Stop Writing Docs: Why "Doing It For Them" Is the Future of Onboarding

Most SaaS onboarding sucks. It's a harsh truth, but we all know it. We sign up for a new tool, land on a dashboard, and are immediately greeted by a "tour"—a series of annoying tooltips pointing at buttons we don't understand.

"Click here to create a project!" says the tooltip. "Click here to add a user!"

We aggressively click "Skip All." Why? Because we don't want a tour. We want the result. We want the project created and the user added.

The fundamental problem with tools like Pendo, WalkMe, or traditional docs is that they focus on telling the user what to do. But in 2024, users don't want to be told. They want it done for them.

The Friction Stack

Every time you ask a user to perform a task, they have to climb a mountain of cognitive friction. We call this the "Friction Stack":

1. Discovery Friction: "Where is the setting?" (I have to navigate menus).
2. Context Friction: "What value do I put here?" (I have to read docs to understand the field).
3. Fear Friction: "What if I break it?" (I hesitate to click 'Save').
4. Effort Friction: "This takes 20 clicks." (I don't have time right now).

Traditional onboarding solves #1 (Discovery) but ignores #2, #3, and #4. That is why feature adoption remains low even with extensive documentation.

The Paradigm Shift: From "Show" to "Execute"

Touchstage represents a shift from "Guidance" to "Execution." An agentic copilot doesn't just point at a button; it understands the user's intent and executes the workflow on their behalf.

Case Study: Setting up a CI/CD Pipeline

Let's look at a real-world example: configuring a CI/CD pipeline in a developer tool. This is a notoriously high-friction task.

The Old Way (Docs & Tooltips)

1. User opens docs. Reads "How to integrate with GitHub."
2. User navigates to Settings > Integrations.
3. User switches tabs to GitHub, creates a Personal Access Token (PAT).
4. User pastes PAT into your app.
5. User navigates to "Projects," clicks "Create."
6. User selects repo, branch, and build command.
7. User clicks "Deploy."

Result: Drop-off at every single step. Most users bounce before they even generate the GitHub token.

The Agentic Way (Touchstage)

User: "Can you set up CI/CD for our frontend repo?"

Copilot:

1. Checks State: Sees GitHub is not connected. Opens a focused OAuth window. "Please authorize GitHub."
2. Fetches Context: Pulls the list of repos via API.
3. Clarifies: "I found 3 repos. Which one? Which branch?" (User clicks 'Frontend', 'Main').
4. Executes: The agent calls your API to create the project, configures the webhooks, sets the build command defaults based on the repo type (e.g., it detects a package.json).
5. Confirms: "Done! I've set up the pipeline and triggered the first build. Here is the link."

Result: The user answered two questions. The agent did the heavy lifting. Friction is near zero.

Why "Doing It For Them" Drives 78% Higher Adoption

When we implemented this execution-first approach for a complex SaaS platform, we saw a 78% increase in feature adoption for their most complex workflows.

The psychology is simple: You removed the fear of doing it wrong, and you removed the drudgery of doing it at all. Users feel "superpowered." They feel like power users from Day 1 because the system acts as a power user proxy.

Stop writing more documentation. Stop adding more tooltips. Start building agents that do the work. That is the future of onboarding.