---
title: "How GhostOwl works"
description: "GhostOwl sends three AI browser agents through a key journey on your site, three attempts each, and on a competitor's. See where they gave up and what they said."
url: https://ghostowl.ai/how-it-works
---

# Real agents try your site. _You watch where they quit._

GhostOwl sends three different AI browser agents through a key journey on your site, three attempts each, and does the same on a competitor's site. The report shows where each agent gave up, what it told its owner, and how you compare.

## Three steps, a few minutes

1.  1
    
    ### Paste your URL
    
    Add a competitor if you like. No install, no signup, no tag on your site.
    
2.  2
    
    ### Agents try your journeys
    
    Three different agents, three attempts each, run a journey like "find pricing" or "reach checkout". One starts cold, with no cookies or history.
    
3.  3
    
    ### See where they gave up
    
    Watch the replay, read what each agent told its owner, and see how you stack up against the competitor.
    

## Three agents, three attempts, one cold start

Agents behave differently, and the same agent can behave differently twice. So no score rests on one run.

-   ### Stagehand
    
    An open-source browser agent framework that drives a real Chromium browser with natural-language actions.
    
-   ### Browser Use
    
    An open-source agent that reads the page and decides each click and keystroke itself.
    
-   ### Computer-use model
    
    A frontier model that looks at screenshots and uses the mouse and keyboard the way a person does.
    

One of the nine runs always starts cold: a fresh cloud browser with no cookies, logins or history. That is how agents running in cloud virtual machines usually arrive, and they meet every banner and bot check a returning customer never sees.

## Journeys that match how people buy

-   ### SaaS
    
    -   Find pricing
    -   Compare plans
    -   Start a trial
    -   Book a demo
    
-   ### Ecommerce
    
    -   Find a product
    -   Compare products
    -   Add to cart
    -   Reach checkout
    
-   ### Lead gen
    
    -   Find a service
    -   Submit a contact form
    -   Request a quote
    -   Request an appointment
    

## What you get back

-   ### Agent Readiness Score
    
    A 0 to 100 score for each journey, next to each competitor.
    
-   ### Am I blocking real agents?
    
    Yes or no for each agent, with the firewall, CAPTCHA or popup that stopped it.
    
-   ### Where it gave up
    
    The exact step, a replay, and the message the agent sent its owner.
    
-   Paid
    
    ### Share of choice
    
    How often agents pick you over each competitor for real buyer briefs, with confidence intervals.
    
-   ### Friction log
    
    Every popup, cookie wall, CAPTCHA and script-only page the agents hit, ranked by how often it ended the run.
    
-   ### Fidelity panel
    
    Every agent and model version used, so you can compare runs fairly over time.
    

## What usually stops them

How people and agents react to common site friction

A person

An agent

Pricing hidden behind "Contact sales"

Books a call or digs around

Reads a third-party site or picks a rival it can price

Cookie wall, popup or chat widget

Clicks it away

Burns steps on it, or stalls

CAPTCHA or bot block

Solves it

Stops

Content that only loads after scripts run

Waits

Reads an empty page

Vague form error

Tries again

Reports failure and moves on

## Rules every agent follows

-   On competitor sites: public pages only. No forms, carts, accounts or purchases.
-   On your site: no real orders, emails or CRM records. Form and checkout journeys need a verified domain and a test mode.
-   Consent banners are never bypassed.
-   Every request carries the GhostOwl user agent, so you can allowlist it. [About our agent](https://ghostowl.ai/bot)

## See what agents do on your site

Free. No install, no signup.