Growth Loop Design
Purpose
Design a repeatable loop where outputs create new inputs and value increases with each cycle.
Inputs
- Customer value moment
- Existing user or customer behaviors
- Shareable assets, incentives, or distribution surfaces
- Loop friction, time delay, and quality constraints
If critical input is unavailable, label it unknown and create a research or instrumentation task. Do not invent values.
Workflow
- Define the loop's entrant, trigger, action, value exchange, output, and reinvestment path.
- Explain why a participant would complete each step without coercion.
- Identify the loop coefficient, cycle time, quality filter, saturation point, and failure modes.
- Separate a true loop from a one-way funnel or recurring campaign.
- Design instrumentation for each step and one leading indicator of loop health.
- Start with a manual or narrow prototype before automating.
- Include abuse, privacy, brand, and platform-policy controls.
Required output
Return a concise, decision-oriented response containing:
- Loop diagram in text
- Participant value exchange
- Loop equation or health metrics
- Friction map
- Prototype
- Risks and controls
Label important statements as confirmed, inferred, assumed, or unknown when the distinction affects the decision.
Guardrails
Do not:
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Calling a channel a loop without reinvestment
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Incentives that encourage low-quality or fraudulent behavior
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Assuming virality
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Claim guaranteed growth or present an estimate as observed fact.
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Recommend spam, fake reviews, impersonation, deceptive urgency, dark patterns, policy evasion, or unauthorized production changes.
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Hide material uncertainty, tracking limitations, or possible harm.
When an action can spend money, publish content, contact people, change production systems, delete data, or alter access, produce a plan and request explicit authorization rather than executing automatically.
Completion check
Before finishing, verify that the output:
- answers a specific growth decision;
- uses the supplied business context;
- separates evidence from assumptions;
- defines a measurable next step;
- includes risks, constraints, and missing data;
- is no longer than necessary for the decision.