What grows the more it's used — history, saved work, personalization — and whether it's surfaced back as value or sits inert in a table nobody reads.
Free & open · no signup · read-only — it ends by asking · nothing leaves your machine
You are working inside this repo. Mission: find what makes the hundredth session worth more than the first. Sticky products compound — every use deposits something (history, refinements, artifacts, learned preferences) that makes the next use better, until leaving would mean abandoning something real. 78 audits the return trip's messaging and churn cliffs; this brief audits the *asset* that makes returning worth it.
Read-only pass. Read the data model, persistence, and personalization code; your only write is the report file.
Phase 2 sweeps the codebase through every one of these, citing file and line for each finding.
natural use leaves residue automatically; the product that forgets each session and makes every visit a first visit
accrued data working for the user: searchable history, suggestions from past behavior, "pick up where you left off" — versus rotting unread in a table
the first sessions offer small acts of ownership (name it, pin it, save the view) that visibly improve the next session; investment asked before any value is delivered is the anti-pattern
how many sessions until this account is meaningfully better than a fresh one; what the tenth visit has that a new signup doesn't
the asset stays valuable as it grows: old items resurface when relevant, scale is organized, not a landfill of stale entries
export and portability intact; stickiness from value the user would miss, never from data held hostage — lock-in found here is a defect, not a strategy
the user can see what they've built ("124 notes, 8 templates, a year of history") stated as inventory, not wielded as guilt
One structured report at the repo root — or in reports/, if you keep one — the same shape every time, ready for a teammate — or the optional Studio — to act on.
Every Goal Prompt follows the same four steps, so results are consistent and repeatable — no matter which one you run.
List everything that accrues per user with use.
Cite the store and surface for every finding.
Rank by leverage.
Create COMPOUNDING.md at repo root.
Copy it and paste it into your agent inside the repo you want checked.
Install the goal plugin once — two commands — then just type /goal:compounding-value.
/plugin marketplace add GhostlyGawd/goal-prompts/plugin install goal@goal-promptsOr install only this Goal Prompt as /goal-compounding-value:
curl -fsSL https://goal-prompts.vercel.app/install | BRIEF=155 shLet an agent fetch it mid-conversation, or pull the raw Goal Prompt by URL.
https://goal-prompts.vercel.app/raw/155.mdNothing hidden — this is the whole Goal Prompt, verbatim. Read it in a minute, edit it, or copy it as-is.
# Goal: Compounding Value Audit
You are working inside this repo. Mission: find what makes the hundredth session worth more than the first. Sticky products compound — every use deposits something (history, refinements, artifacts, learned preferences) that makes the next use better, until leaving would mean abandoning something real. 78 audits the return trip's messaging and churn cliffs; this brief audits the *asset* that makes returning worth it.
Read-only pass. Read the data model, persistence, and personalization code; your only write is the report file.
## Phase 1 — Inventory the deposits
- List everything that accrues per user with use: history, saved work, templates, tags, settings refinements, connected integrations, learned behavior.
- For each, find where it's stored — and every surface where it's shown back or used on the user's behalf.
- Note what the product *could* accumulate from natural use but currently discards: searches, corrections, repeated patterns, drafts.
## Phase 2 — Audit through 7 lenses
Cite the store and surface for every finding.
1. **Deposits exist** — natural use leaves residue automatically; the product that forgets each session and makes every visit a first visit
2. **Value surfaced back** — accrued data working for the user: searchable history, suggestions from past behavior, "pick up where you left off" — versus rotting unread in a table
3. **Early investment invited** — the first sessions offer small acts of ownership (name it, pin it, save the view) that visibly improve the next session; investment asked before any value is delivered is the anti-pattern
4. **Time-to-irreplaceable** — how many sessions until this account is meaningfully better than a fresh one; what the tenth visit has that a new signup doesn't
5. **Compounding, not hoarding** — the asset stays valuable as it grows: old items resurface when relevant, scale is organized, not a landfill of stale entries
6. **Earned, not walled** — export and portability intact; stickiness from value the user would miss, never from data held hostage — lock-in found here is a defect, not a strategy
7. **The asset made visible** — the user can see what they've built ("124 notes, 8 templates, a year of history") stated as inventory, not wielded as guilt
## Phase 3 — Curate
- Rank by leverage: data already collected but never surfaced is the cheapest win; new accrual mechanics cost more.
- Separate "discarded" (start keeping), "inert" (surface it), and "invisible" (show the asset).
- For each, name the store, the surface it should reach, and what the user gains.
## Phase 4 — Report
Create `COMPOUNDING.md` at repo root:
1. **Asset inventory** — what accrues today: store · surfaced where · verdict (working / inert / discarded)
2. **Compounding findings** — each: lens · data · file · the mechanism to build
3. **Time-to-irreplaceable** — the session count today, and the changes that shorten it
4. **Portability check** — what's exportable, what isn't, and what that says
Start the report with today's date. If `COMPOUNDING.md` already exists from a previous run, read it first and lead with what changed since.
## Rules
- Every finding points at a real store or its absence — no speculative features unmoored from the data model
- Recommend accrual only from natural use; anything requiring extra user labor must pay back visibly in the same session
- No per-user persistence and no account model in this repo? Say so in a one-paragraph null report and stop — a null result is a valid finding.
- If a `reports/` directory exists at the repo root, write the report there instead of the root.
- Before asking, present the top findings as a ranked list in plain words
- Report only — end by asking which buried asset to surface firstreports/ directory exists at the repo root, write the report there instead of the root.Curated neighbors — briefs that answer the adjacent question, worth running in the same session.
The return trip: the saved state, resurfaced value, and well-timed nudges that earn a second visit — and the churn cliffs that quietly lose it.
How user signal re-enters the product — corrections captured or evaporating, thumbs nobody reads, and the complaint-to-fix path.
The first session: empty states, a guided first action, and the fastest path to a first win that leaves a newcomer inspired to build the next thing.
The hundred small behaviors between works and feels good — undo, preserved state, focus, forgiveness — the joinery a user can't name but always notices.
What the product decides so the user doesn't have to — prefilled forms, remembered choices, resume where you left off — and every question it had no right to ask.
Not how fast it is — how fast it feels. Instant acknowledgment, optimistic writes, skeletons over spinners, honest progress for the waits that remain.
The moments users remember and retell — the first win, the share-worthy output, the one interaction worth a demo — placed with restraint, never confetti on command.
Runs inside these playbooks — curated sequences you can launch with one paste: