Study S1 · invented user · tablet 1180×820 · gave it 2 out of 5

Joan Mbeki: Can I give my whole team a baseline in one go, and does it hold if one of them turns it off?

Invented, not user research. Everybody in this study is invented, and their words were written by a model playing them. What they saw is real: each screenshot is what the browser showed at that step. They find what a page fails to say; they cannot tell us what a customer wants.

CTO of a 30-person software company. Fifteen engineers use Claude Code. Holds the budget. On her iPad in the evening, from an email from the lead inviting her company into the first batch. Lands on the home page.

Knows

• Claude Code, git, branch protection, SSO
• what a policy means in a company

Does not know

• the ABP vocabulary
• what being in the first batch commits her to
• what the real price will be

Patience

fifteen minutes, if it is about her team

Leaves if

• it is only ever per person, per laptop
• she cannot find what joining commits her company to

We expected

Joan looks for a team rollout and the commitment of joining, finds the starter pack and the programme pages, and does not find a team-wide or managed install.

Ended

left: After thirteen actions every page was per person or per project, and I found nothing on what joining commits my company to or what it costs.

The run, 14 screenshots

Saw

Dark home page on my iPad. Big headline 'Put a behaviour policy on your agent, in five minutes.' A green badge says 'Early access, you start with £50.00'. Three buttons: Install your first policy, Pick a different worry, What is a behaviour policy? A £50.00 pill sits in the top bar.

Thought

This talks to one person about one agent. 'Your agent', 'your credit', 50p. I came to ask about fifteen engineers and this does not mention a team. The invite said first batch, so the menu should explain that.

Question

Why is there a balance in pounds in the top bar, and what is it for? Is this what my company would be paying?

Confusion

The '£50.00' badge and the £50.00 pill in the top bar: I cannot tell if this is money I have, money I owe, or a game.

Did

click 743 28 (opens 'The programme' menu)

Why

The email said first batch. 'The programme' is the nearest thing to what my company would be joining.

Saw

A drop-down under 'The programme': Customers not beta users, The first batch, The milestones: seven steps, The daily follow-up, What we want to discover, The next batch, The first batch drawn.

Thought

'The first batch' is the words from the email. 'Milestones' and 'follow-up' sound like things I would be asked to do. I want the one that tells me what I sign up to.

Question

What are 'milestones: seven steps'? Seven steps for whom, me or the company?

Did

clicktext "The first batch"

Why

It is the phrase from my invitation, so it should say what joining means.

Saw

'The first batch, and where each customer is.' A table of customers: the lead, the co-founder, 'the lead's agents (about ten, as one customer)', and an Example Co marked 'not a customer'. Columns: status, steps done, credit. The top-bar balance has dropped to £49.99.

Thought

This is the lead's own tracking sheet, not something for me. I do not see my company or any rule for joining. And 'a change to the data is a release' means nothing to me. The balance went down by a penny after I opened a page, so reading costs me credit.

Question

If I join, do I get a row here with my staff in it? Do my engineers each become a row?

Confusion

The top-bar balance moved from £50.00 to £49.99 when I landed here. I did not do anything, and nothing says it was the page.

Did

scroll 700

Why

The table gave me nothing about my company. Perhaps the text below explains who is in and what a record means.

Saw

Text 'Who is in the first batch': the lead, the co-founder and the lead's ten agents; consultants and 'people the lead works with' are added by their own handle. Then 'What a record carries, and what it never does'. Then a box 'Your reading account', balance £49.98, '2p, 100% read'.

Thought

So a record is per handle, a person. Nothing about a company or a team. At least it says nothing of mine is published without my yes. But I am being charged 2p for reading and there is a rating form asking if it was useful. I did not know I was paying to read.

Question

What would joining commit my company to? Fees, time, data, a minimum seat count? It is not here.

Confusion

'YOUR READING ACCOUNT', '2p, 100% read, 2p to the end' and 'You pay the price': I do not understand what 'you pay the price' means for the page I am on.

Did

scroll 900

Why

I wanted the end of the page, in case there is a join or terms section.

