I Built the Tool I Couldn't Find

A few months ago, I was building a training course for airline gate agents. The course lived in Articulate Rise, which I love for its clean, scrolling format. But I hit a wall when I needed to teach the actual app: the mobile tool agents use at the gate to manage flights, check documents, and handle rebookings.

I didn't need a video. I didn't need a simulation built in Storyline with a scrub bar and a next button (yes, I know you can turn this off). I needed something simple: take my app screenshots, let the learner tap through them in sequence, show a tooltip explaining each element, and move on. An interactive walkthrough. Self-contained. Embeddable in Rise. So I went looking for a tool that did this.

The Search

Storyline and Captivate can technically do it, but the output comes wrapped in a player with navigation controls (yes, yes, I know), and the file sizes are enormous for what amounts to "click here, read this." They're built for branching scenarios and complex interactions, not guided screenshot tours.

The SaaS tools - Iorad, Supademo, Arcade, Whatfix - are designed for live product overlays or hosted demos. They don't give you a self-contained HTML file you can drop into a Rise code block. And they all come with monthly subscriptions that don't make sense when you just need the output file.

I could have built each walkthrough by hand in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; I've done it before. It works great, but it takes hours per walkthrough and you have to be a developer, or at least comfortable enough with code to debug layout issues at midnight. And I pity the poor ID that comes behind me to update the code.

I couldn't find anything that existed in the intersection I needed: visual editor, interactive hotspots, self-contained HTML output, no subscription.

Soooo I built it.

What Started as a Workaround

Walkthrough Studio started as a solution to my own problem. I'm an instructional designer, not a developer (I'm developer-ish). I can navigate Chrome DevTools and I know enough HTML, CSS, and javascript to be dangerous, but I'm not shipping production code on my own.

The first version was a single HTML file I could open in Chrome. Upload screenshots, drag hotspots around, configure tooltips, preview it, export the whole thing as a self-contained HTML file. Paste that into a Rise code block, and learners get a guided, interactive app walkthrough right inside the course. It worked. Really well, actually.

Then I started adding features because I kept running into things I needed/want-needed: multiple hotspot types (some that show info, some that navigate to the next screen, some that do both), customizable colors and animations, auto-advance screens for loading states, progress bars, completion signaling that integrates with Rise's continue blocks. Bold and italic text in tooltips. Font controls. Badge options. At some point it stopped being a workaround and started being a product.

What It Does Now

The core workflow hasn't changed from that first version:

1. Upload your app screenshots

2. Place hotspots visually - drag to position, drag corners to resize

3. Configure each hotspot: what it says, what it does, how it looks

4. Preview the walkthrough exactly as learners will experience it

5. Export a single HTML file with everything baked in

6. Paste it into Rise (or any iframe, any LMS, any browser)

No external dependencies. No hosted assets. No subscription required to view the output. The exported file is completely self-contained - screenshots are base64-encoded inline (discovering this was like discovering fire for me), the viewer engine is vanilla JavaScript, and it runs anywhere.

Recently I added branching and non-linear navigation, persistent tooltips that stay visible as reference labels, and per-hotspot tooltip positioning. It's turned into a genuinely capable tool.

Why I'm Writing This

I decided to make Walkthrough Studio available because I figured if I needed this tool, other instructional designers probably do too. The pricing is intentionally low because I built this as a practitioner solving a practitioner's problem, not as a VC-funded startup chasing enterprise contracts, and honestly, you should be able to afford your own tools without having to provide a "business case" email that has to be reviewed by your manager and then accounting and then discussed at a budget meeting, and then, and then, and then ad nauseam.

There's a free 7-day trial, no credit card required. If you build software training and you've ever wished you could just make an interactive walkthrough without firing up Storyline or signing up for another SaaS platform, give it a shot.

I'll be using this blog to share tips on building effective walkthroughs, instructional design patterns that work well with this format, and updates as the tool evolves. If you have questions or ideas, I'm reachable at info@walkthrough.studio.

Thanks for reading. Now go build something.