Goal-Based Planning

Overview

Goal-Based Planning lets you set concrete visibility targets for your project and track progress toward them over time. Instead of watching metrics passively, you define where you want to be — a target visibility score, citation count, or sentiment level — and the system computes milestones, evaluates your pace daily, and warns you when a goal is at risk.

Goals are per-segment, so you can set different targets for branded queries vs. non-branded discovery vs. competitor head-to-head prompts. Each goal includes a feasibility assessment based on your current baseline and industry benchmarks, auto-computed milestones on a front-loaded curve, and daily progress evaluation with pace indicators.

How It Works

Where Goals Live

Goals have a page of their own: Goals, at /dashboard/goals. It lists every goal on the current project alongside the pace each one is keeping, and New goal opens the panel where you set one.

Set your first goal after your first capture has landed. A goal is graded against real measurements, so one created before there is a baseline has nothing to be graded against.

Per-Segment Goals

Each goal targets a specific prompt segment:

You can have separate goals per segment. A common setup is a conservative branded target (maintain current position) alongside an ambitious non-branded target (grow organic discovery).

Auto-Computed Milestones

When you create a goal, the system computes intermediate milestones between your baseline and target using a front-loaded curve. This means early milestones are closer together (faster expected progress at the start) and later milestones are spaced wider (acknowledging diminishing returns as you approach the target).

Daily Progress Evaluation

A cron job evaluates all active goals daily. For each goal, it:

1. Fetches the latest metric value for the goal's segment
2. Computes pace against the timeline
3. Updates milestone statuses (achieved, missed, or pending)
4. Logs the progress entry
5. Generates intelligence insights if the goal is at risk

Available Metrics

Goals can target any of these metrics:

Each metric is evaluated against the same segment filter applied to the goal, so a visibility_score goal scoped to branded only considers snapshots from branded prompts.

Setting Goals

Creating One

New goal on the Goals page opens a panel with six fields: the metric, the segment it is scoped to, the target value, the target date, and — both optional — a short title and any notes. Saving it computes the milestones straight away.

Feasibility Assessment

After you enter a target value and deadline, the system evaluates feasibility:

The assessment reads your own project, not other people's: the gap between your baseline and your target, the weeks available, how much lift is still sitting in your weak prompts, and the average lift your own verified actions have already produced. Until you have verified actions to average, it falls back to a deliberately conservative estimate, which is why an early goal is graded more cautiously than a later one.

Milestone Computation

Front-Loaded Curve

Milestones follow a front-loaded curve defined by:

milestone_progress = 1 - (1 - linear_progress)^1.5

This curve front-loads progress: early milestones expect faster gains (when optimization efforts have the most impact), while later milestones allow more time (acknowledging that gains become harder as you approach the target).

Milestone Spacing and Limits

• 1 milestone approximately every 3 weeks between goal start and deadline
• Maximum 6 milestones per goal, regardless of timeline length
• Each milestone has a target value (interpolated on the curve) and an expected date

Milestone Statuses

Milestone status is evaluated during the daily progress cron. A missed milestone does not cancel the goal — it updates the pace indicator and may trigger an at-risk insight.

Progress Tracking

Pace Status

The daily evaluation assigns one of four pace statuses:

Scope Change Detection

If your project's prompt count changes by more than 20% after a goal is created (e.g., you add a large batch of new prompts or remove a segment), the system flags a scope change. Scope changes affect baseline assumptions — a visibility score computed over 50 prompts is not directly comparable to one computed over 100. The flag helps you decide whether to adjust the goal or acknowledge the new baseline.

Forecasted Value

The progress tracker computes a forecasted value at deadline using linear extrapolation from your progress log. This gives you a simple projection: "At your current rate, you will reach X by the deadline." Compare this to the target to see whether your pace is sufficient.

Daily Progress Log

Every daily evaluation appends an entry to the goal's progress log:

• Date of evaluation
• Current metric value
• Expected value (from the front-loaded curve at this point)
• Pace status
• Forecasted value at deadline

The log provides a complete history of how the goal progressed over time, useful for retrospectives and for understanding what interventions worked.

Intelligence Integration

Goal-at-Risk Insights

When a goal's pace status moves to at_risk, the intelligence engine automatically generates a goal_at_risk insight. This insight includes:

• Which goal is at risk and by how much
• The current vs. expected metric value
• Suggested actions based on the metric type (e.g., "Add more non-branded prompts" for a visibility goal, "Review negative sentiment snapshots" for a sentiment goal)

Action Attribution

Goals can be linked to actions (from the Insights system). When you take an action that the platform recommended, and your goal metric subsequently improves, the system can attribute the improvement to that action. This closes the feedback loop between "what should I do" and "did it work."

MCP Tools

Three MCP tools are available for programmatic goal management:

Example: Create a Goal

{
  "tool": "create_goal",
  "arguments": {
    "project_id": "proj_abc123",
    "metric": "visibility_score",
    "segment": "non-branded",
    "target_value": 75,
    "deadline": "2026-07-15",
    "name": "Q3 Non-Branded Visibility Target"
  }
}

Example: List Goals with Progress

{
  "tool": "list_goals",
  "arguments": {
    "project_id": "proj_abc123"
  }
}

Response includes each goal's current value, pace status, milestones, forecasted value, and scope change flags.

Webhook Events

Two webhook events are dispatched for goal lifecycle changes:

Configure webhook endpoints in Settings → Webhooks to receive these events. See Webhooks for setup details.

Plan Requirements

Goal-Based Planning is available on all plans.