Design note · The guide cursor
Point, don’t tell
When you're lost in a product, help shows up three ways today. A wall of FAQ text. A support bot that types “go to Settings → Privacy → turn off Usage Data” and leaves you to hunt for it. Or an AI agent that takes the wheel and does it for you — so you never learn where anything is, and you're not the one who pressed the button.
I wanted a fourth. An assistant that doesn't talk at you from a side panel, but inhabits the one thing everyone already knows how to read — the cursor. You ask; it travels to the actual control and either explains it in place or rings it and says “this is it — you press it.” Because its answer is always a real spot on the screen, it can't hallucinate a location the way a chatbot can. And because it points instead of acts, you stay in control.
Overview
What I decided, and why
- A cursor, not a chatbox
- Everyone already knows how to read a cursor. Borrow it and the help explains itself — you watch it go to the thing and stop. No paragraph to read and translate back into clicks. It doesn't teleport, either: you see it decide and travel, so where the answer lives is something you watch, not something you parse.
- Point, don't do
- It guides; you act. The opposite of an agent that takes the wheel — you keep your hands on your own product, you learn where things live, and for anything irreversible you're the one who commits.
- Grounded, so it can't lie about where
- It can only point at elements that are really on the screen. The answer is a place, not a claim — so it physically can't send you to a button that doesn't exist, the way a chatbot confidently can.
- Answer or guide — never a wall of text
- Two moves only: pop a one-line answer beside the thing (“what is this?”), or travel to it and ring it (“where do I…?”). The agent picks the move; you never parse a reply.