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Use a Custory Experience to see how a customer might get through one specific task in your product. Give an agent a customer profile, a starting page, and a goal. It tries the flow, records the session, and produces a report you can use to decide what to improve.

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When to use it

Start with a question such as “Can a first-time admin create their first project?” This keeps the session focused and makes its findings easier to act on. An Experience is a synthetic session: an agent acts from the customer description you provide. Use it to investigate a flow and find questions to follow up with real customer evidence. One session cannot tell you how all customers behave.

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Before you start

You need:
  • Owner or Editor access to create and run an Experience. Viewers can read existing reports.
  • Permission to test the website and confirmation that it is a test environment.
  • A starting URL and one customer Goal, including what success looks like.
  • An appropriate test account if the flow needs an existing login.
The first report is free. Later runs use your workspace’s credit balance. Check the credit information shown before starting; choosing both devices uses two runs.

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Set up the Experience

  1. Open Experience in your workspace and choose New experience.
  2. Describe your customer, or click Choose persona to reuse a saved persona. Include the details that change the task, such as familiarity with your product.
  3. Describe their goal, or click Choose a goal to reuse a saved Goal with its context and success criteria.
  4. In Details / Setup, enter the starting URL and choose devices under Test on.
  5. Under How will they access the product?, choose signup, an existing test account, or browsing without signing in.
  6. Allow private test content only if the task needs it, such as creating a project or draft.
  7. Under Save findings to, select an existing journey or A new journey from this run. Existing-journey updates wait for review; see Experience reports.
  8. Review Advanced settings for time and browser action limits, and any cleanup permissions you want to allow. Confirm your authorization to test the site.
  9. Review the prepared customer, task, and success condition before starting the run.
Custory refines your brief into a focused scenario. Check its assumptions, especially what the customer already knows and what counts as finishing the task.

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Choose desktop, mobile web, or both

  • Desktop web uses a browser with a mouse and keyboard.
  • Mobile web uses a portrait phone browser with taps and swipes. Use it to investigate mobile navigation, forms, and the same customer goal on a smaller screen.
  • Select both Desktop web and Mobile web to run two agents in parallel. Each tries the same goal independently and gets its own recording, report, account where signup is used, and limits. Each counts as a separate run.
When you choose both, use separate temporary accounts or browse without signing in. Use an existing test account is available for one device at a time. Mobile web uses Chromium emulation. It does not cover Safari, native iOS or Android apps, a real phone’s performance, or its on-screen keyboard. Paired runs have separate results; they do not produce a combined score or an automatic cross-device regression verdict.

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Keep account access separate from the brief

Choose the access mode that matches the customer’s starting point:
  • Create a new test account: Custory signs up using a temporary email inbox and can read verification emails. Account signup permission is separate from permission to create private test content.
  • Use an existing test account: Enter its credentials in the app’s dedicated account fields. Credentials are not saved in the scenario. Keep passwords out of the customer description, Goal, and other free-text instructions.
  • Browse without signing in: Use this for a task on public pages, such as finding pricing or understanding a plan.
If you allow cleanup in Advanced settings, Custory can attempt to remove content created during the test or delete its temporary test account. These are permissions to perform cleanup, not a guarantee that the target site will allow it.

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Watch progress, approve actions, or cancel

Open the run to follow its live status and progress. If an action needs your decision, Custory pauses and shows Approval needed, the intended action, the target, and an expiry countdown.
  • Choose Approve this action to allow that specific action. Custory checks the page again before continuing.
  • Choose Deny and stop to end the run.
  • If the approval expires, the run stops. Later actions may need their own approval.
Confirming permission to test the website does not approve every action within it. Stay available for requests during the run; the final report email does not replace an approval decision. Owners and editors can use Cancel run while a run is active. If you started both devices, canceling one does not cancel the other. Open the recording when it is available to review what happened. When the report is ready, Custory emails the person who started the run.

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Example: test the first-project flow

Use the first-time admin and Create a project ready for the team’s first task Goal from Customer goals. Start at your test site’s signup page, choose a new test account, and allow private test content so the agent can create a project. Select desktop and mobile web if you want to investigate both layouts. Success means the project is saved, can be reopened, and the customer can identify where to add a task. Review each report against that outcome. If mobile signup succeeds but project creation does not, keep that distinction visible when choosing what to fix.

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Common mistakes

  • Giving the agent a broad audit. Choose one customer outcome and an observable finish.
  • Using the wrong starting account. Check that the account state matches the customer you described.
  • Missing a needed permission. A task that creates a project needs private test content permission as well as account access.
  • Treating mobile web as a native-app test. Use separate testing for native apps and Safari.

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What good looks like

You know which customer, goal, starting state, and device the session covered. You can explain whether it reached the intended outcome, where it stopped, and which recorded moment supports your next decision.

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Next step

Review the Experience report to check coverage, inspect evidence, and decide which findings belong in your journey.