# Generative experience

A generative experience is an in-product interface where an AI agent works out what a user is trying to do and does it with them in the live product, instead of showing a fixed, pre-authored sequence of steps. The term describes an agent-led alternative to the product tour.

## How is a generative experience different from a product tour?

A generative experience is built from the user's request at that moment, while a product tour is written once and shown the same way to everyone. The tour explains where things are. The generative experience gets the task done.

Take an analytics product. A tour points at Reports, then Filters, then Share. In a generative experience, the user types "show me accounts that went quiet this month and send the list to my team lead." The agent builds the report, applies the filter, drafts the share and asks the user to confirm.

## What does a generative experience need?

Four things have to be in place:

- **Intent:** understanding the request in the user's own words, including vague ones.
- **Actions:** running the product's own functions through its APIs, within the signed-in user's permissions.
- **Interface:** showing the right controls in the moment (a form, a picker, a summary card) inside the conversation.
- **A feedback loop:** requests the agent couldn't handle show the team what to add next.

Without actions, it is a help panel that answers questions. Without the feedback loop, it stops improving.

## When does a generative experience fit?

It fits when users arrive with a goal and the steps to reach it vary by role, data or account setup. Setup tasks, configuration, reports and bulk changes are the usual candidates: work that takes many clicks, happens rarely, and looks different for every customer.

It is a poor fit when the user wants to learn the interface itself, for example a daily task they need to do quickly by hand. A short tour or walkthrough still serves that well, and the two can live in the same product.

A useful test is to read what users type when they ask for help. If most requests start with "how do I," people want to learn. If most start with "I need" or "can you," they want it done.

## Where does the term come from?

Foldspace uses "generative experience" as its name for what comes after the product tour, set out in [our post on generative experiences](/blog/not-a-tour-a-generative-experience-what-replaces-product-tours-in-the-ai-era). In that model, the user asks and the Product Agent carries out the request in the product, while Conversational Analytics flags [the requests it couldn't handle yet](https://docs.foldspace.ai/user-guides/analytics/signals-frequency/) for the team.

## Learn more

- [Not a Tour. A Generative Experience. What Replaces Product Tours in the AI Era.](/blog/not-a-tour-a-generative-experience-what-replaces-product-tours-in-the-ai-era)