You don't fill out a form. You have a conversation.

Most site builders open with a wall of fields: business name, address, hours, pick a template, upload a logo, choose colours… Yoshi opens with a single line and a question.

Paste your website, or tell me about your business in one sentence.

From that one input, Yoshi starts working — and the next question it asks is shaped by what it already found. It's not a wizard reading a fixed script. It's an agent that gets smarter about you with every turn.

Two ways in, one conversation

• You have something already (Mode A). Paste a Facebook page, a Google listing, an old site, or a competitor you admire. Yoshi reads it — your services, photos, reviews, hours — and confirms what it found instead of asking you to retype it.
• You're starting fresh (Mode B). No web presence yet? Just talk. "Towing company, Ottawa, flatbed and roadside." Yoshi pulls public signals (your trade, your city, what businesses like yours offer) and proposes the scaffolding for you to approve.

You never have to declare which mode you're in. Yoshi figures it out from what you give it.

Meet Yoshi

You're not talking to a chatbot reading a script. You're talking to Yoshi — a friendly, egg-born little genius who's genuinely glad to help. Cute on the surface, brilliant underneath: he asks about your business in plain language, quietly does the hard web stuff in the background, and brings ideas you wouldn't have thought to ask for. (The full character lives in _PERSONA.md — it's the same Yoshi everywhere in the product.)

The conversation is the work happening

Here's the part that feels different. Each answer fires a real task behind the scenes, and the findings drive the next question. Ask-then-do, interleaved, one informed step at a time. Here's a full intake, in Yoshi's voice — this is the spec for how the agent should sound and behave:

  yoshi:  Hi! I'm Yoshi — I build websites by growing them from an egg. 🥚
          Paste your website, or just tell me about your business in one line.

  you:    I run a towing company in Ottawa.

  yoshi:  ⟳ having a quick look around Ottawa towing…
          Nice — around here, flatbed, roadside, and lockouts are the usual lineup.
          Which of these are yours?
          [Flatbed] [Roadside] [Lockouts] [Winch-out] [+ something else]

  you:    (taps Flatbed + Roadside)

  yoshi:  Got it. ⟳ pulling your reviews and photos…
          Found you! 12 reviews at 4.8★ and 7 photos on your Google listing.
          Want me to use these?           [Yes, use them] [Let me pick]

  you:    Yes, use them

  yoshi:  Love it — real reviews make a site feel trusted.
          One idea: a lot of Ottawa shops add winch-outs after a storm.
          Worth a page? I'd build it for every area you serve.   [Add it] [Not now]

  you:    Not now

  yoshi:  No problem — we can add it anytime from your dashboard.
          Last thing: which areas do you cover? I'll make a page for each.
          [Barrhaven] [Kanata] [Orléans] [All of Ottawa] [+ type your own]

  you:    All of Ottawa

  yoshi:  Perfect — that's everything I need to make something great.
          Building your egg now — want to watch? 🥚✨      [Watch it build]

Notice what Yoshi does and doesn't do: he confirms instead of interrogating, offers exactly one creative idea (and drops it gracefully on a Not now), never uses jargon, celebrates the small wins, and never asks you to retype something he could find. That restraint is the persona working.

Two design commitments make this humane:

1. Choice-chips, not blanks. Every question offers buttons generated from what Yoshi just learned — so you're recognising, not composing. There's always an "Other / type it" valve so the flow never traps you in our assumptions.
2. It's prescient, not interrogative. Because tasks run between your turns, Yoshi often already has the answer and is just confirming — "Add winch-outs? Three nearby competitors list it." The goal is a conversation where you mostly tap Yes.

Why this matters (the product bet). The intake is the product's soul. A form extracts data; a conversation builds trust and surfaces things you'd never have thought to enter. It's also the moment Yoshi proves it understands your business — before it's built a single page. status: planned — today the intake collects a seed then runs in a batch; the conversational-eager version is cycle 39.

You haven't signed up yet — and that's on purpose

Notice what didn't happen: no email gate, no "create an account to continue," no credit card. The conversation, the building, the preview — you experience all of it first. Yoshi asks you to register only at the moment it actually matters: when you want to keep what you made and put it live. That's the trade — a free account in exchange for saving your egg, claiming your address, and publishing. The value is delivered before the ask; the account just protects it. (The capture funnel — hook → build → reflect → claim — is a deliberate product decision; see Publish & Address.)

Try it below — the egg is the avatar, and it's talking to you.

What Yoshi is quietly collecting

While you chat, the egg is filling with the raw material a great site needs: services, service areas / neighbourhoods, reviews, photos, hours, brand colours, a logo (or the seed to synthesise one), and the voice your business should speak in. You'll see this happen — that's the next page.

🌳 Open questions (the inquisitive seam)

• How long is too long? A conversation that's too thorough becomes the form we were escaping. What's the right number of turns before Yoshi says "I have enough — want to see it?" — 4? 6? Adaptive (stop when confidence is high)? Leaning: adaptive, with a visible "skip ahead, build now" escape at every turn. Cycle 39 + cycle 42 (background cognition = the confidence signal).
• Voice + personality of the agent. RESOLVED (Curtis s01-b6ac70 → D31, _PERSONA.md): the agent is Yoshi — friendly, cute, a natural-born genius who's kind + creative; an egg-born spinoff creature grounded in the shipped egg identity. Warmer on the marketing site, brisker in the flow. Remaining sub-fork: the visual embodiment (egg-as-character vs full mascot) — see _PERSONA.md.
• Failure grace. What happens when the scrape finds nothing (brand-new business, no listing)? The Mode-B path must feel like a fresh start, not an error. How do we make "I found nothing" feel encouraging? Cycle 39 failure paths + cycle 18 (webclaw).
• Trust at the data moment. When Yoshi says "I found your reviews," some users will feel seen and others surveilled. Do we show exactly what we pulled and from where, with a one-tap "don't use this"? Leaning: yes, always show the source + a remove control — honesty compounds. Decision.
• Can you resume? Real owners get interrupted. Does the conversation persist so they come back to a half-filled egg? Leaning: yes — the egg is saved state, not a session. Cross-ref cycle 30 (persisted blueprint), cycle 49 (claim flow).