Store growth audit

Store Growth Audit

Walk an app — new or live — through the full App Store growth playbook, phase by phase, and produce a scorecard: what's installed, what's missing, what to do next, and who fixes it.

The invariant: every item has a detection rule. Status comes from an ASC read, a codebase check, or an explicit question — never from vibes. If the user doesn't know, the item is 🟠 unverified, not assumed ✅.

Where it fits (read the seams)

• Not store-signals. That is the continuous signal → backlog loop: are the numbers moving, did last cycle's bets pay off? This is the structural audit: is the machinery even installed? Run this quarterly (or pre-launch); run store-signals monthly. Trend questions route there.
• Not analytics-interpretation. Metric-quality judgments ("is 3.2% conversion good?") route there; this skill only records the baseline and whether benchmarks were checked.
• Fixes never happen here. Every 🔴/🟠 routes to a named sibling skill and (when driven from SwiftShip) an /apple:* command. This skill detects, scores, and routes. Read-only on ASC.

When This Skill Activates

• "Audit my app's growth / store presence / what levers am I missing"
• A new app is approaching first submission and needs a growth plan, not just metadata
• Quarterly re-audit cadence, or after a launch that undershot expectations
• Before deciding to spend on paid acquisition ("is the free machinery done first?")
• Portfolio triage: "which of my apps is leaving the most on the table"

The Model: P0–P9

54 items across ten phases. Each phase is a theme; the item detail lives in the checklist files.

Phase	Theme	Items	Goal
P0	Day-one money toggles	4	Free margin + a measurement baseline before anything else
P1	On-metadata ASO	7	Every indexed field working (title, subtitle, keywords, events, IAPs)
P2	Conversion assets	5	Icon, screenshots, trust signals that convert impressions
P3	Localization	5	Metadata-first market expansion + PPP pricing
P4	Ratings machinery	4	Prompting, replying, and protecting the rating
P5	Experimentation	4	PPO, CPPs, events as a testing habit
P6	Featuring & free discovery	6	Nominations, new-OS adoption, storefronts, web presence
P7	Paid & external traffic	8	Apple Ads ladder, launch spikes, pre-orders, codes
P8	Earnings	7	Paywall experiments, win-backs, web checkout, bundles
P9	Retention loop & ops	4	Retention surfaces + the recurring refresh calendar

Compressed priority (used for action selection, not the maturity ladder): P0 money toggles first → P1–P3 (metadata, conversion, localization) → P8.4 web checkout + P8.6 volume purchasing (the 2026-era revenue unlocks) → everything else → P7 paid traffic last. Paid spend on top of broken free machinery is burned money.

Reference Files

File	Purpose
detection-playbook.md	Gather-once machinery: the MCP batch table, the codebase grep table, the single MANUAL question batch
audit-checklist-p0-p4.md	Items P0.1–P4.4 (25): foundations — money toggles through ratings
audit-checklist-p5-p9.md	Items P5.1–P9.4 (29): growth loops — experimentation through ops

Audit Process

1. Resolve app, mode, and scope. Get the appId (from .planning/STATE.md when driven by SwiftShip, else list_apps + confirm with the user). App live on the store → existing mode; not yet shipped → pre-launch mode. Scope defaults to the full P0–P9; a named phase runs scoped (see Scoped Runs). A prior scorecard (GROWTH.md), if present, is the diff baseline.
2. Gather evidence — one pass, per detection-playbook.md. Run the full MCP read batch, the full codebase grep pass, and ONE batched AskUserQuestion round for every MANUAL item. Never interleave gathering with scoring; never ask questions one at a time.
3. Score all 54 items against the gathered evidence using each item's rule:. Honor applies-if: guards (⚪ N/A) and ⏳ ANNOUNCED flags. Every status carries a terse, citable evidence string (locales: en-US only, SBP: enrolled (user, 2026-07)).
4. Compute phase scores + maturity level (rules below), and — when a prior scorecard exists — per-item deltas: fixed / regressed / new since last audit.
5. Select the top 5 actions (rule below).
6. Write or refresh the scorecard — in a SwiftShip project this is .planning/GROWTH.md (schema in SwiftShip's templates/GROWTH.md); standalone, write GROWTH.md beside the audit. Append an audit-history row; refresh the recurring calendar's next-due dates.
7. Print the digest and route. Maturity level, phase bar, top-5 with routes, deltas, unanswered MANUAL items, next three calendar due-dates, and the suggested next command/skill.

