How Smart Match Works
Last updated: 2026-05-18
How Smart Match Works
Smart Match is a short conversational session that ends with a ranked set of tool recommendations and a written brief. You describe your situation, the system asks a few follow-up questions, and it returns a stack. This article explains what's happening at each step.
The Conversation
You start by describing what you need. Budget, role, team size, use case — the more of that you include upfront, the fewer follow-up questions the system needs to ask.
From there it goes up to 5 turns. Each follow-up covers one thing: budget, scale, role, or preferences like API access or open-source. You can type your answer or click the option chips when they appear. When the system has enough context, or once you hit turn 5, it returns your results.
What You Get Back
The output has three parts:
Strategy Brief — Two sentences. Your situation, then why this stack fits.
Insights — A few short tags describing the stack's character. Things like "Budget-optimized" or "API-first."
Ranked tools — The main output. Each tool card shows the name, vendor, pricing, a fit score out of 100, and a one-sentence reason tied to what you described.
Validation Against the Directory
Every tool in the stack comes from the HokAI directory. Smart Match doesn't invent products or guess at tools it hasn't seen. Each recommendation maps to a real tool profile that you can click through to. If a tool isn't in the directory, it won't appear in a stack.
Session Storage
Sessions are saved to help us improve the system and to support session history when that feature ships. We don't use your conversations to train external AI models. See Privacy & Data Handling for the details.
Keeping Data Current
Tool information changes constantly — pricing, features, availability. We run automated scans daily to catch those changes and update profiles. If you spot something that's wrong, let us know and we'll fix it.