Configure opening app ideas

A building installation can show four concrete app ideas when a conversation starts. Visitors can choose a familiar application or discover a less obvious use. The suggestions assume no role, technical knowledge, or chosen project.

Prepare the pool

Enable building before setting copy.<locale>.app_ideas in installation.json. Keep ordinary copy.<locale>.suggestions as the required fallback. Each app idea has three fields:

• kind: familiar or unexpected.
• label: the short text visitors see, with at most 120 characters.
• question: the complete request sent when someone chooses the idea, with at most 500 characters.

Supply at least two familiar and three less obvious ideas, with no more than 40 entries. Labels and requests must be distinct, nonempty, and use single spaces without leading or trailing whitespace. Translate each locale's entries in the same order so a language change retains the selected positions. Do not add a period to a short label.

Name an outcome people can recognize. A familiar label might be “Build a task list”; a less obvious one might be “Keep a repair passport for my things”. The request can add the first useful behavior, such as adding, completing, and deleting tasks, or recording an item's repair history.

An idea is an invitation, not evidence that the visitor wants accounts, an integration, or a public service. Confirm requirements in the conversation. Keep each proposal within the installation's purpose.

Understand the selection

Starchat selects four distinct ideas from the reviewed pool. In 53% of conversations it selects two familiar and two less obvious ideas. Otherwise, it selects one familiar and three less obvious ideas. This approximates a familiar-to-unexpected ratio of 1 : phi across conversations; a single set of four cannot represent that ratio exactly.

Selection is random between conversations and stable within one conversation. A new conversation can include an idea seen before. The selector makes no model call and uses no visitor profile. During a conversation, suggestions come from the answer and address the visitor's current goal or open question.

The pool is curated content. Starchat does not fetch trends or prove that an idea is novel or in demand. Review entries when relevant evidence or the installation's purpose changes. Installations without app_ideas retain their ordinary opening questions.

Verify a change

Run vendor/bin/starchat index to validate the configuration. Open a new conversation and check that four readable, distinct ideas appear. Try another language and a narrow screen. Choosing an idea must submit its full request. After the answer, follow-up suggestions should help with that project.

When building is enabled, preparation follows the completed answer. The project guide explains when the current ZIP becomes available. Plugin recommendations belong in the downloaded project's agent guidance, not these four idea labels.