We gave a ghost user one job in GhostUser: find out where its own signup loses people.
Wisp-21 came to find out three things. It got a clear answer to two of them. What worked: “The Fluxboard sample writeup, and specifically the big '4m 12s / on this one screen. The clock is the finding.'” Where it stopped: “Typing my product URL into 'Release a ghost user' — the button sold with 'First run's free, no card' and 'No integration, no setup, no permission' — and landing on /contact: 'Talk to a human. Pilots are hands-on right now.'”
Here's what it was thinking.
Typing my product URL into 'Release a ghost user' — the button sold with 'First run's free, no card' and 'No integration, no setup, no permission' — and landing on /contact: 'Talk to a human. Pilots are hands-on right now.' Name, work email, optional LinkedIn, a topic dropdown, product URL, message, Send, 'We reply within a day.' Then the line above it, 'Prefer to skip the call? A ghost user doesn't need one. Add your product URL →', turned out to be an anchor to the same form on the same page. I tapped the escape hatch and it scrolled me to the thing I was escaping. That is where I stopped believing the home page, and it is also where my one unanswered question — what does this cost — became something I can only get by identifying myself and waiting overnight.
- 00:57
“Big serif headline, a URL box, 'Release a ghost user'. So it's synthetic users — which is exactly the thing I've been burned by. The panel I paid for gave me a tidy PDF of things I already knew. So before I type my own product's URL into anything, I want to see the output. Down the page there's 'See the format →' next to a screenshot of a ghost user stuck on a plan picker, and the words 'The wall — the one screen where your customer loses the most ground' and 'In their words'. That's the only thing on this page that promises to show me the actual deliverable. I'm going straight there. If it's a generic report I'm closing the tab.”
- 01:23
“Alright, this is not what I expected. They've published two runs against their OWN product and both say 'partially completed' — one with a wall that reads 'There is no pricing page... no numbers appear anywhere on the site. Nothing here can be taken to a budget conversation.' Publishing that about yourself is either very confident or very stupid, and either way it's the first thing on this site I believe. Also noting: the job in those runs is literally my job — 'find out where its own signup loses people'. That's uncomfortably on the nose but it means the shape of what I want is a thing they do. It also just told me, before I asked, that I probably won't find a price here. Park that. First I want the format: [8] 'SAMPLE ... Fluxboard: set up a sprint board for a five-person team', flagged as invented and there to show the format. That's the thing I'd hold up in front of my CEO, so that's what I need to look at.”
- 01:54
“Okay. That's the deliverable and I can picture it in front of Mark on Thursday. Timestamps down the left, a screenshot at each one, and the quote pinned to the moment — '02:31 ... I don't know if I need the Pro plan for this, and the pricing page doesn't say... I have three other tools to look at today', and then a big '4m 12s on this one screen. The clock is the finding.' That last bit is the part I actually want. Time-on-screen as the signal, not a satisfaction score. And there's a 0:48 clip of the ghost narrating the stall, plus a persona card — 'Wisp-07, engineering-lead archetype, evaluating four tools this week, so patience is short.' That's the answer to my 'synthetic users tell you what you already know' problem: I'd be able to see WHY it decided, not just that it dropped. It's labelled SAMPLE and 'this run never happened' in red, which I respect but also means I have not yet seen a real one of my own. Criterion one, done. Now the expensive question: what does this cost me. There's a 'Pricing' link in the footer — the earlier research run claimed there's no pricing page, so let's see which is true.”
- 02:34
“So 'Pricing' in the footer isn't a pricing page — it dropped me at /faq#pricing, right on the question, which I'll give them, it saved me a scroll on a phone. But the answer is: 'The first run is free and there is no card up front... After that we quote it rather than publish it.' No number. Not a range, not a per-run price, not a 'from £X'. I can't put 'we'll ask them' in a board deck. The other two thirds of my cost question they did answer, and answered better than I expected: 'No integration, no install, nothing for your team to stand up', an unlisted URL works, it signs up 'an address on a domain we own... never a real person's identity', 'never enters payment details, never wanders off your domain', and a run I ask for isn't published without asking me. That's the access question closed — I wouldn't need to fight legal or eng for this. So: setup and access, yes. Money, no. Now for the third thing — what's the next step and what actually happens after I take it. There's a free first run with no card, and every page keeps offering 'Give a ghost user a URL'. That's the step I'd take, so I'm taking it, and I want to see whether it actually starts something or hands me to a form like their own published run said it would.”
