Preview
What it is.
You give it your customer lifetime value and your acquisition cost from other channels, and it designs the loop: the trigger moments, the share mechanism and the incentive structure.
Together they cap what a referral can pay, which is the constraint most programs never set. When it stalls, a problem table maps low awareness to in-app prompts, low share rate to one-click simplification, and abuse to verification and limits.
What you get.
- A referral loop built in three named steps
- Incentive sizing against your lifetime value and acquisition cost
- A split between customer referral and affiliate programs
- A problem-to-remedy table for the common failure points
- A/B tests worth running on the program itself
How to set it up.
Install with npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill referrals -a claude-code.
Bring your average customer lifetime value and your acquisition cost from other channels. The incentive cannot exceed what the channel is worth.
Decide whether you are building a customer referral program, an affiliate program, or both. They need different mechanics and different terms.
Find the trigger moments first, meaning the points where a customer has just succeeded at something. A referral prompt anywhere else gets ignored.
Simplify the share mechanism to one click before you raise the incentive, because low share rate is usually friction and not money.
Check the product fit question honestly. A product nobody talks about will not carry a referral program.
Pricing Plans
Free. MIT license.
Checked against the repo in July 2026.
Use cases
Setting the incentive ceiling
Finance wants to know what a referral can pay. Hand over customer lifetime value and your acquisition cost from other channels, and the ceiling comes back as a figure with the math attached.
Restarting a stalled program
The program launched and nothing happened. Describe the symptoms and the problem table maps them to a remedy, with low share rate usually coming back as friction, and money the wrong lever.
Finding the trigger moments
You don't know where to put the referral prompt. Describe the points where a customer has just succeeded at something, and the prompt gets placed there, because anywhere else it gets ignored.
Referral or affiliate, decided
You're weighing both program types. It separates them with different mechanics and different terms, so the choice follows the audience instead of a template.
Best for
A referral program with no referrals
The problem table diagnoses it in four rows, and the answer is usually awareness or one-click friction.
Sizing an incentive
Lifetime value against current acquisition cost gives you a ceiling you can show your finance team.
Choosing referral or affiliate
The two are separated with different mechanics, which matters because the terms and the audience differ.