Hooked UX
Habit-forming product design
Build habit-forming products using Nir Eyal's Hook Model. This skill helps your AI agent design trigger-action-reward-investment loops that keep users coming back, increasing engagement and long-term retention naturally.
This skill is compatible with Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, and other agentskills.io-compatible agents.
What is the Hooked UX skill?
Nir Eyal’s Hooked explains how products become habits, and Hooked UX is the free AI agent skill that puts the model to work. Your agent maps your product onto the four-step cycle — trigger, action, variable reward, investment — names the step your loop is missing, and designs the fix without reaching for another notification.
Key concepts from Hooked your agent applies
The Hook Model
Four steps that create habits: Trigger → Action → Variable Reward → Investment.
External & Internal Triggers
Start with external triggers (notifications, emails) and transition to internal triggers (emotions, routines).
Reducing Friction
Make the desired action as easy as possible — fewer steps, less thinking, lower effort.
Variable Rewards
Unpredictable rewards (social validation, content discovery, personal achievement) drive repeated engagement.
Investment Phase
Get users to invest time, data, or effort that makes the product more valuable with each use.
When to use Hooked UX — and when not to
Reach for it when
- Users finish onboarding, get the value once, and never return unless an email from you drags them back.
- Engagement rests entirely on push notifications, and each campaign buys visibly less than the one before it.
- People enjoy the product but nothing they leave behind makes their fifth session better than their first.
- You have a daily-use ambition and a monthly-use reality, with no emotion or routine that reliably points at your product.
Reach for something else when
- The behavior genuinely repeats once a year — a tax filing, a house move — so optimize the single conversion with CRO Methodology.
- Users want to come back and cannot get through the flow; the missing ingredient is ability, not reward — use Improve Retention.
- Nobody returns because the product does not yet solve a real problem — Jobs to Be Done is the honest place to restart.
- You are polishing the feedback and animation of one small interaction rather than a return cycle — that is Microinteractions.
Example prompts for the Hooked UX skill
Map the Hook cycle for my social media app using hooked-ux skill
Product designDesign variable rewards for my learning platform using hooked-ux skill
EngagementIdentify internal triggers we should associate with our product using hooked-ux skill
Behavioral designCreate investment mechanisms that increase switching costs using hooked-ux skill
RetentionHooked UX vs the other Product & Innovation skills
All 10 Product & Innovation skills are free and install the same way — the only question is which framework fits the job in front of you.
| Skill | Based on | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Jobs to Be Done | Competing Against Luck — Clayton Christensen | JTBD framework for product innovation |
| Hooked UX | Hooked — Nir Eyal | Habit-forming product design |
| Improve Retention | Tiny Habits — BJ Fogg | Behavior design for user retention using B=MAP |
| Lean Startup | The Lean Startup — Eric Ries | Build-Measure-Learn methodology |
| Design Sprint | Sprint — Jake Knapp | 5-day process for validating ideas through prototyping |
| Continuous Discovery | Continuous Discovery Habits — Teresa Torres | Habits for continuous product discovery |
| Inspired | Inspired — Marty Cagan | Building products customers love |
| The Mom Test | The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick | Customer conversations that reveal the truth |
| The 37signals Way | Shape Up — Jason Fried & DHH | Lean, opinionated product development from Getting Real to Shape Up |
| Lean Analytics | Lean Analytics — Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz | Startup metrics and the One Metric That Matters |
Frequently asked questions
How do I install the Hooked UX skill?
Run npx skills add wondelai/skills/hooked-ux --global. It takes about 30 seconds and needs no account. The Hooked UX skill then works in Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw and Hermes Agent — anything that reads the open agentskills.io format — and your agent loads it on its own when a task calls for it. It is free and MIT-licensed, and the source is at https://github.com/wondelai/skills.
Which book is the Hooked UX skill based on?
It packages Hooked by Nir Eyal — stanford lecturer, behavioral design expert. The skill distils the book's method into instructions your agent follows while it works, covering the hook model, external & internal triggers and reducing friction. It sits in the Product & Innovation part of the library.
How is this different from the Improve Retention skill?
Hooked is an architecture; Improve Retention (Tiny Habits) is a diagnosis. Eyal assumes the behavior can happen and asks how to make it recur on its own — external trigger giving way to internal trigger, reward made variable, investment loaded so the next session is better. Fogg asks why a single instance of the behavior failed and answers with motivation, ability or prompt. Reach for Fogg when users try and fail; reach for Hooked when they succeed once and never come back.
What are the four steps of the Hook, exactly?
Trigger — external at first (a notification, a link from a friend), eventually internal, where an emotion or routine fires without you. Action — the simplest behavior someone will do in anticipation of reward. Variable Reward — an unpredictable payoff: social validation, the hunt for something good, a sense of completion. Investment — time, data or effort the user puts in, which both loads the next trigger and makes the product better next time. Investment is the step teams skip, and the one that makes a loop compound rather than decay.
Do I need the book to use this?
No — but Hooked is unusually practical to read alongside it, because much of the book is worked examples of ordinary products (Pinterest, Instagram, the Bible app) taken apart step by step. The skill carries the model and applies it to yours. What the book gives you is a trained eye: after it, you catch other people’s hooks in the wild, which is the fastest way to get better at designing your own.
Isn’t habit design just manipulation?
It can be, and the skill cannot referee that for you. Eyal’s own test is the Manipulation Matrix: would you use the thing yourself, and does it materially improve the user’s life? Point this skill at a product with thin value and it will still design a working loop — you will simply have made churn slower and resentment louder. Decide whether the habit deserves to exist before you ask an agent to engineer it.
Guides that use this skill
Install Hooked UX
Free, open-source, and ready in 30 seconds.
npx skills add wondelai/skills/hooked-ux --global MIT Licensed · Works with Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent & other agentskills.io agents · No account needed
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