category-positioning
by Eronredcategory-positioning is a product marketing and ASO skill for choosing, changing, or evaluating App Store and Google Play categories. It helps assess primary vs secondary category trade-offs, smaller-category ranking potential, discoverability, and featuring eligibility. Use this category-positioning guide when you need a defensible category recommendation.
This skill scores 74/100, which means it is listable but best presented with a caution that it is a focused, mid-depth workflow rather than a fully packaged, end-to-end tool. Directory users can reasonably expect it to help agents trigger the right category-positioning conversation, but they should know it has limited supporting assets and no install command or companion files to reduce adoption guesswork.
- Strong triggerability: the frontmatter explicitly names when to use it, including App Store, Google Play, primary vs secondary category trade-offs, and category switch decisions.
- Good operational depth: the body is substantial (7,923 characters) with 12 H2 sections and concrete initial assessment steps, which gives agents a usable workflow instead of a vague prompt.
- Clear decision context: it covers discoverability, ranking potential, featuring eligibility, and when a category switch is worth the disruption, which helps users make an install decision.
- No support files or install command: there are no scripts, references, resources, or README, so users must rely entirely on SKILL.md.
- Limited ecosystem context: it references related skills (aso-audit, competitor-analysis, market-movers) and an app-marketing-context file, but those dependencies are not bundled here, which may require extra setup or manual prompting.
Overview of category-positioning skill
category-positioning is a product marketing and ASO skill for deciding whether an app should stay in its current App Store or Google Play category, switch categories, or split primary vs secondary placement to improve discoverability and ranking odds. It is best for teams that need a category-positioning skill to answer a real business question: “What category helps this app win, and what do we trade off if we move?”
What this skill is for
Use category-positioning when the decision is about category fit, chart competition, or featuring eligibility—not just general ASO cleanup. It helps evaluate smaller categories versus broader ones, category subcategory fit, and whether the app’s current category is helping or hurting visibility.
Who should use it
It fits app marketers, ASO specialists, founders, and Product Marketing teams who already know the app and need a defensible category recommendation. It is especially useful when choosing between nearby categories such as Productivity vs Utilities or Health & Fitness vs Lifestyle.
What makes it useful
The main value of category-positioning for Product Marketing is decision quality: it connects category choice to ranking potential, audience expectation, and launch risk. It is more useful than a generic prompt because it forces the user to specify the app’s actual function, current category, and business goal before recommending a move.
How to Use category-positioning skill
Install and locate the skill
Use the category-positioning install flow from your skills tool, then open skills/category-positioning/SKILL.md first. In this repository there are no support folders, so the main guidance lives in that file; there is no separate script layer to interpret.
Give the skill the right inputs
A strong category-positioning usage prompt should include:
- App ID or app name
- Current App Store category and/or Google Play category
- The app’s true function in one plain sentence
- The goal: installs, revenue, featuring, or top-chart ranking
- How long the app has been in the current category
- Any category candidates you are already considering
Example prompt:
“Evaluate whether our meditation app should stay in Health & Fitness or move to Lifestyle. Current category has been stable for 9 months. Goal is more organic installs, not featuring.”
Read the workflow in the right order
Start with the “Initial Assessment” steps in SKILL.md, then move to the sections on why category matters, category structure, and platform-specific category rules. That sequence helps you avoid premature recommendations and shows why a category switch can help or backfire.
Use it with a decision-first workflow
The best category-positioning guide is to ask for:
- current fit,
- likely target category,
- ranking and visibility trade-offs,
- switch risk,
- recommendation.
If your prompt only says “pick the best category,” output quality drops because the skill needs business context to judge whether the app should optimize for fit, growth, or speed.
category-positioning skill FAQ
Is category-positioning only for App Store apps?
No. The skill covers both App Store and Google Play, but the decision logic differs. App Store work focuses more on primary and secondary category trade-offs; Google Play usually involves category plus tags and a slightly different discovery model.
Do I need a mature ASO program to use it?
No. The skill is beginner-friendly if you can answer basic product questions. It becomes most valuable when a team is about to relaunch, re-categorize, or compare category options and wants a clearer rationale than “this seems close enough.”
How is this different from a normal prompt?
A normal prompt may suggest a category based on surface keywords. The category-positioning skill is better when you need a repeatable recommendation grounded in app function, category competition, and change risk. It is designed to reduce guesswork, not just generate ideas.
When should I not use it?
Do not use category-positioning if the real problem is metadata quality, conversion rate, or keyword targeting with no category change contemplated. In that case, a broader ASO review or a competitor analysis skill is the better fit.
How to Improve category-positioning skill
Give a clearer product truth
The fastest way to improve category-positioning output is to describe what the app actually does, not how marketing positions it. If the app is a habit tracker with light coaching, say that directly; if it is a wellness content app, say that too. Honest function details lead to better category fit.
State the decision you are optimizing for
The skill works better when you name the primary goal. “More installs,” “higher rank in a smaller category,” and “better featured-app odds” often lead to different recommendations. For category-positioning, goal clarity is more important than long background context.
Include category constraints and history
Tell the skill whether the app has recently changed categories, whether there is a brand constraint, and whether you are comparing one category or several. Category switches can reset momentum, so history changes the recommendation.
Iterate with a short test set
If the first answer is close but not decisive, follow up with two or three candidate categories and ask for a tighter comparison. Better inputs look like: “Compare Lifestyle vs Health & Fitness for this app, assuming our priority is organic installs over featuring.” That produces a more actionable category-positioning install decision than a broad request.