Overview
Podium’s Companion API, subscription system, and intelligence layer are designed to support radically different agent experiences on the same infrastructure. These two production apps demonstrate the range — from conversation-first with deep memory to browse-first with creator taste profiles.Beauty Companion (Sage)
A personal skincare agent: quiz onboarding → conversational discovery → personalized recommendations → checkout → subscription monetization.User Journey
1
Onboarding quiz
New users complete a 4-step conversational quiz that builds their intent profile. Questions are experiential rather than clinical — “How does your skin feel by early afternoon?” instead of “What is your skin type?”Each answer patches the user’s intent profile and awards points.
2
Conversational discovery
The Conversational Agent uses the profile to deliver personalized recommendations with streaming SSE responses. Users see quick-reply chips for common follow-ups and reason tags explaining why each product was suggested.
3
Purchase
Two purchase modes depending on the product source:
- Platform products — x402 USDC checkout via concierge orders
- Affiliate products — redirect to retailer with affiliate tracking
4
Subscription monetization
Free users get 25 messages/month and basic recommendations. Sage+ subscribers get unlimited messages and memory-aware personalization — the agent loads accumulated intelligence into every conversation turn.See Subscriptions for the full billing integration.
5
Ongoing engagement
Returning subscribers receive personalized greetings that reference their last conversation. Chat history is durable with full pagination support.
Platform Features Used
Architecture
Key Design: Thin Client
Sage stores almost nothing locally — just a Telegram-to-Podium user mapping. All user data, product data, interactions, orders, and subscription state live in Podium. This makes the companion a thin agentic client that orchestrates the platform API into a coherent experience.Clone Agents (Familiar)
A creator-based shopping agent: pick a creator → browse their curated products → buy what they’d buy. The agent surfaces products through the lens of a creator’s taste rather than the user’s own profile.User Journey
1
Creator discovery
Users browse active creator personas via the CreatorPersona discovery endpoint. Each persona has a display name, avatar, platform affiliation, and curated product catalog.
2
Browse creator picks
Selecting a creator loads their resolved product catalog. Products are displayed as swipeable cards with Love, Skip, and Buy actions — each recorded as an interaction.
3
Profile seeding
When a user selects a creator, the creator’s taste profile (preferred brands, price ranges, product concerns) is merged into the user’s intent profile. User-set fields from a completed onboarding quiz are never overwritten.
4
Purchase via affiliate
Buy actions redirect to the product’s affiliate URL (ShopMy, Amazon Associates, or LTK). The platform handles URL resolution and tracking.
5
Guest mode
Unauthenticated users can browse up to 5 products before hitting an auth gate. All interactions during guest mode are replayed to the user’s profile on sign-in — no engagement is lost.
Platform Features Used
Architecture
What This Demonstrates
Both apps share the same Podium infrastructure but deliver radically different experiences:
The takeaway: Podium’s primitives are vertical-agnostic and experience-agnostic. The same user model, interaction system, and enrichment pipeline support both a deeply personalized AI companion and a social commerce discovery tool.
Adapting for Your Vertical
To build a companion for a different product domain or experience model:1
Define your intent profile fields
Replace skin type, concerns, and brand preferences with your domain’s preference dimensions. The profile schema is flexible — use whatever fields describe your user’s preferences.
2
Choose your discovery model
Conversation-first (like Sage), browse-first (like Familiar), or a hybrid. The same API endpoints support all patterns.
3
Curate your product catalog
Populate product records with your inventory, or use CreatorPersona to let creators curate for you. Include images, prices, and external URLs.
4
Pick your monetization
Subscriptions for recurring revenue, affiliate links for commission-based monetization, x402 for direct USDC checkout, or any combination.
5
Deploy to your surfaces
Both apps use the same pattern: one codebase, deployed to web and Telegram. The app detects its surface and renders accordingly.