Seating guests by hand and with AI
How to seat guests in Seated by Tini: drag-and-drop and click-to-assign seating, AI-generated arrangements from plain-English rules and guest tags, saving several versions of a chart to compare side by side, and reading the room legend.
Updated
Seating people
Seating happens on the Room tab. When nothing is selected, the right panel becomes the guest list — split into Unseated, Seated, and a Waitlist for Tier B. There are two ways to seat someone.
1. Drag from the list
Drag a guest from the right-hand list onto any seat. Drop them on an occupied seat to trade places, or drag a seated guest from seat to seat to move or swap them.
2. Click an empty seat (often faster)
Click any empty seat and a picker opens right at that seat. Search and click a name to seat them — no dragging across the screen. Unseated guests are listed first, with a “move from another seat” group if you want to relocate someone already seated.
Reading and managing seats
- Each occupied seat is tinted with the guest’s primary (first) tag color, so groups read at a glance.
- Right-click (or long-press on a touch device) a seated guest to view their full details (tags, RSVP, notes, constraints) or remove them from the seat.
- The stats bar above the canvas tracks Guests total, Seated / seatable, Unseated, and how many tables still have open seats, plus an RSVP breakdown.
AI suggestions
Suggest with AI (top of the Room tab) drafts complete arrangements from your rules. Every plan includes a monthly allowance of AI generations — see Plans & AI usage.
- 1Make sure you have tables and guests. The modal shows a checklist if anything’s missing.
- 2Toggle the preset rules and add free-text instructions, then choose 2 or 3 suggestions and Generate.
- 3Review each result — its strategy, how many guests it seated, and any constraints it couldn’t satisfy.
What the preset rules do
| Keep tags together | Seats guests sharing a tag at the same table. |
| Mix tags across tables | Spreads each tag around the room instead. |
| Keep couples / families together | Looks for a Family tag and keeps those groups intact. |
| Fill tables to capacity first | Finishes one table before starting the next. |
| Respect zones | Seats a tag inside the zone whose name matches it. |
| Only seat Confirmed guests | Ignores Pending / TBD / Unknown for this run. |
| Honor must-sit / must-not | Applies each guest's seating constraints. |
| Empty seats per table | Leaves a set number of seats open at each table. |
Free-text instructions
Add anything the toggles can’t express, in plain English — for example: “Put the bride’s college friends near the dance floor. Keep Uncle Bob away from Aunt Linda. Seat the CEO at Table 1.”
Versions & comparing
Each event can hold multiple arrangements. This is how you decide between options — apply a few, then actually look at them instead of judging from a paragraph of text.
- The Arrangement menu at the top of the Room tab switches versions and lets you create a blank one, duplicate the current one, rename, or delete.
- Versions from the AI are marked with a wand icon in the menu.
- Apply several AI suggestions, then flip between them with the menu to compare the real seating on the canvas before committing.
Reading the AI’s notes
When a version came from a suggestion, an AI notes button appears next to the arrangement menu. It opens the approach the model took, the instructions you gave, and any rules or constraints it couldn’t fully satisfy — so the reasoning behind a version is never lost.
The room legend
Because a guest can carry several tags (and colors), a busy chart can be hard to read. The legend in the top-left of the room fixes that.
- It lists every tag that has someone seated, with its color and a count. (It stays hidden until at least one tagged guest is seated.)
- Click a tag and the chart lights up just the seats of people with that tag — everyone else dims — while a list shows exactly who they are and which table they’re at.
- Click a name in that list to open their full details. Click the tag again (or the ✕) to clear the highlight.
Ready to seat everyone?
Start free — one event, up to 50 guests, no credit card.