Catch flow friction before real users do.
Ghostwalk is the layer between automated tests and real user research. It runs research-grounded participant profiles through onboarding, signup, pricing, and key product flows, then turns what happened into a concise usability brief your team can act on.
ghostwalk.app / live study
Why this layer exists
The missing layer between tests and users
Before
Tests pass
Code works. The build is green, but nobody has actually tried to use it yet.
The gap
Ghostwalk
Synthetic personas walk your flows and flag the friction a first-time user would hit.
After
Real users
Recruit humans for the deeper questions. Slow and expensive — save them for what matters.
What Ghostwalk catches
The friction you stop noticing in your own product.
Which screen, which decision, which moment a first-time user decides this flow is not worth the effort.
Best for · onboarding · signup · pricing
“Three paragraphs deep and I still can't tell what this actually does or who it's for.”
→ Value proposition confusion
“Asking for my card before I've seen anything useful. I'm closing the tab.”
→ Trust breaks in signup
“I've clicked the logical next step twice. Nothing's happening. Where am I supposed to go?”
→ Task dead ends
How it works
Choose the flow
Paste a URL, pick the profiles that match your users, and name a concrete task.
Watch it unfold
Each persona walks the flow in real time — hesitations, backtracks, and all.
Act on the brief
Get a structured report with severities, evidence, and suggested next steps.
Pricing
50 free credits. No card required.
Each participant session uses 1 credit per step. Most studies use 10–50 steps per profile depending on task complexity.
$5
100 credits
Small pack
$10
250 credits
Medium pack
$40
1,250 credits
Large pack
Still wondering?
Why not just run more tests or recruit users?
Why not automated tests?
Because green tests do not prove user comprehension.
Your test suite proves the implementation works. It does not tell you whether a first-time user understands the labels, notices the CTA, or knows what to do next.
Why not real users first?
Because real-user time is too valuable to waste on obvious friction.
Real users are better, but early teams rarely have enough access, time, or polish to recruit them for every pre-launch check. Ghostwalk gives you draft-review signal before that step.
Why Ghostwalk?
Because it covers the workflow gap neither option handles.
Run it after the build works and before you put real humans through the flow. Fix the obvious friction first, then spend real-user time on deeper questions only humans can answer.
Participant profiles are customizable. Shared libraries are next.
Build profiles around decision style, domain familiarity, trust sensitivity, and other behavioral hypotheses that match your audience. Team libraries and reusable profile sets are coming next.
Before launch
- Catch avoidable friction before real users do.
- Compare how different participant profiles interpret the same flow.
- Use it for fast pre-launch signal, not as a replacement for real research.