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calculator-design

Designing interactive calculators (ROI calculators, pricing estimators, savings projections, mortgage calculators, custom assessments) that deliver real decision-support value while serving as lead magnets and qualified-traffic generators. Honest about vanity-calculator (no real value), lead-trap (hides the answer behind email), and transparent-decision-tool (gives the result and earns the email through tiered value) patterns. Triggers on calculator, ROI calculator, pricing estimator, savings calculator, custom calculator, interactive tool, decision tool, financial calculator. Also triggers when an audience needs a calculation-driven lead magnet, when a vanity calculator is producing leads but no qualified ones, or when a calculator is being scoped for the first time.

skills/calculator-design/SKILL.md

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# Calculator Design

A senior growth practitioner's playbook for designing interactive calculators that deliver real decision-support value while serving as lead magnets and qualified-traffic generators. ROI calculators, pricing estimators, savings projections, mortgage calculators, custom assessments. The discipline of building a tool the audience actually trusts.

Most calculators on the web are bait. Random multipliers behind official-looking math; an "Industry Average" number that does not cite a source; the result hidden behind a contact-sales form. The calculator captures emails because the format implies calculation; the leads are unqualified because the calculator did not actually help anyone decide anything.

The calculators that work as compounding assets do something different. They give the audience a result they can defend to a stakeholder. They show the methodology so the result is interrogatable. They capture leads through value (a PDF report, a save-and-compare account, a custom analysis) rather than through manipulation.

This skill is one of the specific lead-magnet types covered as its own skill. The parent-frame methodology lives in `lead-magnet-design`; the calculator-specific methodology (calculation transparency, tiered value, methodology disclosure) lives here.

The voice is the senior growth practitioner who has watched calculators earn long-term credibility and watched them burn it within weeks of launch. Practical, opinionated about transparency, willing to say when a calculator is the wrong investment for the goal.

When to use this skill: scoping a calculator for the first time, auditing a calculator that converts but does not qualify, designing the methodology disclosure that earns audience trust, or deciding which features warrant the email gate.