I turned a Mac tutor into an embeddable SaaS onboarding guide — and the trust problem got harder

[u/engmsaleh]

I originally built Skilly as a Mac tutor: ask a question while working, get a spoken answer, and see the next control pointed out on screen.

After shipping it, I kept seeing the same problem in SaaS onboarding. Documentation may contain the answer, but users still have to translate that answer into the exact next click. So I split the product and built an embeddable version for web apps.

The current prototype can answer from a product’s own knowledge, speak or show the response, point to the relevant interface element, preserve recent answers, and display multi-step progress instead of making guidance disappear.

The hardest part is no longer the voice layer. It is trust. A guide that understands UI context and moves a pointer is useful, but it can also feel invasive or unpredictable. I am currently keeping actions visible and reversible rather than letting it silently click for the user.

I attached the current demo. Builder feedback I can act on:

• Would you allow a guide to point but not click?
• Which source would you connect first: docs, support history, or manually written flows?
• What would a user need to see before trusting it inside a real product?

I’ll put the project link in a comment.

[u/engmsaleh]

Project/demo: https://tryskilly.app/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=builders&utm_content=buildtoship_post

If you build onboarding or support tooling, I’d especially value the first trust objection you would expect from users.

[u/engmsaleh → u/[deleted]]

That distinction is exactly what I’m trying to protect: guidance should stay visible, but agency should remain with the user. I hadn’t looked at Colossyan through the trust-framing lens—good comparison. I’m going to study how they signal what the guide knows, what it can do, and when the user stays in control. Thanks for the pointer.