saas-product-growth

name

saas-product-growth

description

Build, plan, or review SaaS products with product architecture, monetization, operational readiness, and embedded growth loops considered during development. Use when the user asks to create, spec, audit, or improve a SaaS app, dashboard, CRUD system, PocketBase or Supabase-backed product, billing/subscription workflow, team/workspace product, PLG/free-tool funnel, referral/shareable-report loop, white-label/reseller offer, SaaS marketing surface, onboarding flow, activation flow, retention workflow, or product-growth review.

SaaS Product Growth

Core Intent

Use this skill to make SaaS development commercially complete, not just technically functional.

While building or reviewing, connect four layers:

1. Product workflow: dashboard, CRUD, states, roles, permissions, teams, and data ownership.
2. Monetization: plans, entitlements, usage limits, billing state, invoices, and payment webhooks.
3. Operations: admin tools, support, observability, backups, security, testing, and cost control.
4. Growth: onboarding, activation, free tools, shareable outputs, referrals, SEO/GEO surfaces, lifecycle emails, partner loops, and social proof.

If the task is a new feature or app and the user has not approved a spec, produce a product-growth spec or review first. If coding is approved, use this skill as a build checklist and keep changes scoped to the selected stage.

Operating Workflow

1. Identify the product stage: MVP, production-ready, scale, or enterprise.
2. Identify the SaaS motion: self-serve, sales-assisted, team/workspace, agency/white-label, API-first, marketplace/integration-led, or enterprise.
3. Map the core workflow before naming stack details:
   • Actors and roles.
   • Workspace or tenant ownership.
   • Main CRUD objects.
   • Workflow states and transitions.
   • Dashboard views and daily actions.
   • Events that should be logged, billed, notified, or analyzed.
4. Add monetization gates:
   • Plans and entitlements.
   • Usage meters and reset periods.
   • Feature gates in backend logic, not only UI.
   • Billing lifecycle and webhook idempotency.
   • Cost per customer and per feature.
5. Add product-led growth hooks where natural:
   • Free tool or sample output.
   • Public/shareable report, status page, badge, embed, or client link.
   • Invite/referral/team expansion loop.
   • Onboarding checklist and activation events.
   • Lifecycle emails and in-app nudges.
   • Review/case-study/social-proof capture.
6. Add operational readiness:
   • Admin dashboard and support tools.
   • Security, audit logs, data isolation, backups, restore tests, alerts.
   • Tests for permissions, billing, usage limits, webhooks, jobs, and tenant boundaries.
7. Output a prioritized plan:
   • Must ship now.
   • Should ship before paid customers.
   • Later scale/enterprise items.
   • Explicit non-goals to avoid overbuilding.

Review Mode

When reviewing an existing SaaS repo, inspect the connected surfaces together:

• Schema and tenant ownership.
• Backend authorization and feature gating.
• Frontend dashboard, empty/loading/error states, and plan-state UX.
• Billing checkout, portal, subscription state, webhook handling, retries, and idempotency.
• Usage metering, quotas, rate limits, and abuse controls.
• Background jobs, queues, cron, retries, progress, and dead-letter handling.
• Email deliverability, notifications, preferences, and unsubscribe behavior.
• Analytics events, activation metrics, revenue metrics, and cost metrics.
• Admin/support tools, impersonation controls, and audit trails.
• Public growth surfaces such as SEO pages, free tools, share links, badges, templates, review prompts, and referral flows.

Return findings by severity or release stage. Do not treat a feature as complete if it is only hidden in the UI but not enforced in backend rules.

Reference Routing

Load only the reference needed for the task:

• references/product-architecture-checklist.md: full SaaS component checklist for product, frontend, backend, database, auth, teams, billing, APIs, storage, jobs, security, analytics, testing, legal, support, cost, and vendors.
• references/growth-marketing-checklist.md: SaaS marketing channels and product-embedded growth mechanics such as PLG, free tools, SEO, GEO/AEO, referrals, affiliates, white-label, integrations, reviews, lifecycle email, paid ads, virality, and localization.
• references/stage-gates.md: MVP, production-ready, scale, and enterprise gates plus the highest-risk forgotten SaaS items.
• references/pocketbase-supabase-mapping.md: pragmatic mapping for PocketBase/Supabase apps, including auth rules, RLS/collection rules, subscriptions, storage, background jobs, admin tooling, and product-growth events.
• references/source-coverage.md: map from the original two source files to the converted skill references.

If this skill is used alongside saas-kit, let saas-kit drive the spec-first artifact workflow and use this skill to enrich the SaaS component, monetization, and growth coverage.

Output Shapes

For a new SaaS idea, produce:

• Product stage and SaaS motion.
• Core workflow map.
• Data and ownership model.
• Dashboard and CRUD requirements.
• Monetization and entitlement rules.
• Growth hooks to build into the product.
• Operational gates.
• Testing and verification plan.
• Implementation sequence.

For an existing repo review, produce:

• Critical blockers.
• Missing SaaS core items.
• Missing growth/product loops.
• PocketBase/Supabase-specific risks if relevant.
• Practical next implementation steps.

For implementation after approval, produce or update only the pieces needed for the chosen release stage. Avoid adding enterprise, scale, or marketing-channel machinery before it has a product reason.