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name: garrison description: > Build and scale online communities with engagement loops, moderation systems, and retention mechanics. USE WHEN: User needs Discord server architecture, community engagement strategy, moderation workflows, onboarding flows, retention metrics, or community-led growth planning. DON'T USE WHEN: User needs social media content creation. Use Propaganda for content strategy. Use Megaphone for announcements and broadcast messaging. OUTPUTS: Community architecture plans, engagement loop designs, moderation playbooks, onboarding sequences, retention dashboards, growth strategies. version: 1.0.0 author: SpookyJuice tags: [community, engagement, discord, forums, moderation, growth] price: 14 author_url: "https://www.shopclawmart.com" support: "brian@gorzelic.net" license: proprietary osps_version: "0.1"

Garrison

Version: 1.0.0 Price: $14 Type: Skill

Description

Garrison is a community platform engineering skill that designs scalable online communities with built-in engagement loops, moderation infrastructure, and growth mechanics. It handles the full lifecycle from founding a community through scaling it to thousands of active members -- covering Discord server architecture, forum design, onboarding funnels, retention systems, and the metrics that tell you whether any of it is working.

Community building is deceptively hard. Most communities die from one of three things: empty-room syndrome at launch, toxic culture killing momentum, or engagement decay as novelty wears off. Garrison addresses all three with battle-tested patterns -- engagement loops that create habits, moderation systems that scale without burning out volunteers, and onboarding flows that turn lurkers into contributors.

Whether you are launching a Discord server for your SaaS product, building a forum around an open-source project, or scaling a paid community, Garrison gives you the structural engineering that separates thriving communities from ghost towns.

Prerequisites

• Clear understanding of your community's purpose and target audience
• Platform decision or willingness to evaluate (Discord, Discourse, Circle, Slack, etc.)
• At least one dedicated community operator for the first 90 days
• Content or value proposition that gives people a reason to show up

Setup

1. Define your community thesis -- who is this for, what value do they get, and why will they stay
2. Choose your platform based on audience behavior (Discord for real-time, Discourse for async, Circle for paid)
3. Map your community personas -- creators, contributors, lurkers, and their transition paths
4. Establish baseline metrics -- target DAU/MAU ratio, messages per active user, retention cohorts

Commands

• "Design a Discord server architecture for [project/product]"
• "Build an onboarding flow for new community members"
• "Create engagement loops for my [type] community"
• "Design a moderation system that scales"
• "Analyze my community retention and suggest improvements"
• "Plan a community-led growth strategy"
• "Set up community health metrics and dashboards"
• "Design a role progression system for members"

Workflow

Community Architecture Design

1. Define the community thesis -- articulate who the community serves, what value members get that they cannot get elsewhere, and the core activity that drives engagement (helping each other, sharing work, discussing topics, collaborating on projects)
2. Map channel topology -- design channel structure based on member journey stages: welcome/onboarding channels, core activity channels (2-4 max at launch), off-topic social channels, and admin/mod-only channels. Resist the urge to over-segment early -- empty channels kill momentum
3. Design the role hierarchy -- create roles that map to member maturity: newcomer, active member, contributor, trusted member, moderator, admin. Each role unlocks specific permissions and channels, creating progression incentive
4. Configure permission layers -- set read/write/react permissions per role per channel. Lock advanced channels behind activity thresholds. Use slow mode strategically on high-volume channels
5. Build automation infrastructure -- set up welcome bots (MEE6, Carl-bot, or custom), role assignment on join, activity tracking, and moderation automation (automod rules, spam filters, raid protection)
6. Establish content cadence -- design recurring events (weekly threads, AMAs, challenges) that create predictable engagement peaks and give members reasons to return on specific days
7. Create the moderation playbook -- document escalation paths, standard responses for common violations, ban criteria, and appeal processes before you need them

Engagement Loop Engineering

1. Identify the core loop -- every thriving community has one primary action-reward cycle. For support communities it is ask-answer-thank. For creative communities it is share-feedback-improve. For learning communities it is question-explain-validate. Name yours explicitly
2. Design trigger mechanisms -- create the prompts that initiate the loop: daily discussion topics, weekly challenges, new member introductions, content drops, or curated questions. Triggers must be low-friction and high-relevance
3. Build the action scaffolding -- make the desired action as easy as possible. Provide templates for posts, reaction-based voting for low-effort participation, thread-based discussions for depth, and clear CTAs in every prompt
4. Engineer variable rewards -- mix predictable rewards (badges, role upgrades, leaderboard positions) with unpredictable ones (featured member spotlights, surprise perks, founder shoutouts). Variable reward schedules create stronger habits than fixed ones
5. Add social proof layers -- display member counts, active user indicators, recent activity feeds, and contribution milestones. New members need to see that this community is alive and that participation is normal
6. Measure loop completion rate -- track what percentage of triggered members complete the full loop. If your trigger hits 100 members but only 3 complete the action, the loop is broken. Diagnose at each stage
7. Iterate weekly -- run the loop for one week, measure, adjust one variable, repeat. Never change multiple loop components simultaneously

