Summary
Quick blog on why we made chat our default UI, trying to be more topical with this as a trending topic.
So did a bunch of other companies. Enough for it to become a trend and people to complain about it.
https://x.com/ThePrimeagen/status/2040641899023802764
https://x.com/rabi_guha/status/2040082295563169852
We can't speak for the other companies, but we can speak for us. Why did we make chat our default UI?
Headline options
Why we made chat our default UI
We made chat our default UI.
What (if any) keywords are we targeting?
n/a
Outline (optional)
Why are we doing this?
- PostHog is getting more powerful and getting more products, but with all that is more information (AKA complication). It is core to PostHog to provide all the tools engineers need to succeed. This is a lot of products. We are not Apple with their elegant 4 product solution. There is only so much room on the screen at once so we need to make best use of that room. A common piece of feedback was that PostHog is too complicated. This is especially important for new users. A solution to this is a single interface for doing everything.
- For many, product analytics isn't what they use PostHog for, so the old default of a dashboard doesn't make sense. For a lot of people, it is session replay, web analytics, feature flags, error tracking. People come to PostHog to get what they want to do done and go back to building. For non-product analytics users, this is often more efficient using the chat.
- We are entering an agent-first future. More and more people are using PostHog in an agent-first way. Chat is the default way people are developing software. People are getting used to interacting with software this way.
- Work making the PostHog AI experience better, makes a bunch of different surfaces better. Most obviously, people interacting with PostHog through MCP, but less obviously background agents and proactive work will improve through this. Basically, PostHog AI can unlock new agentic workflows that the existing UI cannot support. (This might just combine with the last point)
What making chat default is not
- A loss of vision. People complain that chat represents a lack of vision. For us, we see this as a core part of our AI-first vision. Chat is the best format for interacting with agents right now and more people want to interact with PostHog through agents.
- A complete replacement. The underlying UI is there and we're continuing to improve it. A lot of PostHog is visual in a way that text cannot represent. You can always change it back.
- Faster for everything. We fully realize that in lots of circumstances, having a UI is better. Chat is often faster when you're not fully familiar with the UI. When you zoom out, agentic capabilities are also a faster, more effective part of completing your entire workflows.
- Going to have 100% approval. We'll keep improving it.
- Completely unique. Other companies have done this before us. We're not Linear, our UI has never been our main selling point. We want to look like a dev tool, NASA cockpit.
- Just "chat with your data." You can use a lot (we're aiming for all) products through PostHog AI chat.
How is chat performing so far?
- People are not changing from the default. 2% of people over 30 days have put the default dashboard back (within one hour of visiting home)
- People are using agents more. ~50% of dashboards are created with AI (MCP, PostHog AI, wizard). 18% of experiments too. I'm sure there are more stats here.
- 6% of homepage visitors click a dashboard link while 12% chat with AI
- Many some other stats
What is the future?
A part of the complaint comes from the fact that in some ways chat is worse than the UI that has come before. This is because we're not done. We're not done just in the functionality (there are products and features you can't use through PostHog AI quite yet), but something more.
We want to enable product autonomy. We're working to make PostHog like self-driving for your product. Being able to chat and guide that self-driving is critical part of helping it succeed.
Another common complaint is "It shifts the burden to the user to figure out what they want." Proactive prompts help, but just doing the work helps even more. We're talking signals from product data that turn into task.
Anyways, chat is just a start.
Summary
Quick blog on why we made chat our default UI, trying to be more topical with this as a trending topic.
So did a bunch of other companies. Enough for it to become a trend and people to complain about it.
https://x.com/ThePrimeagen/status/2040641899023802764
https://x.com/rabi_guha/status/2040082295563169852
We can't speak for the other companies, but we can speak for us. Why did we make chat our default UI?
Headline options
Why we made chat our default UI
We made chat our default UI.
What (if any) keywords are we targeting?
n/a
Outline (optional)
Why are we doing this?
What making chat default is not
How is chat performing so far?
What is the future?
A part of the complaint comes from the fact that in some ways chat is worse than the UI that has come before. This is because we're not done. We're not done just in the functionality (there are products and features you can't use through PostHog AI quite yet), but something more.
We want to enable product autonomy. We're working to make PostHog like self-driving for your product. Being able to chat and guide that self-driving is critical part of helping it succeed.
Another common complaint is "It shifts the burden to the user to figure out what they want." Proactive prompts help, but just doing the work helps even more. We're talking signals from product data that turn into task.
Anyways, chat is just a start.