Appcues

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

Copy the prompt for Claude CodeCopy the prompt for CodexCopy the prompt for Cursor

Copy

Build the in-app onboarding I actually need instead of Appcues.

Be clear about the trade: **you are giving up the no-code editor**. A developer will add each tour. If that is unacceptable, keep paying — that constraint is the entire product.

STACK
- Node 20+ with Fastify serving a small script
- SQLite through better-sqlite3, WAL mode
- Vanilla JS on the page, no framework, no dependency on yours
- Caddy in front

THE DATA MODEL
- flows: id, name, kind, steps_json, targeting_json, frequency_json, is_live, version
- step_views: id, flow_id, step_index, person_hash, at, action — seen, advanced, dismissed, completed
- person_state: person_hash, flow_id, status, last_seen_at, times_shown
- Versioned flows, so a change does not rewrite the history of the old one

THE SCRIPT ON THE PAGE
- One request on load returning the flows this person qualifies for, with everything needed to render, so there is no second round trip
- Anchored tooltip, modal, slideout, checklist, banner. That is the whole vocabulary
- **Anchoring is the thing that breaks.** Prefer an explicit data attribute your own code adds; fall back to a structural path; if the element is not there after a short wait, skip the step and record why. Never point at nothing
- Re-anchor on scroll and resize with a ResizeObserver, and keep the tooltip inside the viewport
- Nothing blocks the page: if the script fails, the application is unaffected

TARGETING AND FREQUENCY, WHICH IS WHERE THIS BECOMES ANNOYING
- Rules on plan, signup date, role, a feature flag, and whether an event has happened
- **A global cap: one flow per person per session, and never two at once.** Two tours firing together is the failure everybody ships once and every user notices
- Dismissed means dismissed, permanently, per flow
- A snooze rather than only a close, because 'not now' is the honest answer most of the time

MEASURING IT
- Step-by-step completion per flow, so the step people leave at is obvious
- **The number that matters is not completion, it is whether the people who saw it did the thing afterwards.** Record the target action and compare with people who did not see the flow
- An easy off switch per flow, reachable without a deployment even if authoring needs one

RESPECT
- prefers-reduced-motion honoured, keyboard reachable, escape closes, focus trapped in a modal and returned afterwards. An onboarding overlay that traps a keyboard user is an accessibility failure in the most visible place in your product

WHAT MATTERS MOST
The frequency cap and the skip-if-missing rule. One stops the product feeling hostile; the other stops a frontend change turning every tour into a broken arrow.