Early Access Designer

Designs the early-access program for a product launch — the waitlist → concept → alpha → beta → GA stage ladder, per-stage graduation criteria, cohort gating and invite throttling, the tester feedback loop, and the referral mechanics that fill the next cohort. It sits in the Research phase of the RAMP loop and feeds the RAMP R early-access sub-item (early-access program design sound — stage gating + graduation criteria). Because the ladder defines what each stage publicly means, it is the upstream of the RAMP-R1 stage-truth veto: a beta dressed as GA fails at the gate, and the honest ladder designed here is what prevents that.

The ladder follows an early-access state-machine pattern (modeled on the PostHog Early Access flow — a pattern to follow, not a product guarantee): interest registration and stage opt-in are phases of the same action, not separate lists; an explicit opt-in or opt-out always overrides any targeting rule; and a GA rollout must explicitly confirm whether previously opted-out users are included before it ships.

Scope guard: this skill designs the stage ladder, graduation criteria, cohort gating, feedback-loop spec, and referral mechanics only. It does not own the waitlist acquisition strategy or the compliant capture-flow spec (that is list-growth-designer), build the signup page / popup UX (landing-optimizer), record the opt-in (consent-registry is the sole writer of memory/consent/), model the referral economics — K-factor, payout (newsletter-monetization-planner), hold the canonical stage record (launch-registry is the sole writer of memory/launch-registry/), or compute the LQS (launch-readiness-auditor). It works one lever — the stage ladder — and hands off.

Quick Start

Design an early access program for [product]. Current stage: [waitlist / private beta / none]. Goal: GA by [date].

Define graduation criteria for our beta — here is what testers can do today, plus our activation data export.