Item Record Format

Each checklist item is a stanza:

#### P3.1 Metadata-only localization (ja de fr es pt ko zh-Hans) — core
- detect: MCP `list_locales`
- rule: ✅ ≥7 target locales localized · 🟠 1–6 non-English locales · 🔴 en-only
- new-app: plan — seed target locales in the first submission
- fix: product/localization-strategy → /apple:localize

• ID (P<phase>.<n>) is stable forever — scorecards diff by ID; never renumber.
• Flags after the name: core (phase-gating), RECURRING (calendar-driven), ⏳ ANNOUNCED (WWDC26).
• detect: MCP <tool> · CODE <grep> · MANUAL <question> · HYBRID (combination).
• rule: explicit ✅/🟠/🔴 thresholds; optional applies-if: guard → ⚪ N/A when it fails.
• new-app: how pre-launch mode scores it — plan / code / defer (see Modes).
• fix: sibling-skill → /apple:command — the skill path works standalone; the command half applies when driven from SwiftShip.

Status vocabulary: ✅ done/healthy · 🟠 partial, stale, or unverified · 🔴 missing · ⚪ N/A (applies-if failed; excluded from denominators) · ⏳ ANNOUNCED (not yet scoreable; excluded from denominators; carries prep: and recheck: lines instead of a live rule).

Scoring & Maturity

• Phase score: ✅ n / N applicable — ⚪ and ⏳ items are excluded from N.
• Phase grade:
  • Complete — all applicable items ✅
  • Working — ≥50% ✅ and no core item 🔴
  • Gaps — any core item 🔴, or <50% ✅
  • Not started — no applicable item ✅
• core items (13): P0.1, P0.2, P1.1, P2.2, P2.4, P3.1, P4.1, P4.2, P5.1, P6.1, P8.1, P8.4, P9.2.
• Growth maturity level (0–9): the highest P such that every phase ≤ P grades at least Working. An app with P0–P3 working but P4 in gaps is Level 3, no matter how good P5–P9 look. The ladder follows numeric phase order; the compressed priority shapes only action selection.

Top-5 action selection: from all applicable 🔴 + 🟠 items, order by compressed-priority tier (T1: P0 · T2: P1–P3 · T3: P8.4 + P8.6-when-live · T4: P4–P6, rest of P8, P9 · T5: P7), then within a tier: core first, 🔴 before 🟠, lowest effort first. Two overrides: an overdue RECURRING calendar item jumps to the top; always include at least one metadata-only quick win (shippable without a binary release).

Modes: Existing vs Pre-Launch

	Existing app	Pre-launch
Evidence	ASC reads + codebase + MANUAL	.planning/ docs + codebase + MANUAL
new-app: plan items	scored normally	planned-in-docs → 🟠 planned; absent → 🔴
new-app: code items	scored normally	scored normally (greps work pre-launch)
new-app: defer items	scored normally	⚪ with an activation trigger noted (e.g. "30 days post-launch")
Output framing	audit + deltas	launch plan (history row tagged mode: pre-launch)

The first post-launch audit diffs cleanly against the pre-launch scorecard — same IDs, same schema.

Scoped Runs (single phase)

"Run phase 3" = audit + worklist for that stage only.

• Scope: one phase (P3, bare 3 accepted) or a short range/list (P1-P3, P0,P4). Default remains the full P0–P9 audit.
• Evidence: pull only the detection-playbook.md rows whose items are in scope — MCP calls, greps, and MANUAL questions alike. A P1 run needs get_metadata/list_locales/list_iap/ list_app_events, not sales reports or paywall greps.
• Scorecard: update only the in-scope phase tables and their Phase Scores rows; every other row stays untouched (stable IDs make the partial update safe). Append an Audit History row tagged scope: P3. Recompute the maturity level from the refreshed rows plus the untouched remainder — mark it (est.) if any out-of-scope phase has never been audited.
• Output: instead of the top-5, print the phase worklist — every applicable in-scope item with status, evidence, and route — ordered core first, 🔴 before 🟠, lowest effort first. End by offering to start the first route (gated, as always).
• A scoped run never rewrites items outside its scope, and never counts as a full re-audit for the Recurring Calendar's "announced-features recheck" row unless the ⏳ items are in scope.

