How to use Heurio
Does Heurio Automatically Analyze My Page?
Heurio doesn't run an automatic scan on page load today — every heurio is created manually or through a locked heuristic guideline. Here's how the two workflows compare, and what's coming.
Short answer: Heurio doesn't scan a page for you automatically today. You (or your teammates) pin each heurio manually. If you want a structured, guideline-by-guideline pass instead of ad-hoc clicking, see Heuristic Evaluation — that's the closest thing to "automatic" that exists right now.
Not yet — every heurio today is created by a person, either one click at a time or by working through a locked heuristic guideline. Here's exactly how manual review works right now, and what's changing.
#How review works today
- Manual, one at a time. You click an element on a live website, and Heurio opens a comment form for a note, suggestion, severity, and optional heuristic reference.
- Guided, not automated. In Heuristic Evaluation, you can lock a rule (e.g. "Visibility of System Status") so it's pre-filled on every new heurio — this speeds up a structured pass through a guideline, but you still have to find and click each issue yourself.
- No page-load scan. Opening the extension on a page does not trigger any analysis. Nothing happens until you click.
#Why this trips people up
If you came to Heurio expecting it to open a site and hand you a list of usability problems, that's a fair expectation to have — and it's not what the current version does. Heurio today is closer to a structured commenting tool than an automated auditor. We hear this often enough that we're building toward it directly — see Heurio for vibe coding for where AI-assisted analysis is headed.
#Get the fastest manual workflow today
Until automated analysis ships, the fastest way to approximate it is:
- Open the Book of Guidelines and pick a built-in guideline — Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics is the most common starting point. See Heuristic Evaluation for the full walkthrough.
- Lock the first rule and work through the page top to bottom, pinning a heurio on every violation.
- Switch to the next rule and repeat.
This won't find issues for you, but it guarantees you don't miss a category the way ad-hoc clicking sometimes does.
Frequently asked questions
- Will Heurio ever analyze a page automatically?
- Automated, AI-assisted analysis is actively in development. Follow the vibe coding pages at /vibe-coding and the Heurio blog for updates on AI heuristic analysis as it rolls out.
- What's the closest thing to automatic today?
- Locking a rule in the Book of Guidelines and working through a guideline systematically — see Heuristic Evaluation. It structures your manual review but doesn't find issues on its own.
- Does the extension do anything when I open it on a new page?
- No. Opening the extension just makes the comment tool available. No data is collected and no analysis runs until you click an element.
- Can my whole team split up a manual review to go faster?
- Yes. Heuristic evaluations are typically more reliable with 3–5 reviewers, and splitting the rules of a guideline across teammates is faster than one person covering the whole guideline alone.