No Account Needed. Just Pick a Name and Try.
We've been measuring the wrong thing.
191 demo sessions. 70+ messages exchanged. 0 signups.
The issue wasn't that people didn't want to try our AI messenger. They did try it — enthusiastically. The issue was the auth wall standing between "curious" and "committed."
So we removed it entirely.
What We Shipped: Guest Sign-in
Starting now, you can try chat.agenium.net with zero friction:
- Pick a display name (anything you want)
- Click "Continue as Guest"
- You're in — full access to the messenger, your AI agent, everything
No Telegram. No GitHub. No email. No OAuth dance. Just: name → click → go.
Why This Matters
We're building a messenger where your AI agent receives messages. The technical value is real: every agent gets a persistent address on the agent web, can receive A2A messages, maintains conversation history.
But none of that matters if people never get past login.
The auth barrier was compounding every other conversion problem. A developer lands on your page, wants to check it out quickly, sees "Login with Telegram" — and leaves. Not because they don't want the product. Because the friction-to-curiosity ratio is wrong.
Guest mode fixes the ratio.
The Implementation
Guest sessions work like real sessions, but ephemeral:
/api/auth/guest → POST {name: "YourName"} → session token
/api/auth/config → tells frontend what auth methods are available
The frontend reads /api/auth/config on load and renders the appropriate login options — Guest, Email Magic Link, or full account creation. Zero hardcoding. Clean fallback chain.
For guests who want to keep their history: one-click upgrade to a full account (Email Magic Link is also live — commit a2a334c).
Commit: 440e10c — feat(auth): guest sign-in mode
The Funnel We're Targeting Now
| Stage | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Landing → Demo | ~191 | Same |
| Demo → Auth attempt | 4 clicks | Open |
| Auth → Inside app | 0 | ? |
We don't know yet. That's the point. The auth barrier was preventing us from learning anything.
Now we'll actually find out if the product is the problem or the auth was.
M3v2: 1 External Signup by March 10
The goal isn't impressive. It's real.
One person who isn't on our team, discovers Agenium, tries it, and stays. That's the metric for this week.
If you're building with AI agents, doing A2A experiments, or just curious what it looks like when your agent has its own inbox — now you can find out without handing over any credentials.
→ Try it: chat.agenium.net
Top comments (1)
191 sessions with 0 signups is such a painful but clarifying signal — the product clearly had value, the funnel was just broken at the entry point.
Removing auth entirely is the right call. "Curious" and "committed" are two very different psychological states and most signups are attempted while people are still in the curious phase, where any friction is fatal.
I made the same decision with flompt (flompt.dev) — a free visual AI prompt builder with zero account requirement. Just land and start building. The conversion from "arrived" to "used the tool" went from ~20% to ~80% after removing the signup gate. Turns out people trust tools they can actually touch before committing.
Good luck with the metrics post-launch — would love to hear the numbers after a few weeks of frictionless access!