| name | community-diagnostics |
| description | When community engagement is low or members aren't returning, diagnose whether the issue is coordination failure (incentive misalignment, siloed internal teams, top-down adoption, broken information flow) — not "more content." Communities are moats that fail when starved of resources or treated as a marketing channel. |
| composition_level | atom |
| extraction-lens | capability |
| source_attribution | Matt Bond (Hivemind Library) — synthesized from a16z Future |
| license | pending-consent |
| status | candidate |
Community Diagnostics
When to use
- Community engagement declining or churn rising
- Community feels like a marketing channel rather than a coordination layer
- Different teams (product, marketing, support) give conflicting messages
- Considering community investment but unsure where to start
- Pre-TGE community readiness check
When NOT to use
- Pre-launch with no community yet (build before diagnosing)
- Community with strong, sustained engagement (no problem to diagnose)
- Tactical content / channel optimization
Core procedure
Step 1: Identify community type
Different community types require different incentives, governance, and content. Pick one explicitly:
- Community of Product — formed around using the product (Notion, Figma)
- Community of Practice — formed around shared craft or discipline (DevRel, design ops)
- Community of Play — formed around shared identity or culture (NFTs, BAYC, fandom)
If the team doesn't know which type they're building, that's the first finding.
Step 2: Diagnose the six coordination dimensions
Score each: aligned / misaligned / unclear.
- Incentive alignment — do budgets and KPIs reward community success, or do programs languish?
- Internal alignment — do marketing, product, support, leadership share a common vision? Or do siloed departments create conflicting messages?
- Go-to-community readiness — is the community type clear (product/practice/play)? Each requires distinct mechanics.
- Bottom-up adoption — are participants empowered with self-serve experiences and encouraged to evangelize / co-create? Or is the team expecting top-down adoption?
- Information flow — do forums, AMAs, on-chain governance let feedback shape roadmaps? Or is feedback ignored?
- Measurement & iteration — is the team tracking participation, retention, sentiment? Are engagement drops being treated as coordination issues rather than content issues?
Step 3: Identify the bottleneck
If multiple dimensions score "misaligned," start with incentive alignment (cascades into everything else) or internal alignment (siloed teams produce siloed communities).
Step 4: Output recommendations as coordination fixes, not tactical fixes
The skill's value is redirecting from "we need more content" to "we have a coordination failure." Output should name the structural issue and propose the structural fix.
Output format
COMMUNITY TYPE: product | practice | play | unclear
DIMENSION SCORES:
- Incentive alignment: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- Internal alignment: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- GTC readiness: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- Bottom-up adoption: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- Information flow: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- Measurement: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
PRIMARY BOTTLENECK: [which dimension]
DIAGNOSIS: [structural cause, not symptom]
RECOMMENDED FIX: [coordination fix, not tactical fix]
Anchor examples
- Figma — community of practice around design, with strong cross-functional resources, bottom-up adoption (designers evangelize internally), and dedicated community team treated as first-class function.
- Lululemon — community of play around fitness identity, with rituals (run clubs, ambassadors) that compound retention beyond product.
Both invested in community as moat, not as marketing channel.
Failure modes
- Treating community as marketing. "Post more on Discord" treats symptoms, not causes.
- Siloed budget and KPIs. When community KPIs aren't tied to revenue/retention, the program languishes.
- Top-down expectations. Founders expecting community to "just happen" without empowering bottom-up creation.
- Wrong community type. A community of practice approach in a product context (or vice versa) produces friction.
Related skills
dao-failure-pre-mortem — applies when DAO governance is the coordination layer
incentive-surface-diagnostic — drills into incentive alignment specifically
four-foundational-stories — the Group story is what makes community possible