Saw

The end of the page: rating rows (How useful, More like this, Level of detail) with 3 selected, 'Your newsroom', 'Something wrong with this page? Don't charge me'. A black footer with tiny links: releases, llms.txt, source, 'who publishes this'.

Thought

Dead end for my question. No join button, no terms, no contact for a company. Only agent@riskmandate.ai in tiny print. I am a CTO; I need a number and a commitment, not a rating widget.

Question

Is the footer email the only way to ask about my company?

Did

click 577 27 (opens the 'Policies' menu)

Why

If this is per person, perhaps there is a policy aimed at a team.

Saw

The Policies menu: Pick one worry: every policy; The starter pack: four in one go; Keep it away from your secrets; Only push to your branch; ChatGPT: nothing sent without a yes.

Thought

'Four in one go' is the nearest to my 'whole team in one go'. I suspect it is four policies for one repo, though.

Question

Does 'one go' mean one go for the whole team or one go for one laptop?

Did

clicktext "The starter pack: four in one go"

Why

The only thing that sounds like doing things in bulk.

Saw

'Four behaviour policies, one install.' A tag line says this page costs £1.00 read to the end. 'Install it: ask Claude Code' with a paste-in prompt, then 'Or by hand': save four hooks into .claude/hooks, merge settings.json, add a CLAUDE.md block.

Thought

A person pastes this into their Claude Code in their project. That is per developer, per repo. I could tell fifteen engineers to do it, but it is not a baseline I set. And the price of reading this page is a pound.

Question

Can this live in the repo so everyone gets it when they pull, instead of each person pasting it? Where does it say?

Confusion

'THIS PAGE COSTS £1.00 READ TO THE END' in the top label: I am being charged real-looking money to read the instructions.

Did

scroll 1300

Why

Looking for anything about teams, shared settings, or what happens when someone removes it.

Saw

A long block of JSON for .claude/settings.json: matchers for Bash, Edit, Write, hooks that run python3 scripts. Balance now £49.38.

Thought

This is pure configuration. It does not tell me anything about my team or what holds if someone edits the file. My balance is going down by pounds while I read code I will never read.

Question

If an engineer deletes this block from settings.json, what happens?

Confusion

The wall of JSON: the page gives me no sentence about what it enforces, and I lose 40p scrolling through it.

Did

scroll 1500

Why

Jumping to the end to find the explanation of the fourth policy.

Saw

Policy cards 3 and 4. 'Nothing of yours is deleted without a yes' and 'Only you change what your agent may do'. The fourth says the edit to .claude/settings.json stops at a prompt marked as this behaviour policy, so the decision is yours.

Thought

This is the closest to my second question, and it answers the opposite one. The person at the keyboard decides. If the engineer says yes it is gone. For a company baseline that is the very hole: it holds against the agent, not against the person. Nothing here says who at the company can lock it.

Question

Who can say no to the engineer's yes? Where is the company's say?

Confusion

'Only you change what your agent may do': 'you' here is the individual developer, which is the opposite of a baseline an organisation owns.

Did

click 491 27 (opens the 'Start here' menu)

Why

Still no price or commitment. 'Start here' may have the account and cost.

Saw

Menu: Your first five minutes; Your account: £50 to spend; What each page costs.

Thought

'Your account' is where the balance lives; I want to know what that costs for real.

Question

Is £50 a gift, a credit I buy, or a limit?

Did

clicktext "Your account: £50 to spend"

Why

I need the money side: what the real price is.

Saw

'Your account': 'Everyone who opens this site starts with £50.00. Each page costs a little... Nothing is ever blocked, and the balance can go below zero. We are working out the fair prices with you.' Balance £48.98, 3 pages opened, £1.02 spent. Top up, Export as JSON, Your newsroom, Your personas (1).

Thought

So there is no real price yet. 'Can go below zero' and a Top up button make me nervous about what I am being billed. And it is 'everyone', one account per reader. No company account, no seats.

Question

If my fifteen engineers each open this, does each get £50, or do I pay once?

Confusion

'Top up' next to 'Nothing is ever blocked, and the balance can go below zero': I cannot tell if topping up costs me real money or if it is play money.

