Auto-Setup builds the counters and sections, then guides you row by row - beta
Open your pattern in the reader. In the Dashboard (the layers icon, top right) there is a Try Auto-Setup card - or the same thing on the toolbar once the beta is on. Tap it and it analyses the pattern.
What comes back is a report, not a fait accompli: how many pages it read, how many rows, charts and sections it found, and a verdict - READY, PARTIAL or NOT SUPPORTED - with a confidence level. Two lists follow: what Auto-Setup can do, and what you will still do by hand.
If the pattern is written for several sizes or several versions, it asks which you are making before it builds anything - there is no point counting someone else's sleeve. Then Apply creates the sections, counters and shaping in your project, and tells you what it made.
Once a pattern is set up, the top of the Dashboard becomes the card you actually knit from. It shows which row you are on and how many there are, the instruction for that row, your stitch count, and a look ahead - in 3 rows: begin shaping - so nothing arrives unannounced. Rows are flagged where it matters: shaping, check, colorwork, finish.
Next step moves you on. Overview shows the whole pattern with the sections you have finished. Log is your knit log - every row you completed, which you can export as a text file. Pattern info keeps the sizes, yarn, needles, gauge and notions where you can reach them without leaving the row.
A Need help? button stays within reach while you knit, and everything it offers is about this row:
What's on this row - the techniques it uses, or "plain stitches only".
I'm stuck - the row broken into smaller steps, in order, with a reminder to count often and that tinking back one row is allowed.
What's next - what is coming, or that this is the final row of the section.
Full glossary - every abbreviation, browsable.
With Bobbin switched on, the same sheet can ask her to explain the row in plain language, check what your stitch count should be right now, tell you how to measure this section, look ahead at the tricky bits, or talk you through joining a new ball when the yarn runs out.
Auto-Setup also writes a Reading Guide section into the Dashboard: the pattern's instructions gathered per section, in the order you will work them, with a link to any chart it generated. It is there for the moment you want to read ahead rather than follow one row at a time.
Available on iPhone, iPad, Android, and web at app.stash2go.com