes back shorter.
↺ Rephrase	Says the same thing a different way.	You want different wording or a different tone.

You can tap the question text to edit it if a word was misheard, then Regenerate to answer the corrected version.

When the answer contains code

Code arrives in its own block, built for typing it out rather than reading it. Every line is numbered and indentation is drawn with guides, so you keep your place in a long solution and can't lose a level of nesting (which in Python breaks the code). Long lines wrap instead of hiding off the edge. Two buttons sit on the block:

Button	What it does	When to use it
Copy	Copies the original source, without the line numbers or indent guides.	You're allowed to paste.
Bare	Hides comments and docstrings, leaving only the lines that have to be typed. Tap again to bring them back.	You're typing under time pressure and the comments are keystrokes that don't change whether it runs.

Regenerate, Shorter and Rephrase are switched off for an answer that came from Read screen, because they'd re-answer it as text without the screenshot. Take a fresh Read screen instead.

Research / Behavioral / Coding modes

Set the mode in Profile & interview setup. It changes how answers are shaped.

Mode	Use it for	What it gives you
🎧 Research persona	Paid user-research interviews, where you answer as a persona.	In-character answers from your profile, opinions and workflows, no textbook filler.
💼 Job (behavioral)	Recruiter screens and behavioral rounds.	STAR-shaped answers where you are the candidate, landing a concrete result/metric.
⌨️ Coding Max	Technical interviews, the whole round.	Handles all three kinds of question a technical interviewer asks. Ask it to write code and you get approach → full solution in your language → complexity and edge cases. Ask a concept question ("what's the difference between a process and a thread?") and you get a short spoken answer, no code. Ask about your background ("tell me about a time…", "why do you want to work here?") and you get the same STAR-shaped spoken answer Job mode gives.

Coding mode is a superset, not a code-only mode. A technical round is never only code, so you can leave it on Coding for the whole interview instead of switching modes when the interviewer changes subject.

Profile & setup fields

Field	What it's for
Active profile	Who the assistant answers as. Paste your résumé or a bio. Saved to your account and synced across devices. Use ＋New for a second persona, 💾 Save, 🗑 to delete.
📁 Upload résumé	Drop a PDF/DOCX and Poisely builds a first-person profile from it automatically.
This interview, study / company	Per-interview notes: the role, company, study brief, or a product to push. Answers are tailored based on this, you're not uploading answers, it just steers them to the right role and topic.
📎 Upload study material	Attach a case study, course doc, or brief for this interview, answers are drawn from it.
Answer length	Short (1-2 sentences), Medium, or Detailed (with a story). Coding always gives the full solution.
Language	Transcribes the interviewer and answers in your language, 50+ supported. Pick your language. The list is split into two groups: Auto-detect hears only the ten under "Auto-detect hears these" (English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian, Dutch). Everything in the second group, including Chinese, Urdu, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Arabic, has to be chosen yourself. On Auto those come out confidently wrong rather than blank, so the transcript looks real and isn't: Chinese turns to nonsense, Urdu is written as Hindi.
⏱ Wait before answering	How long a pause counts as "the interviewer finished." Raise it if it cuts the question off early; lower it if it feels slow.

Staying off the screen share

Nothing to turn on. The desktop app is excluded from screen capture by the operating system, so the window shows on your screen and is stripped out of Zoom, Teams, Meet, OBS and screenshots. It holds on a full-screen share, and it holds while the window is plainly visible to you.

Some sites show a preview thumbnail while you choose what to share, and Poisely can appear in that preview because it is drawn on your own machine before sharing starts. It is not in what you share. To keep it out of the preview too, press Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on a Mac) to hide the window, start the share, then press it again.

Check it yourself: start a call with a second device, share your entire screen, and look at the other device.

Pair phone

The app opens as a small always-on-top window, 460 by 660 rather than full screen, and you can drag it down to 340 by 320. Your size and position are remembered. Park it beside your call and every control stays in reach, and it is excluded from screen capture the whole time, including a full-screen share. Prefer answers on a second device? Pair phone Max and read them on your phone while your computer keeps listening.

Mock interviews (Practice)

Open Practice from the menu to rehearse before the real thing, free with any account. A realistic AI interviewer asks questions; you answer; you get feedback.

