Set designers work across theatre, broadcast TV, and film. A regional theatre producer asking about a small studio play, a YouTube show needing a recurring talkshow set, and a feature film art department all hit the same contact form. Each one needs a different conversation about fees, build budgets, get-in schedules, and crew. Without help, a busy designer spends most of their week explaining the same fee structures over and over.

SleekAI reads your live WordPress data: production custom post type, capability posts (concept, model-making, technical drawings, construction supervision), and postmeta like medium (theatre, TV, film), fee_basis (weekly rate or fixed), typical_build, and get_in_days. The bot can answer questions like "how much for a single-set chamber play with 6 weeks of build?" or "how do you charge for a recurring weekly talkshow?" with real numbers (often $5,500 to $9,500 per week for theatre concept and drawings, $18,000 to $38,000 fixed fee for talkshow sets, and weekly rates for feature film art department).

Generic bots fall over here because theatre, TV, and film fee structures are unrelated. They confuse a weekly art department rate with a fixed theatre design fee. They have no idea that a Christmas family musical in a 600-seat regional needs a $180,000 build with two crews and tight tech-week scheduling. SleekAI logs which media and venues each visitor asks about so the designer sees whether the next quarter is leaning theatre or broadcast.

Set designers carry a brutal email burden. Producers email cold with fragments of briefs and expect a thoughtful reply within 48 hours. A working designer often spends a full day a week explaining the same fee structure to producers who have never commissioned a set before.

A chatbot that quotes by medium, venue scale, and rehearsal window gives those producers enough to bring the conversation to their board or artistic director, without you typing the same email a fifth time. The economics are favourable. One additional signed regional season package at a $32,000 design fee pays for SleekAI plus tokens for many years.

Two extra broadcast talkshow concepts a year cover the rest of your subscriptions. The transcript log gives you a market read you would not get otherwise. Designers usually only hear about what is happening from agents and chats at premieres.

Reading two weeks of chatbot transcripts tells you that regional theatres are budgeting for two-hander revivals, that streaming production companies are launching three new daytime talkshows, and that independent film art departments are scouting for designers with model-box experience. That informs which artistic directors you reach out to and which agents you let know you are available. The other quiet benefit is filtering.

Tyre-kicker enquiries with no budget and no timeline get a polite, factual reply and self-select out. Real producers with budget get a real conversation. Your week starts to look more like creative work and less like inbox triage.

That is the real win.