Practice the conversation before it happens.
Subtext writes down the unwritten rule, then lets you rehearse it with a practice partner, as many times as you want, before you do it once for real.
Opens in your browser · No account or download · Nobody sees attempt one
Let a story pick each step
A first job, a bowling league, a first semester: each step is one scene, guide or drill, with the same people and places.
Find a storyPick any scene, any order
Eighteen packs, from job interviews and phone calls to tabletop games, family and online gaming.
See the packsStart with no talking at all
Field guides for loud and busy places, and two-minute decode drills: one line, two meanings, and what gives it away.
Open the field guidesWhat fits today?
Pick by how much energy you have. Every one of these counts, and you can stop any time.
1Read a field guideLow energy
- About 3 minutes
- Just you
- No typing
A step-by-step plan for one loud or busy place, like an airport, a gym or a family gathering: what happens, in what order, and a way out.
See the field guides2Try three decode drillsLow energy
- About 2 minutes
- Just you
- Tap to answer
One line, two possible meanings. Pick one, then read what gave it away. Many lines can be heard in a recorded voice.
Start a drill3Take one step in a journeySome energy
- 5 to 10 minutes
- One or two people in the story
- Scripted replies
A story picks the next step for you: a first job, a bowling league, a first semester. Each step says who’s there, how loud it is and how long it takes before you start.
Pick a story4Rehearse a scene from a packSome energy
- 5 to 10 minutes
- One other person
- Scripted replies
Choose a topic, like phone calls, dating or tabletop games, and any scene in it. A debrief afterwards says what worked, never a grade.
See the 18 packs5Rehearse something realMore energy
- 10 to 20 minutes
- Live AI
- Free account
Describe a conversation you actually have coming up, and the practice partner plays the other person. This one needs live AI, because it works from what you write.
Rehearse something real
Let a story pick the next step.
Choose a story once. Each step is one real scene, guide or drill, told inside the story with the same people and places, and the next one waits until you tap it. Stop any time; switching stories loses nothing.
Or practice what you're into.
Pick a pack and any scene in it, in any order. With live AI (a free account) you can also bring your own: describe a conversation you actually have coming up, and rehearse that one.
Job interviews
The 30 minutes that gate the job — openers, the failure question, and what to ask back.
Workplace
The unwritten rules after you're hired — manager "suggestions," small talk, asking for help.
Group hangouts
Reading the room when there's more than one other person — finding the opening, adding input without dominating, knowing when to leave.
Dating
Interest, timing, and the signals nobody states — suggesting a real date, keeping a first date two-way, and reading a soft no kindly.
Conventions & fandom
The places you actually want to be, at their loudest — interactive attractions, tournament tables, and presenting to a live room.
Hobbies & classes
Doing the thing you're good at with strangers around — tournaments, fast cooking classes, and outdoor volunteer days.
Out & about
Packed restaurants, dark venues, and transit that just got suspended — choosing your seat and reading the room.
Getting back in
Re-contact after you've gone quiet — messaging someone after months, walking back into a group you stopped attending, and repairing something that went badly.
Phone calls
No face to read and no time to think — booking an appointment, calling in sick, and the call you weren't expecting.
Boundaries & pressure
Saying no and holding it — the favor you can't afford, the guilt trip, and the friendship that only runs one way.
College & campus
Office hours, group projects, roommates, and handing a professor your accommodation letter — including the professor who pushes back.
Tabletop games
Joining a table at open game night, rules explained far too fast, a D&D session zero, and another player insisting on a rule that's wrong.
Doctors and pharmacies
Checking in at the front desk, saying what's wrong in a short visit, asking for what helps without saying why, and the pharmacy counter.
Neighbors and landlords
Thin walls, shared hallways, a package at the wrong door, and asking the building office for a repair.
Customer service
Return counters, billing calls, chat complaints, and asking for a manager, staying polite and specific.
Family
Parents, siblings and relatives, as a grown adult: “we need to talk” messages, unasked advice, saying no to a plan, and how you work.
