I set Claude Cowork to create an account with Stilnote’s competitors and go through the whole onboarding. A screenshot of every single step.
Why onboarding and not the homepage
Onboarding is the one place a company can’t lie. The homepage is marketing. The onboarding is the strategy: what they ask about first, and what they leave for later.
What do you do?
Ask Cowork to create an account and take a screenshot of every step until the product first does something useful. Cowork opens a real browser and goes through the flow as an ordinary customer. What it should note: what they require before the product does anything useful, and when the card has to come out.
Use one email alias per competitor, for example iCloud Hide My Email or Fastmail. Cowork reads the inbox again after 3, 7 and 14 days. After fourteen days you have their entire lifecycle sequence sitting in one inbox.
Put the screenshots next to your own, and let Claude hold it all up against your own onboarding. Where are you slower. What do they ask about that you don’t. What do they skip that you insist on.
The result: one dated Notion page per competitor. Run it again next quarter.
A diff in onboarding is a strategy that has moved. You see it before it shows up in their press release.
Two caveats
Some signups have a CAPTCHA or require a card, and that’s where the agent stops. Then you take the last steps yourself, with your own name and your own email.
And no, you don’t need a tool for this. Mobbin and Refero have the flows on file, but they are static, and what you’re looking at isn’t necessarily the flow running today. Fine if you have a team and a budget.
Here’s the prompt. Fill in the square brackets, copy it and give it to your agent. Then it does the work for you.
Best, Martin
