Product
Retain

Holdout Group Analysis

Provision a persistent holdout group to measure the cumulative impact of all product experiments over time, from manual setup through autonomous AI-driven optimization that finds the local maximum.

CaptureProduct
$npx gtm-skills add product/retain/holdout-groups

Outcome

Holdout group provisioned with stable assignment and baseline metrics captured

Leading Indicators

  • Holdout group size accuracy
  • Assignment stability rate
  • Baseline metric parity

Instructions

  1. Run the holdout-group-setup drill to calculate holdout size (default 10%) and create the global-holdout PostHog feature flag with ensure_experience_continuity enabled.

  2. Create PostHog cohorts for Holdout Group and Treatment Group.

  3. Verify assignment stability: call the feature flag evaluation API 5 times per user for 10 test users; confirm every call returns the same group.

  4. Query PostHog for 4 weeks of baseline data split by holdout vs treatment: weekly active users, retention (Week 1, 2, 4), engagement frequency.

  5. Verify baseline parity: no primary metric differs >5% between groups. If parity fails, dissolve and recreate the holdout with a fresh flag key.

  6. Store baseline snapshot in Attio. Communicate holdout policy to team: all future experiments must include holdout exclusion filter.

  7. Run the threshold-engine drill: holdout flag active, cohort size within +/-2% of target, assignment stability 100%, baseline parity within 5%.

  8. If PASS, proceed to Baseline. If FAIL, diagnose flag configuration or PostHog identification issues.

Recommendations

Time

5 hours over 1 week

Play-specific cost

Free

Tools

PostHogProduct Analytics