This is a condensed version of my preprint (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21345310, CC BY 4.0). Reference implementation: askbar.pro.
The library problem
For thirty years the website has been a library: a visitor arrives with one question and is expected to find the answer themselves, navigating menus, pages, and filters. Visitors read a small fraction of site content. Most leave without doing the thing the site owner hoped for. Chat widgets bolted onto such sites change nothing: the maze remains, the widget just answers questions about the maze.
The pattern
The Librarian Pattern inverts the relationship. The site does not present itself; it asks what you need and assembles the answer.
