There's no syntax to learn and no command list to memorize. You describe what you want the way you'd describe it to a colleague at the next desk — and if you've never worked with an AI assistant before, the examples below show what that actually sounds like.
Talk to Waldo in plain English. Name the data you're working with and what you want out of it — you don't need to know which geoprocessing tool does the job, what it's called, or where it lives. That's Waldo's half of the conversation. If your request is ambiguous, Waldo asks rather than guessing.
The one thing worth knowing up front is the Ask / Do toggle at the bottom of the pane. In Ask mode Waldo is read-only, enforced: it answers questions about your project, recommends approaches, and hands you tools ready to open — but changes nothing. In Do mode it does the work: runs the analysis, applies the symbology, builds the layout. Start in Ask if you want a second opinion; flip to Do when you want hands.
That's the whole manual. The rest is examples.
Read-only, free forever. Use it the way you'd use a knowledgeable coworker: quick how-do-I questions, or a method discussion before you commit to an approach.
Waldo read the spreadsheet before answering — the advice is about your data, not a generic how-to.
In Ask mode this is all talk, enforced — nothing in your project changes.
The same plain language, but now Waldo executes — in your live session, with every action logged and every geoprocessing run leaving a receipt you can inspect or re-run yourself.
run_geoprocessing_tool · Clip — Wetlands × County_Boundary → wetlands_countyset_symbology · unique values on WETLAND_TYPE — 6 classesTwo steps, one sentence. Every action lands in the log — the receipt is yours whether or not you read it.
Notice what the prompt didn't include: the method. Data plus goal is enough — Waldo proposes the how, you approve or adjust, and it carries the whole thing through to exported layouts. This is a real pattern: a full needs-assessment of this shape is an afternoon, not a week.
"I need a map the county board can read at a glance" gets a better result than a list of button-presses. Waldo picks better methods when it knows what the output is for — and if you do want a specific tool or method, just name it and Waldo will use it.
Shop conventions — your projection, your color ramps, "legends never show the basemap" — can be stated once in conversation and Waldo carries them through the session. You don't have to repeat yourself request by request.
Waldo explains its choices — why natural breaks instead of quantiles, why that search radius. If something looks off, say so in plain language ("the labels are crowding the coast") and it adjusts. It's a conversation, not a command line.
Seven days, every capability, no card and no sign-up. Open a project you know well and ask Waldo something about it — that first answer is usually the moment it clicks.