Point it at your URL
Run one slash command with your product's URL. A 2-minute intake researches your site and confirms a few founder-only details.
Free and open-source · Apache-2.0 · Updated June 2026
A novel marketing strategy to beat competitors you can't outspend.
A free, open-source plugin that runs Diffmode's growth pipeline inside your AI coding agent — one command, about 90 minutes, and 7–9 novel tactics calibrated to your stage, budget, and channels.
claude plugin marketplace add acogood/diffmode_freeFree and open-source. Runs on your own machine — in Claude Code today, with Codex and Cursor coming.
From a URL to 7–9 tactics, in four moves
Generic AI tools stop at retrieval — a list of channels you already knew. This runs the synthesis step instead: it combines documented mechanisms into tactics that weren't in any single playbook.
It researches your market
Enrichment maps your competitors, your audience's jobs-to-be-done, and the acquisition tactics already working in your space.
Three think-tanks + a fresh vector DB
Competitor-gaps, cross-industry, and platform-arbitrage analyses run in parallel while it mines a per-run database of growth mechanisms from public case studies.
Synthesis writes your tactics
It combines 2–3 mechanisms at a time into 7–9 demand-gen tactics — about half intentionally unconventional — and writes them to synthesis.md.
Install in three commands
claude plugin marketplace add acogood/diffmode_freeclaude plugin install diffmode-growth-tactics@diffmode-free/diffmode-growth-tactics:run-growth-tactics --url https://your-product.comThat's the whole workflow — it's a slash command, not a config file. Point it at your URL and walk away for about 90 minutes.
Before your first run: restart
Claude Code after installing. A Perplexity MCP server is optional — connect one for the highest-quality research, or skip it and the
research stages fall back to Claude Code's built-in WebSearch (zero
setup, no API cost). The run writes into ./<slug>/ in whatever directory you start it from.
You don't need any of these to run it — the steps above are the whole workflow. For power users:
Advanced: all commands & flags (optional)
run-growth-tactics The full pipeline — intake through synthesis. Pass a URL and walk away.
run-enrichment --product <slug> Enrichment only — competitors, audience, and acquisition tactics, without the think-tanks or synthesis.
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
--url <site> | Research a website to prefill the intake. The workspace slug is derived from the host unless --product is also given. |
--product <slug> | Name the workspace at ./<slug>/ in the current directory. Required if you don't pass --url. |
--from <stage> | Resume from a stage, reusing earlier outputs already on disk. |
--only <stage> | Run a single stage (its inputs must already exist). |
--remine | Force a fresh per-run vector database instead of reusing the cached one. |
--fast-intake | In URL mode, skip the founder Q&A and accept the researched prefill as-is. |
--scratch | Write stage outputs to *-scratch/ siblings, preserving known-good results. |
Stage names for --from /
--only:
diagnostics,
enrichment,
think-tanks,
growth-factors,
lite-constraints,
synthesis (or the finer
explore /
build steps).
A workspace you can read, not a black box
Every run writes a ./<slug>/ folder in your current directory. The deliverable is the file at the
bottom — but every file above it shows the reasoning that produced it.
-
synthesis.md — the deliverable: 7–9 novel demand-gen tactics, with about half intentionally unconventional. Each one names the mechanisms it combines and how to run it.
-
Enrichment analyses — your competitors, audience jobs-to-be-done, and the acquisition tactics already working in your space, each as its own markdown file.
-
Three think-tank reports — competitor-gaps, cross-industry transfers, and platform-arbitrage, written before any tactic is named.
-
growth-factors.json — the per-run vector database the pipeline mined from public case studies, so you can trace where each mechanism came from.
What's free, and what isn't
The method is the free part. This plugin runs the real Diffmode
synthesis, but on a deliberately lighter
per-run LIGHT database mined fresh
from public case studies every run — and it stops at ideas, your
synthesis.md.
What stays paid is the breadth and the finish: the proprietary
576-mechanism database, plus the
downstream prioritization and week-by-week implementation. The free
output is genuinely useful — full-depth ideas — and visibly lighter than
the paid product. Nothing here reads or ships the proprietary database.
What you need to run it
Claude Code
The plugin installs into Claude Code and runs as slash commands. You spend your own Claude Code usage per run.
Perplexity MCP (optional)
Connect one for the best research, or skip it — the research stages fall back to the built-in WebSearch at no API cost.
About 75–90 minutes
A full run is mostly unattended. A resumed --from synthesis run finishes in minutes.
Roughly $0–3 per run
About $2–3 of Perplexity if you use it; $0 in API cost on the WebSearch fallback. The plugin itself is free.
Coming to Codex and Cursor
Runs in Claude Code today — Codex and Cursor are next. The 12 skill bodies are runtime-neutral, so the method isn't tied to one agent. The Codex port is already scaffolded and reads the same skills through symlinks, so there's no second copy to drift; full orchestration is in progress, and other coding agents can follow the same path.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free?
Yes. The plugin is open-source under Apache-2.0 and costs nothing to install or run. You bring your own Claude Code, and optionally a Perplexity MCP server for higher-quality research. The growth method is the free part; the proprietary 576-mechanism database and the paid implementation stages are not.
What does a run cost?
The plugin is free. If you connect a Perplexity MCP server, a full run makes about 5 deep-research and 50 search calls — roughly $2–3 depending on your plan. Without Perplexity, the research stages fall back to Claude Code's built-in WebSearch at no API cost. Either way, you also spend your own Claude Code usage.
Do I need Perplexity?
No — Perplexity is optional. Connect a Perplexity MCP server and the research stages use it for the highest-quality sourcing; skip it and they fall back to Claude Code's built-in WebSearch, with citations auto-verified for reachability. A measured no-Perplexity run matched the quality bars and finished a touch faster.
How long does a run take?
About 75–90 minutes end to end, mostly unattended. Stages overlap: the three think-tanks run in parallel and the per-run vector database is mined off the critical path. A resumed --from synthesis run takes minutes, since the earlier outputs are cached.
How is this different from paid Diffmode?
Same method, lighter inputs, and it stops earlier. The free plugin mines a per-run LIGHT database from public case studies and ends at ideas — your synthesis.md. Paid Diffmode runs the same synthesis over the proprietary 576-mechanism database and continues into prioritization and week-by-week implementation.
Does it touch your proprietary database?
No. The plugin never reads or ships the 576-vector database. It builds its own per-run database fresh from public case studies every time, in a clean room. That is by design — the breadth of the proprietary database is part of what the paid product is.
What's the output?
A ./<slug>/ workspace in your current directory. The deliverable is synthesis.md — 7–9 novel demand-gen tactics, about half of them intentionally unconventional. Alongside it you get the enrichment analyses, the three think-tank reports, and the growth-factors.json database the run built, so you can read the reasoning behind every tactic.
Can I run it for several products or clients?
Yes. Each run names its own ./<slug>/ workspace, so you can keep many products side by side. Use --product to name a workspace, --url to research a site, and --from or --only to resume or re-run a single stage without paying for the whole pipeline again.
When are Codex and Cursor supported?
The 12 skill bodies are runtime-neutral, so the method isn't tied to Claude Code. The Codex port is scaffolded today and reads the same skills; full orchestration is in progress. The WebSearch fallback is currently Claude Code only.
Add the plugin and run your first pipeline today.
One command to install, one to run. Free and open-source — you only spend your own Claude Code usage.
claude plugin marketplace add acogood/diffmode_free