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Pendo tells you that adoption moved: a guide was dismissed, a poll scored low, a path lost visitors. As product analytics with in-app guides, it can’t show you what one specific visitor saw when they bailed. Subtext can. Attach the Subtext session URL to your Pendo visitor metadata and every Pendo signal becomes a jumping-off point — your agent reads the subtext_url, opens that visitor’s real session, and walks the decisive moments with screenshots, the component tree, network, and console. Pendo detects; Subtext diagnoses.
This guide assumes the Subtext capture snippet is installed and capturing sessions, and the Pendo agent snippet is installed on the page. No field setup is required — a value sent client-side via the snippet lands as agent metadata, which Pendo creates automatically the first time it receives it. Optionally give subtext_url a friendly display name under Pendo → Settings → Metadata.

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Attach the session URL

Store the current Subtext session URL on the Pendo visitor so it travels with the visitor into every segment and report. It lands on the visitor’s agent metadata, and the field needs no declaring first: Pendo creates the agent metadata the first time the snippet sends it. Attach the URL with pendo.updateOptions once the visitor is known. In React, put it in the same useEffect as FS('setIdentity'). If the visitor is already known at boot, you can set it in the initial pendo.initialize call instead.
Don’t read FS('getSession') at module top level — it returns null until the session has started. The session URL also changes on a new session and when FS('setIdentity') is called with a different uid, so re-call pendo.updateOptions whenever you re-identify the visitor; the metadata is frozen until the next update. And don’t call pendo.initialize twice — use pendo.updateOptions after the first initialize.

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From signal to session

However you first hear about a problem in Pendo — a low NPS score, a dismissed guide, a path that loses visitors — the path is the same: get to the subtext_url, then hand it to your agent for a Detect-vs-Diagnose read. Pendo flagged the drop or the low score; the session shows whether the guide rendered over the right element, whether the step was confusing, or whether something was simply broken.
Pendo notifies you of a detractor: NPS 2 with a comment like “the new dashboard is confusing.”Open the responding visitor: Visitors → visitor details → Metadata → copy subtext_url. Then hand it to your agent:
Your Pendo guide engagement report shows an onboarding guide being dismissed far more than completed.Build a segment of visitors who dismissed the guide, open their visitor records, and copy subtext_url from each. Grab a few, then hand them to your agent:
A Pendo Paths or Funnels report shows visitors dropping at a specific step of a key workflow.Segment the dropped visitors and copy subtext_url from each visitor’s metadata:
For a dismissed guide or a shared drop-off, ask your agent to roll the findings into one proof document (doc-create) — a screenshot of the guide as each dismisser actually saw it, plus a single shared link. Paste that back into the Pendo guide or report notes so the engagement number carries its cause.

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For agents

An autonomous agent can run the whole loop against Pendo directly: discover the friction, extract the subtext_url, and hand each session to the Subtext MCP. Pendo ships an official MCP server — remotely hosted, OAuth-authenticated, and it respects your existing Pendo permissions (pendo.io/product/mcp). Use the MCP to confirm the metadata field and aggregate for hotspots; for deterministic single-visitor subtext_url reads, Pendo’s REST API is exact.
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Discover who is affected

Aggregate paths, funnels, guide engagement, or NPS and poll responses to find drop-offs and dismissals. Over the MCP, use the query tools (activityQuery, with an App ID from list_all_applications, plus searchEntities to find pages and features, guideMetrics for guide engagement, and npsScore for NPS). Over REST, POST the Aggregation API with a pipeline source — pollsSeen / pollEvents for NPS and polls, guide-engagement or path/funnel aggregations for dismissals and drop-offs, and visitor / feature / page activity for low-adoption hotspots.
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Extract the session URL

Read subtext_url off the visitor’s metadata. Confirm the field first with the MCP’s visitorMetadataSchema, then read it deterministically per visitor over REST:
metadata is grouped by origin (agent, custom, salesforce, …): fields sent by the install snippet land under metadata.agent, while custom fields are added manually in Pendo or via the API — the snippet never writes them.
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Hand off to Subtext

For each URL, call review-open(session_url=<subtext_url>) on the Subtext MCP → a Detect-vs-Diagnose summary: Pendo flagged the dismissal or the drop; the session shows whether the guide mis-positioned, mistimed, or covered the UI.
subtext_url only round-trips if it was written as visitor metadata at capture time (see Attach the session URL). Pendo’s published tool list varies by source — the authoritative list is the Pendo help center, not third-party catalogs.