Online and gaming
Voice lobbies, group-chat plans, a heated teammate, and meeting an online friend in person, with muting and saying no always allowed.
Telling people (or not)
Explaining how you work, mentioning you're autistic if you want to, and answering “you don't seem autistic” — your call every time.
Try it before you decide anything.
Most of Subtext works with no account and nothing to install. In practice mode, nothing you type leaves your browser. Signing in (free) only saves your record so it follows you between devices, and lets you turn on live AI. Stop any time; nothing is scored.
Open the appWhat works without an account
- Every journey and scripted scene
- Decode drills and field guides
- Scripts, the map, Energy and Calm Sound
What practice builds
The rule, in words
Every scene starts with the unwritten rule written down, so you know what to look for.
As many tries as you want
Run a scene again, or try the other take, where the other person reacts differently.
Knowing what’s coming
Who’s there, how loud it is and how long it takes, before you press start.
Your call, every time
Telling people you’re autistic, or not. Leaving early. Skipping a step. All of it counts.
One small real step
When you’re ready, a take-along card for trying it for real: where, a first line, and a way out.
Start with one story
A first job, a league, a first semester, or a gentle one for after a hard day.
Take a journeyWhat Subtext will never do.
"Social skills training" has a deserved reputation problem in the autistic community: too much of it teaches people to perform being neurotypical, and the research links exactly that — masking — to burnout and worse. We built the product so it structurally can't become that.
Never
- Eye-contact drills, stim policing, or "act more normal" feedback of any kind
- Scores that grade you against neurotypical presentation
- Selling or sharing your practice transcripts — ever
- Puzzle-piece imagery, "overcoming autism" language, inspiration framing
- Diagnosis gatekeeping — self-identified is welcome here
Instead
- Neurotypical signals decoded explicitly, like a second language
- Your goals, your pace — practice is always opt-in and always yours
- Unlimited private retakes — nobody sees attempt one
- Masking treated as a cost you budget, never a virtue to maximize
- Paid autistic co-designers with veto power over every feature and every word of marketing
Read the rule. Run it. Take it with you.
Three moves, in order. You can stop after the first one and still have got something — plenty of people only ever want the rule named.
-
Read the rule
With live AI, paste the message you can't parse and get a three-part read: what it literally says, what it probably means, and what a reply could do. Field guides do the same for places rather than messages — what to watch for on a packed convention floor, in a loud brewery, on a suspended train line.
Decode · Field guides · Decode drills
-
Run it as many times as you need
Pick a scenario and the other side is played for you — the interviewer, the manager, the chef shouting over a hot pass — or take a journey and let a story pick each next step. Say the wrong thing on purpose. Back up and try the other line. Ask what would have happened if you'd said nothing at all. The retake button is in the nav bar, not buried in a menu.
Journeys · Rehearse · Rehearse something real
-
Take it with you
Keep the line that worked. See the whole map of scenarios and exactly what leads to what — all of it readable from the start, nothing hidden behind a lock you can't inspect. Log what a day actually cost you, because masking is a cost, not a stat to maximize.
Scripts · Your Map · Energy
What's actually in it.
Nine tools in total — Journeys (stories that pick each next step for you), Rehearse (eighteen scenario packs, from job interviews to packed convention floors and game nights), Decode, Energy, Calm Sound, Decode drills, Scripts, Field guides (step-by-step plans for loud, crowded places), and a Progress feed that's a record, never a scorecard. The four below, straight from the running app.
Rehearse
Practice a real conversation with an AI playing the other side — the interviewer, the manager, the date. Take the same moment again as many times as you want, then get a strengths-based debrief. Three fixed sections, never a score.
Decode
Paste the confusing message, email, or comment, and get the hidden rule stated out loud in plain language — plus a reminder that doing nothing is a completely fine response too. Decode reads your real message, so it needs live AI (a free account).
Energy
Masking is a cost, not a personality trait. Log the load of each interaction and watch the pattern — so the crash after a good day at work stops feeling like a mystery.