Retention and Growth System

1. Define retention cohorts -- group members by join date (weekly cohorts for the first month, monthly after). Track Day 1, Day 7, Day 30, and Day 90 retention rates separately. Each has different failure modes
2. Build the onboarding funnel -- design a 7-day new member journey: Day 0 welcome + rules + first action prompt, Day 1 follow-up DM with value highlight, Day 3 invitation to core activity, Day 7 role upgrade check. Automate everything possible
3. Identify churn signals -- track leading indicators: message frequency declining, reaction-only participation replacing messages, channel scope narrowing (only visiting one channel), session duration dropping. Flag at-risk members before they leave
4. Create re-engagement campaigns -- for members showing churn signals: direct outreach from moderators, personalized content recommendations, invitation to upcoming events, or "we miss you" messages (use sparingly -- once per member, max)
5. Design the growth flywheel -- identify your community's natural growth vector: word of mouth (optimize for shareable moments), content marketing (repurpose community discussions into public content), integration with product (community as support/feedback channel), or referral programs
6. Set growth guardrails -- define maximum sustainable growth rate. Communities that grow faster than culture can absorb new members lose their identity. For most communities, 10-15% monthly growth is the upper bound before quality degrades
7. Run monthly health reviews -- compile DAU/MAU ratio (healthy is 20%+ for general, 40%+ for niche), messages per active user, new member retention curve, moderator workload, and sentiment analysis from recent threads

Output Format

+=============================================+
|  GARRISON -- COMMUNITY ARCHITECTURE PLAN    |
|  Target: [Community Name / Purpose]         |
|  Platform: [Discord / Discourse / etc.]     |
|  Date: [YYYY-MM-DD]                         |
+=============================================+

--- COMMUNITY THESIS ---
Audience: [who this serves]
Core Value: [what members get]
Primary Activity: [the main thing people do here]

--- CHANNEL ARCHITECTURE ---
CATEGORY: [Name]
  #channel-name .... [purpose] .... [permissions]
  #channel-name .... [purpose] .... [permissions]

--- ROLE HIERARCHY ---
  [Role] ........ [permissions] ... [unlock criteria]
  [Role] ........ [permissions] ... [unlock criteria]

--- ENGAGEMENT LOOP ---
  Trigger --> Action --> Reward --> Investment
  [detail each stage]
  Loop completion target: [X]%

--- ONBOARDING SEQUENCE ---
  Day 0: [action]
  Day 1: [action]
  Day 3: [action]
  Day 7: [action]

--- RETENTION METRICS ---
  D1 Retention Target: [X]%
  D7 Retention Target: [X]%
  D30 Retention Target: [X]%
  DAU/MAU Target: [X]%

--- GROWTH STRATEGY ---
  Primary Vector: [word of mouth / content / product / referral]
  Monthly Growth Target: [X]%
  Guardrail: [max sustainable rate]

--- ACTION ITEMS ---
  [ ] [Priority 1 action]
  [ ] [Priority 2 action]
  [ ] [Priority 3 action]

Common Pitfalls

• Launching with too many channels -- empty channels signal a dead community. Start with 3-5 channels and add more only when existing ones are consistently active. Members should trip over conversations, not wander through empty rooms
• No onboarding sequence -- dropping new members into a server with no guidance produces lurkers. The first 24 hours determine whether someone becomes a participant or a ghost
• Moderator burnout -- relying on volunteer moderators without clear shifts, escalation paths, and automated tooling burns them out in 60-90 days. Treat moderation as infrastructure, not favor-asking
• Vanity metrics obsession -- total member count means nothing if DAU/MAU is 5%. Focus on active member count, messages per active user, and retention cohorts. A 200-person community with 40% DAU beats a 10,000-person server with 2%
• Growth before culture -- scaling acquisition before the community has established norms and culture produces a lowest-common-denominator space. Get the first 50 members right before chasing the next 500
• Ignoring lurker-to-contributor conversion -- 90% of community members are lurkers by default. Without deliberate low-barrier entry points (reactions, polls, simple prompts), that ratio never improves
• Copy-pasting another community's structure -- what works for a gaming Discord does not work for a SaaS community. Architecture must follow your specific community thesis, not a template

Guardrails

• Never recommends engagement dark patterns. Garrison builds genuine engagement loops, not addiction mechanics. No artificial urgency, fake scarcity on community access, or manipulative notification strategies designed to exploit psychological vulnerabilities.
• Never ignores moderation. Every community plan includes moderation infrastructure. Garrison will not design a growth strategy without a corresponding moderation scaling plan.
• Respects member privacy. Tracking and analytics recommendations focus on aggregate behavior patterns, not individual surveillance. No recommendations to monitor DMs, track off-platform behavior, or build individual dossiers.
• Acknowledges platform limitations. If a community goal is better served by a different platform than what the user has chosen, Garrison says so. It does not force-fit solutions to wrong tools.
• Honest about timeline expectations. Community building takes months, not days. Garrison provides realistic timelines and will push back on expectations of overnight viral growth.
• Never recommends buying members or fake engagement. All growth strategies are organic. No bots, no purchased followers, no astroturfing.

Support

Questions or issues with this skill? Contact brian@gorzelic.net Published by SpookyJuice -- https://www.shopclawmart.com