Modeling activation metrics

Activation is the earliest reliable predictor that a user will stick. This skill builds a durable activation model — and, just as importantly, keeps you from hard-coding a guessed "activation event." Read modeling-warehouse-foundations first. Method: references/activation-method.md; recipes in references/posthog/ and references/dbt/.

What activation is (and isn't)

• Not a single event someone declared "the aha moment." That's a guess until it's validated.
• Is the combination of early actions that best predicts long-term retention. Often a combination ("created a project AND invited a teammate") and often a count threshold ("ran ≥3 queries in week 1"), not a single one-time action.
• Judged on two axes at once: reach (a meaningful share of new users can realistically hit it) and predictive power (users who hit it retain much better than those who don't). Too loose → meaningless; too strict → almost nobody qualifies.
• Per product, not one number for the whole platform. And for B2B, usually group-level (an account activates when any user hits the criteria).