Control	What it does
Topic tiles	Pick Behavioral, Technical/coding, System design, Data annotation & RLHF, Research, or a specific role.
Your résumé / profile	Choose a saved profile so it interviews you about your real background.
Study material / job description	Paste or upload a JD so questions match the exact role.
Spoken interview (toggle)	On = questions are read aloud and you answer by voice in a continuous conversation. Off = type your answers.
⏸ Pause / 🎤 Resume	Stop or restart the mic during a spoken session.
🔊 Repeat	Hear the current question again.
Finish & score me	Grades the whole session: an overall score, per-skill breakdown, strengths, and exactly what to work on.
End session	Closes the practice run.

Meetings Pro & Max

Open Meetings (or go to /meeting) to record and summarize any call on your computer. It never joins the call, it hears your computer's audio plus your mic, so both sides are transcribed and nothing shows in the participant list.

Control	What it does
Start meeting	Poisely captures your computer's call audio and adds your mic, then starts the live transcript. No share picker needed.
Live transcript	The conversation appears in real time, split by speaker.
End & save	Stops the meeting, writes a summary and action items, and saves it.
Saved meetings	Open any past meeting to read its transcript, summary and action items, or delete it.
Ask this meeting Max	Ask a question about a saved call, for example “what did we agree on?”, answered from the transcript.

Tip: use headphones so your mic doesn't double-capture the call audio. A meeting auto-ends after a long silence or the max length. Pro gets up to 2 meetings a day; Max gets up to 5 a day and adds Ask-the-call.

Account menu

Open it from the button at the top right of the app.

Item	What it does
Manage subscription	Update card, see invoices, or cancel (card subscriptions).
Upgrade plan	Move from Pro to Max, or from trial to a plan.
Invite friends · earn credits	Share your link, you and your friend both get a credit on their first purchase.
Mock interviews · practice	Jump to the Practice page.
Log out / Delete account	Sign out, or permanently delete your account and data.

Plans, credits & discount codes

Plans

Free trial, one interview capped at 5 minutes of live listening.
Pro, up to 2 interviews a day, research & behavioral, transcript, 50+ languages.
Max, unlimited, plus Coding mode, Read screen (coding problems and aptitude tests), and Pair phone.

Pay as you go (credits)

No subscription, every credit unlocks full Max features. One credit is a 24-hour pass with up to 90 minutes of live help, and it's resumable, so a dropped call never wastes it. The 24-hour clock starts when you first start the interview, not when you buy. Unused credits never expire, and with several credits only the one you're using is "on the clock", the rest wait untouched.

Discount codes

On the checkout screen, enter a code in "Partner or discount code" and tap Apply, the price updates before you pay. Codes work on any plan or pack and with any payment method. Prices show in USD; your local amount, if you pay in a local currency, appears on the checkout page.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
"Open on a computer"	Phones can't capture call audio. Use a computer for the call; on Max, pair your phone to read along.
It doesn't hear the interviewer	Re-tap Re-share call audio and make sure you ticked the audio box. Prefer sharing the tab with the call, or Entire screen + system audio for a desktop app.
It cuts the question off early	Raise ⏱ Wait before answering.
Read screen only "sees an interview"	Capture the window with the actual problem (code editor / doc / test page), not the video-call window.
A test question comes back as RESHOOT	That question was cut off in the capture. Take it again with the whole question and all its options visible. Poisely says RESHOOT rather than guess an answer.
Answer is too long / wrong	Use ✂️ Shorter, which halves it each tap, or ↻ Regenerate; add the role in the study box for sharper answers.
Transcription or answers in the wrong language	Set Language to your language instead of Auto-detect. Auto hears only the ten in its group, so Chinese comes out as nonsense and Urdu is written as Hindi; picking the language directly fixes it.
It stopped transcribing and the screen looks frozen	Check whether the interview has ended: the status line reads paused or ended and 🎧 Re-share call audio reappears. The last answer stays on screen after a session ends, so the app can look live when it isn't. Tap Start for a new one.
A Windows download is blocked by antivirus	It's a false positive — the installer is code-signed and comes from the official site (dl.poisely.co). Allow it, or re-download from poisely.co/download.

Still stuck? Email support@poisely.co.

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