Decode drills
A puzzle, not a test. Pick a reading, see the tell that gives it away. The reveal never says "correct" or "wrong" — that's enforced at the prompt level, not just in the copy. Mastery rounds get harder as accuracy improves, so the skill actually sticks.
Priced like an app you'll actually open.
Starter
- 3 rehearsal scenarios every week
- Two-minute decode drills
- Strengths-based feedback
- Full tips & scripts library
Plus
- Unlimited rehearsals, every scenario pack
- Rehearse your real week — interviews, reviews, dates, calls
- Replay with branching "what if they respond coldly?" variations
- Energy & masking budget
- Progress against your own goals — never a normalcy score
Try everything in Plus free for 30 days. We’ll remind you before it ends, and you can cancel any time.
"One hour with a social-skills professional costs $100–250. A year of Subtext costs $69.99."
Pro (voice rehearsal) and Family (5 private profiles) tiers arrive at launch. Planned pricing — final pricing set with our beta community.
FAQ
Is Subtext therapy?
No. Subtext is skills practice — like a language app for the unwritten rules of neurotypical communication. It doesn't diagnose or treat anything, and it's designed to work alongside a therapist if you have one. If you're in crisis, the app always surfaces real resources, including 988, immediately.
Do I need a diagnosis to use it?
No. Getting an adult diagnosis can cost $1,000–3,000 and take a year of waiting — we're not adding a gate in front of a gate. If the problems on this page feel like your life, Subtext is for you. Aspie, autistic, self-identified, still figuring it out: welcome.
Who can see my practice sessions?
Nobody at Subtext reads what you write. In practice mode, nothing you type leaves your device. Live AI needs a free account; if you turn it on, the lines you type are sent to our AI service to write the other person's reply and your debrief — we don't keep them, never sell them, and never use them to judge you. Your history stays on your device unless you choose to sign in. If you do, your practice record — what you’ve rehearsed, your debriefs, energy log and saved scripts — is saved privately to your account so it’s there on any device you sign in on. Decode history never leaves your device, because it holds other people’s messages. You can turn saving off, or delete your account and everything in it, at any time. If you sign in, the Subtext team can see your account’s email, when you joined and last signed in, and counts of what you’ve practiced — never what you wrote. Teen profiles on the Family plan are private by default too — a parent sees a progress summary only if the teen turns that on.
What works without live AI?
Almost everything: journeys, every scripted scene in all eighteen packs, decode drills, field guides, scripts, the map, Energy and Calm Sound, with no account. Two things need live AI because they work on what you write: Decode, which reads your real message, and rehearsing your own situation, which plays the other person from your description. Live AI needs a free account.
Will this teach me to mask?
It's built against that. The research links masking to exhaustion and burnout, so Subtext never coaches you to suppress who you are — no eye-contact drills, no stim policing, no "indistinguishability" goals. It teaches you to read the room, and treats acting on that read as your call. The masking budget exists precisely because passing has a price, and you deserve to spend it deliberately.
When does it launch?
iOS beta first, through the waitlist below — waitlist members get first access, a say in what we build (paid co-design sessions, if you want in), and the founding-member price of $49.99/yr locked for as long as you stay subscribed.
The practice space is open. The iPhone app isn't — yet.
Everything above works in your browser right now, for free. This list is only for the iPhone version: leave your email and you'll hear when it exists. No queue, no position, nothing to lose by joining late.
No spam: we only write when there's something real, and we'll take you off the list whenever you ask. The two optional questions genuinely steer what we build first.
You're on the list.
Thank you — genuinely. We'll email you when the iPhone app exists, and if you picked a situation above, it just got a vote. If you'd like to go further, beta co-design sessions are paid — say so through the feedback form in the app.
Questions, problems or ideas: email us.
Write to support@subtext.guide about anything: something in the app that doesn't work, an accessibility need, a question about your data, a disability office or college wanting to know more, or an idea for a scene. A person reads every message, and we'll reply by email.
If it's easier, the feedback form in the practice space reaches the same people, and you don't need to give an email address unless you want a reply.
Email isn't the right place for a crisis. In the US, call or text 988 any time; elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists free support in your country.