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Agent skill

Referral Programs

by cbrock84 in cbrock84/headcount

Designs and improves referral, affiliate, and word-of-mouth programs — incentive structure, mechanics, timing, and fraud control.

MITAuto-check passedMarketing & SEO

Install Referral Programs

skills CLI
$ npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill referral-programs -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install cbrock84/headcount referral-programs --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cbrock84/headcount.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/plugins/revenue/skills/referral-programs .claude/skills/referral-programs && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
referral-programs
GitHub stars
2k
Token cost
~859 tokens
SKILL.md length
459 words
Files
2 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
175
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Designs and improves referral, affiliate, and word-of-mouth programs — incentive structure, mechanics, timing, and fraud control.

  • Tasks that involve Referral and retention marketing
  • SKILL.md covers Qualify the channel first, Incentive design, Mechanics and Fraud control, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Referral Programs is an agent skill from cbrock84/headcount. Designs and improves referral, affiliate, and word-of-mouth programs — incentive structure, mechanics, timing, and fraud control. Use this to build a referral or affiliate program, diagnose one that is not producing, decide what incentive to offer, or judge whether referral is a realistic channel for a product.

Its SKILL.md is about 860 tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 2 other files, including reference files (for example `references/sources.md`).

It sits in Marketing & SEO, covering Referral and retention marketing. The repository describes itself as: An agent organization structured as a company — 15+ departments, 125+ skills, each independently installable, citing the standards and regulators that settle the question. Runs… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Referral and retention marketing

Example prompts

  • “Use the referral-programs skill to design and improves referral, affiliate, and word-of-mouth programs — incentive structure, mechanics, timing, and…”
  • “/referral-programs”

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 98d1c17. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Referral Programs loads about 859 tokens when it runs, and up to ~1.1k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 83 tokens; SKILL.md has 459 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~83
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~859
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~1.1k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from cbrock84/headcount at commit 98d1c17, republished under its MIT licence (© cbrock84). 459 words, ~859 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/referral-programs/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
referral-programs
description
Designs and improves referral, affiliate, and word-of-mouth programs — incentive structure, mechanics, timing, and fraud control. Use this to build a referral or affiliate program, diagnose one that is not producing, decide what incentive to offer, or judge whether referral is a realistic channel for a product.

Referral programs

Qualify the channel first

Referral programs amplify existing word of mouth. They do not create it.

If customers are not already recommending you unprompted, a program will not produce them — it will produce incentive-motivated signups that churn. Check first: is anyone referring today, and what do they say when they do?

Incentive design

  • Two-sided beats one-sided in most cases. It gives the referrer something to offer rather than something to gain, which removes the awkwardness that stops most referrals.
  • Match the reward to the product's value, not to a round number. Account credit usually outperforms cash, and costs less.
  • Reward the outcome you want. Paying on signup buys signups; paying on a retained, activated customer buys customers.
  • Cash rewards attract fraud, and fraud scales faster than the program does. Budget for detection before launch, not after.

Mechanics

The referral has to be effortless at the moment of enthusiasm, which means the ask must appear right after a success moment — not in a settings page nobody visits.

  • One-click share with pre-written text the referrer can edit.
  • A link that works everywhere and survives being pasted into any app.
  • Visible status: who was invited, what stage they reached, what has been earned. Ambiguity kills repeat referrals.
  • The referred person's experience must be better than a normal signup. Landing them on the generic homepage wastes the introduction.

Fraud control

Self-referral, disposable accounts, and coordinated rings. Minimum viable controls: reward only on a qualifying event well past signup, hold a payout window, deduplicate on payment method and device, and cap per-referrer volume pending review.

Show full SKILL.md (197 more words)Show less

Affiliates are a different program

Affiliates are a paid channel with commercial terms, not enthusiastic customers. They need attribution rules, cookie windows, prohibited-methods terms — brand bidding and coupon-site behavior in particular — and monitoring. Run without terms and you will pay commission on customers you already had.

Measuring

Track referred-customer retention against baseline. If referred customers retain worse, the incentive is buying the wrong behavior and the program is losing money while appearing to work.

Sources

references/sources.md in this skill lists the outside authorities that settle the questions here — what each one is authoritative for, and what you may do with it. Check them before answering on anything they cover, and cite what you used. Most are free to read and not free to reproduce; the use note on each is binding.

Never

  • Launch referrals before the product retains. A referral program amplifies whatever is already there, churn included.
  • Pay a reward before the referred account is real — activated, paid, and past the refund window.
  • Ask for a referral in the same breath as an apology or an open support escalation.
  • Run affiliates and customer referrals on the same terms. They attract different people and need different controls.

© cbrock84, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file (references) in plugins/revenue/skills/referral-programs of cbrock84/headcount.

  • SKILL.md
  • references/sources.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 98d1c17

Compare with similar skills

Referral Programs next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Referral Programs compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Referral Programs this skillcbrock84/headcount2k—~859Automated safety check: PassMIT
Referralscoreyhaines31/marketingskills54k2 repos~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Referral Programfreekmurze/dotfiles1k17 repos~1.8kAutomated safety check: PassNone
Churn Preventionrongxinzy/RongxinAI1543 repos~2.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
100m Leadsgetagentseal/founder-playbook724—~2.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Churn Preventionfreekmurze/dotfiles1k13 repos~4.4kAutomated safety check: PassNone

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Categories

Questions about Referral Programs

What does Referral Programs do?

Designs and improves referral, affiliate, and word-of-mouth programs — incentive structure, mechanics, timing, and fraud control. Referral Programs is an agent skill from cbrock84/headcount. Designs and improves referral, affiliate, and word-of-mouth programs — incentive structure, mechanics, timing, and fraud control.

When should I use Referral Programs?

Referral Programs fits situations like: tasks that involve Referral and retention marketing.

How do I install Referral Programs in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill referral-programs -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (plugins/revenue/skills/referral-programs in cbrock84/headcount) into .claude/skills/referral-programs in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Referral Programs in Codex?

Run `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill referral-programs -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (plugins/revenue/skills/referral-programs in cbrock84/headcount) into .agents/skills/referral-programs in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Referral Programs in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill referral-programs -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/referral-programs, .gemini/skills/referral-programs, .github/skills/referral-programs and .opencode/skills/referral-programs in your project.

What does Referral Programs need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Referral Programs is instructions for the agent only.

Does Referral Programs access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Referral Programs safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Referral Programs use?

Referral Programs is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Referral Programs use?

About 859 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 3.4k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 236 tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Referral Programs?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Referral Programs: Referrals (coreyhaines31/marketingskills, 54k stars), Referral Program (freekmurze/dotfiles, 1k stars), Churn Prevention (rongxinzy/RongxinAI, 154 stars) and 100m Leads (getagentseal/founder-playbook, 724 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Referral Programs?

cbrock84 (a GitHub user) maintains it in cbrock84/headcount, which has 2,007 GitHub stars. The repository holds 175 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 17, 2026.

Source: cbrock84/headcount on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.