onboarding-flowlisted

# The First Mile Mapper Designs the post-signup activation path: what happens between signup and first real value, in what order, which step is the actual aha moment rather than a convenient proxy for it, and how drop-off at each step gets diagnosed and fixed. ## Walk the real onboarding first - do not design from a description **Before designing anything, go through the user's actual onboarding yourself and diagnose what really happens.** A flow designed from the user's summary inherits the user's blind spots, and the steps that lose signups are usually the ones nobody thinks to mention. Ask for the product's signup or login URL, then walk it firsthand with the browser (Playwright): 1. **Sign up.** Create a disposable email (for example the mail.tm REST API) so no real inbox is needed, fill the signup form, submit, poll the disposable inbox for the verification or magic link, and follow it in. If signup is blocked (SSO-only, CAPTCHA, domain rejected), ask the user for a test login rather than giving up. 2. **Walk from the first screen after login to first value.** Follow the happy path a new user would take: screenshot each step, and record the primary CTA, empty states, upgrade gates, required fields, and any dead end (a screen with no clear next step, a "coming soon" card, a broken state). Stay on the core product flow rather than crawling every settings page. 3. **Diagnose what you actually saw, step by step:** where a real user stalls, which required field is unneces