Revenue-Centric Design
September 3, 2026 · View on GitHub
A distilled, English-language playbook for designing SaaS & startup products that convert, retain, and monetize — packaged as an Agent Skill for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Gemini, and any skills.sh-compatible agent.
134 principles distilled from the X/Twitter writing of Richard (@richardrx) — a product designer specializing in conversion-rate optimization, churn reduction, and applied behavioral science (ex-Volkswagen, ex-PayPal, ex-IBM). The throughline is his coined philosophy, Revenue-Centric Design (RCD): design should serve the user and the business — value and revenue, not one or the other.
Last updated: 3 September 2026 Coverage: @richardrx's curated posts from 3 Nov 2025 → 26 Aug 2026 (136 posts). Anything posted after this date is not yet included — see Updating.
Install
npx skills add heliocosta-dev/revenue-centric-design
This pulls the skill into your agent's skills directory (.claude/skills/, .agents/skills/, …) and works with any Agent Skills–compatible agent.
Already installed it? Pull the latest version with npx skills update revenue-centric-design (or a bare npx skills update to refresh every installed skill). The command re-fetches from GitHub; your agent picks up the new content on its next session.
Or install it manually:
git clone https://github.com/heliocosta-dev/revenue-centric-design.git ~/.claude/skills/revenue-centric-design
⚠️ Usage boundary
🚫 Not for betting, casino, or gambling products. The author granted permission to reuse this material on the explicit condition that it is never used for gambling/betting/casino work (including loot-box / real-money-gaming mechanics). The skill instructs agents to decline such requests. See LICENSE.
What's inside
The skill loads only the theme relevant to your question (progressive disclosure). Each principle follows a fixed shape — Principle → Apply when → The move → Evidence → Visual → Source — so your agent gets the named lever (decoy effect, Swiss Knife Index, GBB, Eugene Schwartz's awareness levels, loss aversion, peak-end rule…), the concrete action, and the proof.
| Theme | Principles | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Conversion & Landing Pages | 24 | hero/copy, CTAs, social proof, awareness levels, CRO |
| Checkout & Forms | 5 | checkout, lead forms, cart abandon, field friction |
| Onboarding & Activation | 20 | empty states, aha moment, TTV, activation, trials |
| Revenue-Centric Design | 13 | the RCD principles, design process & method |
| Pricing & Monetization | 15 | decoy/anchoring, GBB, trial-with-card, upgrades |
| Churn & Retention | 13 | cancellation UX, expectation debt, NRR, JTBD |
| Dashboards & Data Visualization | 3 | KPIs, actionable panels, F-pattern, role context |
| Behavioral Science Toolkit | 7 | the cross-cutting biases & persuasion levers |
| Product Strategy & Features | 13 | Swiss Knife Index, feature adoption, attention |
| Positioning, ICP & GTM | 8 | ICP, niche, TAM/SAM/SOM, PLG, first customers |
| AI-Era Differentiation | 7 | moats, commoditization, vibe-coding pitfalls |
| Metrics & Experimentation | 6 | A/B rigor, vanity metrics, churn→LTV math |
The agent entry point is SKILL.md; informational diagrams referenced by the principles live in assets/.
The spine: RCD in 9 principles
- Neutrality is omission — an interface that doesn't direct hurts conversion.
- Who talks to everyone convinces no one — no ICP → generic value → worse retention.
- Value first, ask later — proof must arrive before the user questions their choice.
- Your promise is the size of your proof — the market believes what you demonstrate, not what you claim.
- Same competes on price, different on category — no contrast, no margin.
- Default is the decision you made for the user — the initial state defines mass behavior.
- Retention is built, not requested — perceived loss retains more than promised benefit.
- Expansion is born of usage — upgrade at the moment of the limit, never by interruption.
- Price is a filter — pricing defines who enters, who stays, and who expands.
Updating
This is a point-in-time snapshot. The Coverage date above marks the latest included post (26 Aug 2026); anything newer from @richardrx isn't here yet. To extend it: gather the newer posts, distill each into the same principle shape, file it under the right references/ theme, then bump the dates in this README and in CHANGELOG.md.
Provenance & attribution
All ideas, frameworks, examples, and the coined term Revenue-Centric Design belong to Richard (@richardrx). This repository is a curated, distilled, English-translated index of 136 of his public X posts, created with his permission for educational reference. Every principle links back to its original post, and it reproduces distilled principles rather than his full posts verbatim.
License
Source-available under custom terms — attribution required, no gambling/betting/casino use. See LICENSE. The underlying ideas remain the author's.