Streak Mechanics

A streak is a commitment device. It works by accumulating something the user does not want to lose, then putting it at risk every day. That makes it the most powerful retention mechanic most products can ship — and the easiest one to point at the wrong behaviour.

Seven decisions determine whether yours helps or hurts. How low the bar sits, what number you are aiming users at, what happens on a miss, what happens on a structural gap, whether users can raise their own stakes, what the cheapest qualifying action is, and what the counter actually certifies.

This skill covers the chain itself — the reason to care about continuity. It does not cover delivering the cue that gets someone to open the product on a given day (reminders, widgets, permission prompts, win-back flows), and it does not cover progress meters that move rather than break.

Setting the bar

• [[references/fixed-low-bar-separate-ambition-dial]] — decouple the chain's trivial bar from the user's self-chosen target; the most ambitious tier is a churn signal, not a commitment signal.
• [[references/activation-threshold-as-one-shared-target]] — find the tenure number past which return probability jumps, publish it internally, and aim every early-lifecycle surface at that one number.
• [[references/trivial-floor-protects-the-chain-not-the-outcome]] — a minimum viable day under two minutes, an alternate low-effort format, and one counter fed by every product line.

Building in slack

• [[references/scarce-recovery-token]] — a finite, countable, auto-applying allowance that absorbs a miss while keeping loss aversion and scarcity intact.
• [[references/scheduled-pause-at-the-known-dip]] — find the trough already visible in your usage data and ship a sanctioned pause aimed at it; plus an operational suspend for groups who cannot comply.