Output Format

The scorecard file (schema = SwiftShip templates/GROWTH.md): header (app, date, mode, maturity) · phase-score table · top-5 actions · ten per-phase tables (ID | Item | Status | Evidence | Next step | Route) · Watchlist (⏳ announced) · Recurring Calendar · Baseline Metrics Snapshot · append-only Audit History.

The printed digest never dumps 54 rows:

Growth audit: <App> — Level 4/9 (existing, re-audit)
P0 ▓▓▓░ 3/4 · P1 ▓▓▓▓▓░░ 5/7 · P2 ▓▓▓░░ 3/5 · P3 ▓░░░░ 1/5 · P4 ▓▓▓▓ 4/4 …
Top 5: 1) P0.1 Apply to Small Business Program (route: growth/indie-business) …
Since last audit: 3 fixed, 1 regressed (P9.3 update freshness)
Unverified (you were unsure): P0.3 peer benchmarks, P7.2 brand defense
Calendar: featuring nomination due in 12 days · keyword refresh due 2026-10-01
Next: /apple:localize (or product/localization-strategy standalone)

Routing Map

The only place the full route list lives; stanzas carry the short form.

Audit area	Sibling skill (canonical)	SwiftShip command
SBP, business ops	growth/indie-business	— (ASC manual)
Billing grace/retry, subscription lifecycle	generators/subscription-lifecycle	/apple:subscription
Analytics baseline, benchmarks	growth/analytics-interpretation	/apple:learn-from-store
Keywords, metadata fields, AI tagging	app-store/keyword-optimizer	/apple:metadata (or /apple:aso if installed)
Apple Ads (discovery, exact, halo, brand)	app-store/apple-search-ads	/apple:aso if installed
Screenshots, previews, Creative Assets	app-store/screenshot-planner	/apple:screenshots
Icon + PPO + CPP experiments	generators/product-page-optimization, generators/custom-product-pages	/apple:experiment
In-app events	generators/in-app-events	/apple:event
Localization + PPP pricing	product/localization-strategy, monetization (pricing-models)	/apple:localize
Ratings: prompting, replies, protection	app-store/ratings-mechanics, generators/review-prompt, app-store/review-response-writer	/apple:ratings (health + replies); /apple:ship (phased release)
Featuring nominations	generators/featuring-nomination	— (ASC manual, calendar-driven)
New-OS adoption	—	/apple:modernize
App Intents / Spotlight	apple-intelligence/app-intents, generators/spotlight-indexing	/apple:plan
Web SEO, landing page, deal sites	app-store/web-presence	—
Pre-orders, offer codes, waitlist	generators/pre-orders, generators/offer-codes-setup, product/beta-testing	/apple:testflight
Paywall + pricing experiments	generators/paywall-generator, monetization	/apple:subscription
Win-backs, retention messaging	generators/win-back-offers	/apple:subscription
External purchase links / web checkout	monetization/external-purchases	—
Bundles, Family Sharing, volume licensing	monetization/bundles-and-licensing	—
Retention surfaces	generators/onboarding-generator, generators/push-notifications, generators/widget-generator, generators/live-activity-generator	/apple:plan

Caveats

• Read-only on ASC. The audit never mutates anything — not even analytics report setup (that routes to store-signals / /apple:learn-from-store). Surface → score → route.
• MANUAL honesty. Ask once, in one batch. "I don't know" scores 🟠 unverified — the scorecard tells the user what to go check, it never guesses.
• ⏳ items are rechecked every audit. Apple ships announced features on its own schedule; each ⏳ stanza carries a dormant detection rule — when the feature is live, apply it and drop the flag.
• Never reset the ratings summary (P4.4). That item is a guardrail, not a task: resetting discards accumulated social proof and is almost never recoverable. Default ✅; flip to 🔴 only if a reset is planned or happened — then route to app-store/ratings-mechanics to stop it.
• Stable IDs. New items get new numbers; retired items keep their row with status retired.