Tell us where project is now.

Within one working day, usually sooner. The reply comes from the person who would actually work on your project, not from an account manager or an autoresponder, so it will engage with what you wrote rather than acknowledge that you wrote it.

Whatever you have. What you are trying to build or fix, anything that already exists, and any deadline or budget constraint worth knowing about. Rough is completely fine. A paragraph is more useful than a specification document, and we will ask the follow-up questions.

No. Plenty of good projects start as a problem rather than a plan, and working out what to build is part of the job. If you arrive with a fully formed spec that is fine too, though we may still push on which parts belong in the first version.

Yes, before any detailed discussion. Just say so in your message. Client work is treated as confidential whether or not paperwork is in place.

We will say so, and where we can we will point you toward someone better suited. Taking on work we are the wrong studio for ends badly for both of us, so it is worth five minutes of honesty at the start.