GROWTH PATTERN

Adding Activation to Clerk Apps

Clerk excels at user management, but misses opportunities to celebrate user achievements and drive deeper engagement.

Clerk

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What's Missing in Standard Clerk Architecture

Clerk manages sessions and users well, but there's no infrastructure to automatically detect when users first achieve value after signing up.

Standard Clerk Flow vs Optimized Skene Flow

Standard Flow
1

User signs up via Clerk

2

User record created but no activation tracking

3

No automatic trigger for activation milestones

Skene Flow
1

Watch Clerk user events for signup and first actions

2

Detect when user completes first value milestone

3

Trigger activation email sequence with personalized onboarding

4

Track activation completion and send milestone emails

Visual comparison of the flows:

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How Skene Fixes This

We created a Skene Prompt that installs activation detection for Clerk. It monitors user actions after authentication and automatically triggers welcome sequences when users complete their first value milestone.

Implementation Comparison

Using Skene Infrastructure

Install via Prompt

cursor.mdc
@task: Initialize Skene.
@action: Analyze my local code, validating subscription via `npx skene login`, and generate `skene.config.ts` to implement the Activation Loop pattern for Clerk.

Copy Skene Prompt for Cursor

Generated skene.config.ts

skene.config.ts
// skene.config.ts - The Automated Way
import { defineLoop } from '@skene/sdk';

export default defineLoop({
  type: 'activation',
  opinion: 'Detect when users complete their first key action and trigger personalized onboarding',
  steps: [
    {
      trigger: {
        type: 'database',
        table: 'users',
        event: 'insert'
      },
      condition: {
        type: 'query',
        query: `SELECT * FROM user_actions WHERE user_id = $1 AND action_type = 'first_project_created'`,
        timeout: '5m'
      },
      action: {
        type: 'email',
        provider: 'resend',
        template: 'activation_welcome',
        personalization: {
          name: '{{user.name}}',
          activationLink: '{{user.activation_link}}'
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  recovery: {
    retries: 3,
    backoff: 'exponential'
  }
});

Frequently asked questions