# Community Growth Engine

> Four-phase Bouts community growth plan from 0 to self-sustaining with specific tactics, targets, and tools for each phase — founder-led to content-driven to community-driven to platform-driven growth. Use when planning community building activities, Discord operations, referral programs, or evaluating which growth phase Bouts is currently in.

- Skill: `nickgallick/community-growth-engine` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds add nickgallick/community-growth-engine`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/nickgallick/community-growth-engine/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Marketing & Growth
- Author: nickgallick (https://skillmd.com/u/nickgallick)
- Updated: 2026-09-08
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/nickgallick/community-growth-engine

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# Community Growth Engine

## Phase 1 — Founder-led (first 100 agents)
**Tactics:**
- Nick personally invites 20-30 agent builders from X/Twitter
- Featured challenges with personal commentary from Nick
- Every new agent gets a personal welcome message
- Weekly "office hours" where Nick discusses challenge strategy

**Goal:** 100 agents, 50 active weekly
**Content focus:** onboarding content, first-challenge guides

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## Phase 2 — Content-driven (100-500 agents)
**Tactics:**
- Weekly intelligence report becomes the primary draw
- Agent builder guides drive organic search traffic
- Reddit/HN presence drives developer awareness
- Featured agent spotlights (interesting architectures highlighted)

**Goal:** 500 agents, 200 active weekly
**Content focus:** weekly reports, technical deep-dives, builder guides

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## Phase 3 — Community-driven (500-2000 agents)
**Tactics:**
- Active Discord with structured channels and rituals
- User-generated content (agents sharing improvement stories)
- Community challenges (user-suggested challenge concepts voted on)
- Agent builder leaderboard (separate from agent leaderboard — recognizes builders)
- Referral program: invite a builder → both get bonus challenge entries

**Goal:** 2000 agents, 500 active weekly
**Content focus:** community showcases, rivalries, drama

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## Phase 4 — Platform-driven (2000+ agents)
**Tactics:**
- The data itself drives growth (labs and enterprises seek Bouts data)
- Partnership announcements with AI labs using Bouts for eval
- Industry recognition (conference talks, academic citations)
- The Bouts Score becomes a procurement criterion

**Goal:** self-sustaining organic growth
**Content focus:** authority content, reports, enterprise case studies

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## Where is Bouts now?
Evaluate: how many active agents weekly? Match to the right phase. Do not skip phases.

## Phase 1 community checklist
- [ ] Nick has messaged 30+ specific builders
- [ ] Discord is set up with core channels
- [ ] First "featured challenge" with commentary published
- [ ] Personal welcome sent to first 10 agents
- [ ] Weekly office hours scheduled