We gave a ghost user one job in Linear: work out what it costs and whether to adopt it, before signing up.
Wisp-11 came to find out three things. It got a clear answer to all of them. What worked: “Pricing. I clicked it out of the nav and there were four tiers with the numbers printed on them, above the fold: free at zero, ten a seat, sixteen a seat, custom.” Where it stopped: “The front page. It says 'The product development system for teams and agents' and everything under it is agents drafting PRDs and opening pull requests and an Opus 5 panel doing triage.”
Here's what it was thinking.
The front page. It says 'The product development system for teams and agents' and everything under it is agents drafting PRDs and opening pull requests and an Opus 5 panel doing triage. I lead five people who track their work in a shared spreadsheet, and I could not tell from that page whether this was built for me or for a team two years ahead of me. If the price had not been one click away in the nav I would have closed the tab and gone to the next tool on my shortlist — not because it looked bad, but because it looked like it was for somebody else.
- 00:55
“Odd start. The words tell me there's a headline here — 'The product development system for teams and agents' — but what I'm actually looking at is a black rectangle with a nav bar on top of it. Nothing under the nav has painted. There's a 1440x804 image on this page with no description at all, so I'd guess that's the hero and it hasn't come in yet. I'm not going to write off a company because I caught them mid-load, so I'll give it a second and look again before I decide anything about this page.”
- 01:30
“Right, it was loading — the hero is there now and it looks expensive. 'The product development system for teams and agents.' Every panel under it is agents: agents drafting PRDs, agents pushing PRs, Opus 5 doing triage. That is not my problem. My problem is five people and a spreadsheet and me being the only one who knows what anyone is doing. I can't tell yet whether this is a tool for my team or a tool for a team that already has an AI workflow, and the marketing is not going to settle it. The thing that settles fastest is money: if this is 40 dollars a seat I stop here and go back to the spreadsheet. Pricing is right there in the nav, so that first.”
- 02:36
1m 06son this one screen. The clock is the finding.“That is the fastest answer to a price question I have had this month. Ninety seconds from the front page and I have four tiers with the numbers on them, above the fold, no form: free at zero, Basic ten a seat, Business sixteen, and both of those say billed yearly with a toggle sitting right next to them so I can tell there's a monthly number behind it. For my five that's fifty a month on Basic, or nothing at all on Free — unlimited members, two teams, 250 issues. The 250 is the bit I'd hit; five people filing issues would chew through that inside a year, so Free is a trial, not a home. Fine. Money is settled. What I still cannot tell is what this actually does for my five that the spreadsheet doesn't — the front page was wall-to-wall agents writing PRDs and opening pull requests, which is not my life. I'll open Product and see what's in it.”
- 03:28
“The menu is open and it's the clearest thing I've seen on this site. Four things: Intake, Plan and monitor, AI and automations, Build review and ship. 'Plan and monitor — set the plan and follow it from idea to launch' is my problem stated back to me, and it's the only one of the four that is. Worth saying out loud: the menu is sitting there on my screen but it isn't in the list of things I'm able to click, so I'm going the long way round to the same place — Plan is also down in the footer. Standup in fifteen. Going to Plan.”
- 04:32
1m 04son this one screen. The clock is the finding.“This page is the one I wanted and I can now write my sentence: it gives my five a shared list where the status keeps itself up to date and gets posted into Slack, instead of me chasing four people every Monday to fill in a row. Projects with milestones, updates that say on track or at risk with a date, threads that sync both ways into Slack — that is the part the spreadsheet will never do, because the spreadsheet only knows what someone last typed into it. I'm taking it with a pinch of salt, mind: every single thing on this page is a picture of Linear with a made-up rider-app company in it, twenty of them, and not one carries a word telling me what it shows. It's a very polished argument, not evidence. Last thing I need before standup is what it would actually cost me to try this: what do they want off me at the door. Pressing Sign up to look — I'm not filling anything in.”
- 05:12
“A spinner on a white card and the word 'Loading…'. Nothing I can click or type into yet. Second time today I've arrived somewhere on this site before it was ready — the front page did it too — so I'll assume it's the same thing and give it a few seconds rather than decide their signup is broken.”
- 05:52
“Yes, still at it — five minutes in and I've got more than I expected, so nowhere near giving up. The door is 'Create your workspace' with three ways in: Google, email, SAML SSO. Note what isn't there: no card, no 'book a demo', no sales form. I want to see what the email route actually asks for before I decide whether I'd start this on a Tuesday, so I'll press Continue with email to see the field. I'm looking at what it wants, not giving it anything.”
- 06:59
1m 07son this one screen. The clock is the finding.“That's the door and it's one field: 'What's your email address?', cursor already in it, a Continue button and a way back. No name, no company, no phone number, no card, no 'how many seats' — an email address and nothing else. That is the whole of what they want off me to get started, so this is where I stop; I'm not handing it over from a browser I'm evaluating in. What I would have sent, if I were doing this for real on Tuesday, is my work address and nothing more. I've got all three of the things I came for and my standup is in ten minutes, so I'm done.”
Wisp-11, on the moment the product earned the most ground: “Pricing. I clicked it out of the nav and there were four tiers with the numbers printed on them, above the fold: free at zero, ten a seat, sixteen a seat, custom. No form, no 'contact us for a quote', and a billed-yearly toggle sitting next to the price so I could see there was a monthly number behind it. I knew what this would cost my five before I had worked out what the product actually was, and I have not had that from anything else on this shortlist.” And on the moment it lost the most ground: “The front page. It says 'The product development system for teams and agents' and everything under it is agents drafting PRDs and opening pull requests and an Opus 5 panel doing triage.”