# Paywall Desk

> An in-app paywall and upgrade-screen workbench for founders, product managers and growth leads: paste the feature gate, usage-limit wall, trial-expiration screen, time-based prompt or tier upsell your free or trial users see, plus what triggers it, and find which of the seven paywall components are missing, which dark patterns and conversion killers it carries, whether it fires before the user has had value or too often, whether the annual saving it states is true, and where the funnel leaks; then get an audit with the fixes in order, and the redesigned screen with when and how often to show it and the tests to run.

App: https://paywall-desk.skillsafe.ai/
API tutorial: https://paywall-desk.skillsafe.ai/api.html

## Input

- The screen: every line the user sees, top to bottom, buttons in [square brackets] and images as [Image: what it shows]. A saved HTML page is reduced to its text, with <button> elements kept as [buttons].
- The context (optional, but it changes the verdict): the product, what is free and what is paid, the prices, what makes the screen appear, when and how often it shows, what happens on dismiss, and any numbers - paywall impressions, upgrade clicks, completed upgrades, free or trial users, a stated conversion rate.
- Optional: the trigger point (feature gate, usage limit, trial expiration, time-based prompt, tier upgrade) and a question.

## The free scan

- The trigger point, read from the context or the screen, or as chosen.
- The seven components the skill names - headline, value demonstration, feature comparison, pricing, social proof, call to action, escape hatch - each found or missing, with the line that shows it; a headline that states only the limit, a generic call to action and a guilt-tripping decline are marked weak.
- Every button, classified as the upgrade call to action, a way out, or other.
- Prices from the screen and the context; the real annual saving (twelve monthly payments against the annual price) and whether a stated "save N%" or "N months free" matches it; how many plans are priced.
- The funnel: click-through (clicks / impressions), completion (upgrades / clicks), overall (upgrades / impressions), free-to-paid (upgrades / free users) and reach (impressions / free users), with the step that leaks most.
- Flags PW-01 to PW-20: no escape hatch; guilt-trip decline copy (confirmshaming); a hidden, delayed or missing close; a headline that states the limit, not the benefit; a generic call to action; no value demonstration; no price; no social proof; no comparison; shown before value (onboarding, signup, first session); shown too often (every session, again right after a dismiss); a cool-down in hours, not days; a blocked critical flow; no upgrade button; a stated saving that does not match the prices; urgency or a countdown; four or more plans; a trial ending with no early warnings; a trial-expiration screen that does not show what the user built or would lose; a public pricing or landing page rather than an in-app moment.
- Exports: the scan as Markdown, the components and flags as CSV.

## The paid lanes

Both run on gpt-terra with a 10% publisher markup; /estimate is free and shows the credits reserved before a run.

- audit: scope (in-app, or a public page that belongs to page CRO); the trigger and why; the moment - what the user is doing and feeling, and whether value came before the ask; the seven components, each strong, weak or missing with a finding, a quote and a fix; the issues - dark patterns, conversion killers, timing, frequency, pricing, copy - with the page's flag ids and severity; the frequency verdict and the rules (after the value moment, never in onboarding or mid-flow, a cap per session, a cool-down in days); the funnel read in the page's numbers and the leak; 3 to 6 fixes in order; a verdict: ship, fix first, rebuild or out of scope.
- redesign: the screen rewritten for its trigger - a benefit-first headline, a subhead, the value demonstration, a free-versus-paid comparison of the features the input names, the price line from the input's prices (monthly and annual, with only the real saving), social proof from the input or a placeholder, a call to action that names the benefit and a neutral way to continue free; 2 to 4 variants; when to show it, when never to, a cap per session and a cool-down in days; for a trial, reminders at 7, 3 and 1 days before the end; what happens after the upgrade; 2 to 4 tests from the skill's experiment library, each with its metric.
- Handoff: an audit hands its trigger, verdict, missing and weak components, issues and fixes to the redesign lane in one click.

## How replies are checked

The page re-checks every reply against its own scan: the trigger the user chose kept; seven components in order, none called present that the page found missing without a quote, none called strong that the page faults; every high-severity flag carried as an issue and never downgraded; value before ask never "yes" when the page flagged an early prompt; frequency never "ok" when flagged; the funnel leak equal to the page's; no "ship" while a high flag stands; a public page left unoptimised; in a redesign, every screen element written, a benefit headline, a call to action that is not generic, a neutral way out that never guilt-trips, comparison rows from the input's features, only the input's prices and only the real saving, a cool-down in days, the 7, 3 and 1-day reminders for a trial, tests with metrics, and the handed-over audit's missing components filled; in both, every quote word for word and no price, count, rate, duration or social-proof number the input or the page's arithmetic does not contain.

## Sources

- Derived from the agent skill @coreyhaines31/paywall-upgrade-cro, published in its current form as @coreyhaines31/paywalls, by Corey Haines (github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills, MIT): https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@coreyhaines31/paywall-upgrade-cro and https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@coreyhaines31/paywalls - its four principles (value before ask; show, don't just tell; a friction-free path; respect the no), the trigger points, the seven paywall screen components, the feature-lock, usage-limit and trial-expiration templates, timing and frequency rules, upgrade-flow and post-upgrade advice, the anti-patterns, and its experiment library (references/experiments.md).
- Scope: in-product upgrade moments for users who have already had value. Public pricing pages are page CRO.