How we eliminated the "Didn't I already ask for this?" problem

There’s a specific kind of frustration that creeps into client projects. It doesn’t stem from bad intentions, but from bad memory. Or, more precisely, from scattered memory.

We’d just wrapped up a round of changes on a website redesign when the client pointed to a section and said: “Didn’t I already ask for this?”

At that moment, everyone paused. The designer looked unsure. The project manager scrolled back through Slack threads. I opened my inbox, dreading the keyword search spiral I was about to enter.

That sentence — “didn’t I already ask for this?” — became the symbol of everything that was broken in our feedback process. Not because the client was wrong. But because we had no shared memory of what was asked, what was done, and what had been left unresolved.

That’s when we knew we needed something better. That’s when we started building Definable.

Where feedback goes to die

In most agencies, feedback doesn’t arrive in a neat, trackable format. It drips in through every possible channel: Monday morning emails, Tuesday Slack DMs, Wednesday Figma comments, Thursday video calls, and Friday voice notes sent from the car.

You try to keep track. You copy-paste. You summarize in Notion. You create tickets. You lose context. You forget who said what. You duplicate effort. You miss something.

And then the project drags.

We had one such project — a straightforward SaaS website redesign — that was supposed to take six weeks. It took twelve. Not because the work was hard, but because we kept re-doing what we thought we had already agreed on.

The client had asked for a “more modern” homepage. The designer delivered. The client didn’t like it. We asked what they meant. They sent examples. We updated again. The conversation looped. At week 12, we shipped. But no one was happy.

What we needed (and couldn’t find)

We tried every combination of project management and communication tools. Trello. Notion. Linear. Email. Slack. Figma. Each of them was great at something, but none of them were built for feedback loops between agencies and clients. The kind where vague asks need follow-up. Where priorities shift. Where people disappear for a week. Where deadlines are real, but clarity is rare.

We didn’t want another project management tool. We didn’t want to onboard clients onto Jira. We didn’t want to train them to speak our language.

We just wanted a simple, structured, and human way to track what had been asked, what had been answered, and what still needed a response.

So we built Definable, named after the Greek word for “bridge.” What we needed wasn’t a dashboard. We needed a bridge between two sides that rarely speak the same language.

What Definable does differently

Definable isn’t trying to replace your whole workflow. It’s not a full-on project manager. It’s not trying to be Figma or Slack or Linear. It’s just trying to solve one very painful problem: feedback mismanagement.

When a client sends feedback in Definable, it’s captured as a single, trackable item. You know who said it, when they said it, what it’s about, and what its current status is. You can mark it as “Needs clarification,” “In progress,” “Done,” or whatever fits your workflow. Everyone sees the same thing, in the same place.

No more buried feedback. No more misaligned expectations. No more “wait, when did we agree on this?”

What changed for us

Once we started using Definable internally, something clicked.

Clients stopped asking for updates, because they could see them. Designers stopped second-guessing feedback, because it was always structured. Project managers stopped playing telephone, because the history was transparent. And I stopped being the middleman who had to stitch together a narrative from scattered threads.

That same type of 12-week project? It now gets done in six. Not because we’re faster, but because we’re no longer doing things twice.

We built it for ourselves. Now it’s yours.

Definable wasn’t built in a vacuum. It was built between Slack calls and late-night design reviews. It was built by an agency (HOW Studio) that’s been on both sides of the conversation — client and vendor, designer and developer, sender and receiver.

We’re not claiming it’ll magically fix your process overnight. But we do believe it can bring clarity to what was agreed, what’s being discussed, and what’s changing. That makes it easier to say “yes” when appropriate, “not yet” when necessary, or even, when it’s justified, “we’ll need to revisit the scope for this.”

Because in agency work, clarity is currency.

And if you’ve ever had a client ask, “Didn’t I already ask for this?” you know just how expensive the alternative can be.