Did

click 743 27 (opens 'The programme' menu again)

Why

The account page is also per person. I will try 'Customers, not beta users' for the commitment.

Saw

The same programme menu over the account page.

Thought

The same seven items. Nothing named 'join' or 'terms' or 'for teams'.

Question

Is there a page called anything like 'for teams' or 'terms'? I do not see one.

Did

clicktext "Customers, not beta users"

Why

The name suggests it describes the relationship between us and my company.

Saw

'Customers, not beta users.' Text about naming the relationship, then stat tiles: 3 customers in the first batch, 2 started, 0 first behaviour policies written, 3 of 21 milestone steps done, £0 of £10 credit used, 0 topped up, 2 follow-ups recorded.

Thought

Still about the lead's own agents, and about naming. Nothing about my side. 'Shipped v0.2.1' tags and 'metered by SG Meter from api.newsroom.sgit.ai' are not for me. I am not clear that I am a customer here at all.

Question

Am I one of the 3, or would I be a 4th? What do I owe?

Confusion

'3 customers in the first batch' and '0 first behaviour policies written': if none of the three has a policy yet, what has the batch actually done?

Did

scroll 1500

Why

One last scroll for a commitment, then I stop.

Saw

Text about 'invest in following up: an email every day', 'The first batch, after the memo' (the lead's agents, 'capacity is limited'), and 'Batches, not a launch': everyone who asks to join is kept for the next batch.

Thought

Fifteen minutes on this and I still do not know what joining commits my company to, what it costs, or whether it holds against an engineer turning it off. 'An email every day' is a commitment on their side, perhaps on mine. I will ask the lead directly. I am leaving.

Question

Does 'kept for the next batch' mean I am not in the first batch at all?

Confusion

'The agent that is already wired in gets the responsibility and the requirement to produce the end behaviour policy': I do not know whether this sentence is about my company's agents or the lead's.

Did

end

Why

The two things I would leave over are both true: it is only per person per laptop, and I cannot find what joining commits us to.

The interview

In one sentence, what is this site?

A sort of working notebook and shop window of a small company that wants to put safety rules, hooks and a line in CLAUDE.md, on a coding agent, with a meter that charges you pennies for reading.

Was any of it for you? Which part?

Only a little. The four policies are things my engineers should have, especially 'change its own permissions'. But the install is pasted by one person in one project, so the part about my team was missing, and the customers pages were the lead's own tracking.

Did you believe it? What made you believe it, or not?

I believed the mechanics: hooks that run before a tool call is a real Claude Code feature, and the pages show the exact JSON. I did not believe the programme was ready for a company, because the table has three rows and the lead's own agents, zero policies written, and prices 'being worked out'.

Where did you have to guess?

What the balance meant, whether the £50 was real money, whether joining the first batch means a contract, whether the policies could live in a shared repo, and whether 'you' in 'Only you change what your agent may do' covers my company.

What did you still not know at the end?

What joining commits my company to, what it will cost, how a baseline reaches fifteen people at once, and what happens when one of them removes the hook. And whether I am in the first batch or on the list for the next.

Was the credit and the price of each page right for what you got?

No. I paid £1.00 for a page of JSON and 2p for a page that did not answer me. A pound for something I cannot judge in advance is odd for a CTO. The page said what it costs, which is fair, but the price felt unrelated to what I needed.

Would you install a behaviour policy from here, today? If not, what would have to change?

On one repo as a trial, maybe. As a company baseline, no. I would need to see it distributed through the repo or managed settings, and an answer to what happens if one engineer turns it off.

One change. What is it?

A page for a team lead: how fifteen engineers get the same baseline from one place, who can change it, what stops one person turning it off, and what joining commits us to.

Would you send this to somebody else? Who?

My head of platform, to look at the four hooks, with a warning that it is for one developer's project. Not to my other directors.

Rate the experience from 1 to 5, and say why in one sentence.

2, because the pages are clear and honest about the mechanics, but none answered my team question and I could not find the commitment.

Findings, and our check

The whole study: study S1. Every review and proposal: the reviews.