End-user onboarding

End users should follow one numbered path from install to first verified success. Operators follow different steps in a runbook. This skill helps an agent audit docs and onboarding design, propose a doctor or preflight contract, and stop to ask the user when a product decision is required.

Principles

1. One supported path for the consumer. Everything else is optional or operator-only.
2. Validate before acting — preflight (doctor) should run before setup that writes config, when the product provides it.
3. No silent assumptions — ports, URLs, CLI versions, and required services must be explicit or detected with a clear failure.
4. Secrets — never echo or log secret values. Offer a safe channel (MCP with user approval, OS secret store, or manual .env with a confirmation step).

Phase 0 — Classify audience

If unclear, ask once:

Are we optimizing onboarding for someone who installs and uses the product (end user), or someone who hosts services, keys, and regions (operator)? I will keep end-user steps minimal and move hosting, database provisioning, and internal publish steps to an operator runbook.

Phase 1 — Single supported path