Seating guests by hand and with AI

1. Drag from the list

Drag a guest from the right-hand list onto a seat — or anywhere on the table itself, and they take its first open seat. No need to hit a small chair exactly, which helps most when you’re zoomed out.

• Onto someone’s seat: the guest takes that seat and the person already there moves to the next open seat at the same table. If the table is full, that person goes back to Unseated.
• Seat to seat: drag a seated guest onto another seat to move them, or onto an occupied seat to swap the two.
• A short note at the top of the room says what happened, with an Undo link. A full table tells you so rather than doing nothing.

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.

Moving someone to another table

You don’t have to find a person’s chair and drag it across the room. Either way below opens a list of every table with how many seats it has free. Tables with room are listed first. Pick one and they take its first open seat.

• In the guest list on the right, every seated guest shows their table (e.g. Table 7). Click that badge.
• Or right-click their seat in the room (long-press on a touch device) and choose Move to table…

Moving a group at once

To move a family or a whole group together, select them and seat them in one step.

• Select people: tick the checkboxes in the guest list, or Shift-click their seats in the room (⌘/Ctrl-click works too). On a touch device, long-press a seat and choose Select for a group move. Selected seats get a dashed ring.
• Select a whole group: the checkbox on a section heading (Unseated, Seated) or on a tag heading (when grouped By tag) selects everyone under it.
• Seat at table… in the bar at the bottom of the guest list shows each table’s room for the whole group, counting seats the group already holds there. Tables too full are grayed out. The group sits in neighboring seats when the table has a long enough gap, in guest-list order.
• Unseat sends the selected seated guests back to Unseated. Clear or Esc empties the selection.
• Every move shows a note with an Undo link, and one undo reverses the whole group move.

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), move them to another table, select them for a group move, 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.

1. 1Make sure you have tables and guests. The modal shows a checklist if anything’s missing.
2. 2Toggle the preset rules and add free-text instructions, then choose 2 or 3 suggestions and Generate.
3. 3Review each result — its strategy, how many guests it seated, and any constraints it couldn’t satisfy.

What the preset rules do

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.”

• 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.

• 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.