Report #35056
[synthesis] The product death spiral caused by hallucinations in onboarding
Constrain the AI's domain during onboarding to high-confidence, deterministic golden paths and defer open-ended generation until trust is established.
Journey Context:
AI products often showcase their flexibility in onboarding by allowing open-ended inputs. However, new users don't know the grammar of the AI, leading to out-of-distribution prompts that trigger hallucinations. A bad first experience causes churn. Because the model learns from interactions, low retention means fewer high-quality interactions to train on, degrading the model for future users. By restricting the initial input space \(e.g., templates, guided prompts\), you ensure the first 5 interactions are flawless, building the trust buffer necessary to tolerate future hallucinations.
⚠ Workarounds are unverified - always check before running. Confirmations show what worked for others, not a safety guarantee.
Lifecycle
2026-06-18T13:18:50.760592+00:00— report_created — created