How to make a QR code by describing it

Reticle AI August 7, 2026 · 7 min read

Most QR code tools ask you to know the answers before you start: which kind of code, which destination, which rules, which colors. Reticle AI turns that around. You write one sentence about what the code should do, read the setup it drafts, and decide whether to build it. This is the walkthrough, step by step, including the parts where it stops and asks you something.

The setup problem

Say you want a single code on a table tent that shows the lunch menu during the day and the dinner menu after 5pm, does not switch on until the restaurant reopens on the 14th, and stays behind a password until then so nobody scans a half-finished menu.

Built by hand, that is roughly eight separate decisions, each in its own control:

• Mint a dynamic link and set a default destination.
• Add a routing rule for the daytime menu.
• Add a second rule for after 5pm.
• Pick the time zone those two rules are judged in.
• Set the go-live date.
• Turn on password protection and choose the password.
• Give the link a name and labels so you can find it in three months.
• Style the code so it does not look like every other code on the street.

None of those steps is hard. The problem is that you have to know all eight exist, and in what order, before the first one makes sense. Describing the same code is one sentence: "Show my lunch menu during the day and my dinner menu after 5pm, live from the 14th, password protected until then."

Step 1: Open Reticle AI

There are three doors into the same builder, and they all open the same panel:

• The ✨ Reticle AI button in the Tools row at the top of the generator.
• The ✨ Reticle AI button at the top of My codes, next to the other create buttons.
• The describe box on the Reticle AI page and the homepage, where the button reads Plan it.

Reticle AI is signed-in only, on any plan. Signed out, the ✨ button opens the sign-in panel first. If you typed a description into the box on the homepage or the Reticle AI page and pressed Plan it while signed out, your text comes with you through the sign-in, so there is nothing to retype. A free account is enough to plan; whether a given plan can be built on a free account is a separate question, covered in step 4.

Step 2: Describe it

The describe box takes up to 500 characters, which is far more than you need. Good descriptions tend to do three things, in this order:

• Name the job. "A code for my hot sauce jars." "A contact card for my food truck." This is what decides the kind of link you get.
• Name the audiences or times that should land somewhere different. "iPhones and Android." "During the day and after 5pm." "In Canada." This is what becomes routing rules.
• Mention colors or an icon only if you care. Left out, you get Reticle's default look and can restyle it later. Asked for, it designs to the request.

Here is what the six example prompts built into the app actually produce. Three of them build on a free account:

• "A contact card for my food truck people can save in one tap" gives you a hosted contact card with a save-contact button, carrying the details you named and labelled blanks for the ones you did not.
• "A dark red code with a flame icon for my hot sauce jars" gives you a dynamic link plus a design: a deep red foreground, a flame from Reticle's built-in icon set in the middle, and rounded dots.
• "A forest green code with a leaf icon for my plant shop" is the same shape in a different palette, which is the point of describing rather than picking: the second one costs you a sentence, not another trip through the color pickers.

Three of them need Pro to build, because of what they contain:

• "Show my lunch menu during the day and my dinner menu after 5pm" (Pro) becomes two time-of-day routing rules on one link, plus the time zone they are judged in.
• "Send iPhones to the App Store and Android to Google Play" (Pro) becomes two platform rules and a default destination for everything else, which is the single most common reason people reach for smart routing.
• "One page with links to all my socials, password protected until launch day" (Pro) becomes a link page of buttons, a password, and a go-live date, all on one code.

You can plan any of these on any account. Planning and building are different gates.

Step 3: Read the plan

A few seconds later a plan card appears in the panel. It is worth reading properly, because it is the only chance to catch a misunderstanding before anything exists. The card carries:

• A one-line summary and a live preview of the code as designed.
• One row per decision. The destination, every routing rule with the condition that triggers it, the schedule, the labels, the custom ending, the password, the colors. If a rule is wrong, you can see it here as a row, not discover it after printing.
• Pro marks on rows your current plan cannot apply, so you know before you press anything why the button below might not say Apply.
• A numbered walkthrough underneath, in plain words, of what applying would build and what to do with it afterwards.
• Blanks it deliberately left. Reticle AI is built to leave a labelled blank rather than invent a detail it was never given, so a missing web address, phone number, or email arrives as an input with a label and a hint instead of a plausible-looking guess.

Those blanks are not advisory. Apply refuses to run while one is still empty, and tells you which one to fill. That is the mechanical guarantee behind the design goal: a plan cannot reach your account with a placeholder standing in for a real detail.

If the card is not what you meant, close it. Nothing has happened, and you can describe it again differently.

Step 4: Apply, then print

Apply is a separate, deliberate click. It runs exactly the steps you would have run by hand, in order: create the link and its link page, then the routing rules, the password, the schedule, and the labels. You watch each one land. The plan itself has no power to write anything; it is a proposal until you press the button.

One rule governs whether that button appears at all: a plan is applied whole or not at all. A draft made only of free features, a plain dynamic link or a contact card within the 3 free links, plus labels, a name, and the look, applies on a free account exactly as drafted. A draft containing smart routing, a schedule, a password, a link page, or a custom link ending needs Pro, and on a free account the card offers the upgrade in place of the Apply button. Nothing is created in that case, including the free parts of the draft, which is the honest behavior: half a plan is not the code you described. Pricing has the full comparison.

What you end up with is an ordinary dynamic link, indistinguishable from one you built by hand. It lives under My codes, it counts scans, and you export the code in whatever format the print shop wants. Because it is dynamic, the printed artwork is final but the setup behind it is not.

Changing it later

This is the part that makes describing worth learning rather than a novelty. Open any dynamic link under My codes and choose ✨ Edit with AI, then describe the change: "send Canadian scanners to the .ca store too", "push the go-live to the 20th", "make it navy with a coffee cup".

The plan that comes back is a set of changes, not a fresh link. They merge onto the link's current setup, so adding a routing rule does not silently wipe the schedule you set last month, and restyling does not drop the labels. You review the changed rows the same way and apply them the same way.

The printed code never changes through any of this. A dynamic code encodes a short link, and the short link is fixed the moment the link is created. Everything Reticle AI edits sits behind it.

What it will not do, and what gets sent

Three honest limits, because knowing them up front saves a confusing plan card:

It does not know your business or your website. It has never seen your site, your brand guidelines, or your product list. It works from the sentence you typed and nothing else, which is exactly why it leaves blanks instead of filling in an address that sounds right. If you want a specific URL in the plan, put it in the description or type it into the blank.

It will not hand you a code that cannot be read. Ask for a pale foreground and it darkens it in place until the contrast works, keeping your icon and the rest of the design. Where a background is too dark for any foreground to sit on, it falls back to the default dark on white palette instead. Either way the card tells you it may have adjusted your colors, and you are free to override it afterwards.

It is not a website builder. It sets up QR codes, the links behind them, and Reticle's own hosted contact cards and link pages. If you ask for a real website, it says so rather than pretending.

As for what leaves your browser: your description and your device's time zone go through Reticle to Google's Vertex AI Gemini API, which returns the suggested setup. When you are editing an existing link, a summary of that link's current setup travels with it so the change can be planned against reality. Reticle does not store your description or the suggestion that comes back, and a password is never part of the exchange in either direction: a plan can say a password is wanted, but you are the one who types it, at Apply time. The privacy policy sets all of this out in full.

Frequently asked questions

Try it on something real: describe a code on the Reticle AI page, or read what a dynamic QR code is before you print one.