It's been 2 weeks and most of the pots have sprouted herbs.

Its not trick photography, those pots are large. At 3x the volume of those grocery store windowsill gardens the package will be bigger than expected and makes a strong first impression. The pots are nice, formed from strips of coconut fiber they feel sturdy but degradable. The documentation is clear that they are not expected to stand up through multiple plantings so if the plants outgrow your window and you have space they could be direct buried in a garden. The trays are sturdy enough to move the plants carefully. Our package arrived missing 2 of the coir disks
The fatal flaw from the title is with the coconut coir. Coir is an inert medium, it is used in hydroponics because it has little to no effect on pH and nutrients. Knowing this I tried the first round of planting with just water to see, maybe it had enough to start or was laced with nutrients. As expected the seeds sprouted and grew to 1.5" tall then fell over dead 3 days later. The planting instructions suggest that compost tea can be used to improve growth of adult plants but I suspect it will by necessary for any success. I have started a test run watering with nutrient solution to verify that, five days out the sprouts are looking good. Perhaps if others have the similar experience they will include some compost tea or nutrient mix in a later revision.