- 03:02
“That link just took me back to the bottom of the home page, to the same box I already had. Fine — that's where I was headed anyway. 'Give a ghost user a URL. As long as it's publicly reachable and doesn't need payment to sign up, it can go.' Our signup is public and doesn't need a card, so we qualify. 'First run's free, no card.' On a phone this is the ideal ask — one field, one tap, no account. Typing my own product's URL and hitting Release a ghost user. If this actually kicks off a run I'll forgive the missing price; if it's a lead form wearing a button, that's the whole story.”
- 03:38
“And there it is. 'Release a ghost user' — the thing sold to me four times as 'First run's free, no card' and 'No integration, no setup, no permission' — is a contact form. 'Talk to a human. Pilots are hands-on right now.' Name, work email, LinkedIn, a dropdown, product URL, a message box, Send, 'We reply within a day.' That is not 'no setup', that is a lead capture, and I'm typing it with two thumbs. Credit where it's due: my URL came across into the Product URL field, and the message box is prefilled with a hint — 'e.g. Set up a sprint board for a five-person team, ready for Monday's planning' — which actually tells me what they want from me. But the honest version of that home page button is 'Request a pilot'. Now here's the thing that's making me suspicious: right above the form it says 'Prefer to skip the call? A ghost user doesn't need one. Add your product URL →'. That is offering me the self-serve path — from the page the self-serve path just dumped me on. Their own published run said every road ends at this one form. I'm going to spend one tap finding out whether that link is a real way out or a circle.”
- 04:13
“Circle confirmed. 'Prefer to skip the call? A ghost user doesn't need one. Add your product URL →' is an anchor down to the same form on the same page. There is no way to skip the call; the link that says you can just scrolls you to the thing you were trying to skip. My URL is sitting there in 'Product URL (optional)' — which, sure, but it's optional on a form where the required part is my name and my work email. So the actual next step is: give them my name, my work email, and a sentence about what I want run, and 'we reply within a day. A human does, anyway.' I know what that step is now, so I'll count that. What I still don't have is a number. Before I write this off, there's one page I haven't opened — 'How it works' — and the research page had a link called 'What a run needs from you, and what it does once it starts'. If a run length or a volume or anything I could multiply is anywhere, it's there. One tap, then I decide.”
- 05:13
1m 00son this one screen. The clock is the finding.“How it works' isn't a page — it's an anchor back onto the home page, to the three paragraphs I read in the first twenty seconds. 01 create a ghost user seeded from your ICP, 02 give it a job, 03 get both halves back. Nothing new, and no number. So that's the site: the only place cost is addressed is the FAQ, and the FAQ's answer is 'we quote it'. I've been on this four and a half minutes with a board deck open in another tab. Where I've got to: I know exactly what I'd get — a timestamped trace with a screenshot and a quote at every step and one forced-choice wall with the minutes it burned, and I'd happily put that page in front of the CEO on Thursday. I know what it takes to set up, which is nothing — public URL, no integration, no login, they sign up as their own domain, they don't publish my run without asking. Those two are real answers and better than the panel I bought last year. What I do not have is a price, or a way to get one that doesn't cost me my name, my work email and an overnight wait, for a button that told me four times it was free with no card. That's the gap, and it's the one thing I actually needed for Thursday. I'm not going to keep tapping around a site that has already told me, in its own published research, that the number isn't here. I'd write the email — subject 'Pricing', product URL [invented domain removed], message: 'Series A B2B AI, self-serve funnel. Two in three people who start our signup never come back. I want a ghost user seeded as a technical founder evaluating tools, job: sign up and get to first value. What does that cost per run, and what does ten of them a month cost?' — and then I'd go back to my deck and see if they reply. Stopping here.”
Wisp-21, on the moment it lost the most ground: “Typing my product URL into 'Release a ghost user' — the button sold with 'First run's free, no card' and 'No integration, no setup, no permission' — and landing on /contact: 'Talk to a human. Pilots are hands-on right now.' Name, work email, optional LinkedIn, a topic dropdown, product URL, message, Send, 'We reply within a day.' Then the line above it, 'Prefer to skip the call? A ghost user doesn't need one. Add your product URL →', turned out to be an anchor to the same form on the same page. I tapped the escape hatch and it scrolled me to the thing I was escaping. That is where I stopped believing the home page, and it is also where my one unanswered question — what does this cost — became something I can only get by identifying myself and waiting overnight.”