paywalls

paywalls is a skill for Claude Code from coreyhaines31/marketingskills. It costs 155 tokens per session (1,368 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to designing and improving the screens that ask users to upgrade from a free or trial version to a paid plan, or to unlock a restricted feature.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan paywalls, upgrade screens, upsell prompts, feature restrictions, trial-ending screens, and messages shown when a usage limit is reached.
Why use it?
It helps place upgrade requests after users understand the product’s value and explains paid benefits clearly.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the marketing-skills plugin — 50 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to plan paywalls, upgrade screens, upsell prompts, feature restrictions, trial-ending screens, and messages shown when a usage limit is reached.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/paywalls
About the project

Marketing Skills is a collection of skills for AI coding agents that assist with conversion optimization, copywriting, SEO, analytics, and growth engineering. Technical marketers and founders use it to apply agents to marketing work in tools such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, and Windsurf. The catalogue entries are the project's own marketing skills and instructions.

coreyhaines31/marketingskills · 49,629 stars · on GitHub · marketing-skills.com

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill paywalls
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install marketing-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 50 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for paywalls

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/paywalls/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/paywalls)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/paywalls"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/paywalls/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for paywalls

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/paywalls"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/paywalls.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 155 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,368 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 14 May 2026
  • Snyk pass 14 May 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00155 $0.01368
Opus 5 $0.00077 $0.00684
Sonnet 5 $0.00031 $0.00274
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00137

Measured 13d ago against content hash d062c03f6b99, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

paywalls scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 13d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/paywalls/SKILL.md · 228 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 228 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Paywall and Upgrade Screen CRO

You are an expert in in-app paywalls and upgrade flows. Your goal is to convert free users to paid, or upgrade users to higher tiers, at moments when they've experienced enough value to justify the commitment.

Initial Assessment

Check for product marketing context first: If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Before providing recommendations, understand:

  1. Upgrade Context - Freemium → Paid? Trial → Paid? Tier upgrade? Feature upsell? Usage limit?

  2. Product Model - What's free? What's behind paywall? What triggers prompts? Current conversion rate?

  3. User Journey - When does this appear? What have they experienced? What are they trying to do?


Core Principles

1. Value Before Ask

  • User should have experienced real value first
  • Upgrade should feel like natural next step
  • Timing: After "aha moment," not before

2. Show, Don't Just Tell

  • Demonstrate the value of paid features
  • Preview what they're missing
  • Make the upgrade feel tangible

3. Friction-Free Path

  • Easy to upgrade when ready
  • Don't make them hunt for pricing

4. Respect the No

  • Don't trap or pressure
  • Make it easy to continue free
  • Maintain trust for future conversion

Paywall Trigger Points

Feature Gates

When user clicks a paid-only feature:

  • Clear explanation of why it's paid
  • Show what the feature does
  • Quick path to unlock
  • Option to continue without

Usage Limits

When user hits a limit:

  • Clear indication of limit reached
  • Show what upgrading provides
  • Don't block abruptly

Trial Expiration

When trial is ending:

  • Early warnings (7, 3, 1 day)
  • Clear "what happens" on expiration
  • Summarize value received

Time-Based Prompts

After X days of free use:

  • Gentle upgrade reminder
  • Highlight unused paid features
  • Easy to dismiss

Read the full file on GitHub · 228 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 13d ago First seen · 228 lines · 155 tokens per session scan A d062c03f6b99

Subscribe to this mod's changes

paywalls is a skill published in the GitHub repository coreyhaines31/marketingskills (49,629 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 155 tokens to every session and 1,368 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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