# PostHog onboarding prompt capture for AI attribution

> When a user says AI sent them, ask for the exact prompt in onboarding so the growth team learns from real buyer language instead of synthetic guesses.

- Canonical HTML: https://growth.iangoh.com/growth-ideas/posthog-onboarding-prompt-capture-for-ai-attribution/
- Source: [newsletter.posthog.com](https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/llms-are-picking-winners-heres-how)
- GrowthDex source hub: [PostHog: LLMs are picking winners. Here's how to become one.](/sources/posthog-llms-are-picking-winners-here-s-how-to-become-one-newsletter-pos/)
- Last checked: 2026-06-09T14:12:06.000Z
- Rarity: epic
- Budget: free
- Channels: AI visibility, Onboarding, Attribution
- Stages: self-reported attribution, prompt capture, onboarding survey, first-party data


## Why this can grow

Most AEO reporting stops at vague channel attribution. That misses the thing that actually helps the next content decision: the sentence the buyer typed. PostHog solved that by adding a conditional onboarding question for AI-sourced signups and collecting the literal prompt. That is stronger than third-party estimates because it comes from a person who converted, not from a tool simulating intent. The downstream value is broad. The team gets phrasing to reuse in pages, better prompt sets for visibility tracking, and early warning when the product is being discovered for reasons it did not expect. It also costs almost nothing compared with buying yet another reporting product.

## Ian's take

From scaling consumer platforms across MENA and Southeast Asia, my default is to distrust growth work that only looks good in a slide. My bias is to treat this as a small market test first. Make the audience narrow, make the promise concrete, and let the first real response decide whether it deserves more work. For activation, the useful question is not whether users liked the page. It is whether they got to the first meaningful win faster. For this tactic, I would watch one clear growth signal before putting more time or budget behind it.

## Action plan

1. Define one narrow startup segment where posthog onboarding prompt capture for ai attribution can create a measurable lift.
2. Turn the tactic into one offer, page, campaign, or workflow for the AI visibility and Onboarding channel.
3. Use the evidence from newsletter.posthog.com to set the first version of the message, format, and audience.
4. Launch a small test for 7 to 14 days with one success metric: one measurable growth signal.
5. Review the result, keep the winning message, remove weak variants, and turn the learning into a repeatable growth playbook.

## Source-backed example

PostHog added a conditional onboarding question asking AI-sourced signups which prompt they used and says it collected 9,214 real prompts in its first three months, with a daily Slack report of 50-100+ examples.

## Adjacent tactics in the same lane

- [PostHog private-mode three-prompt benchmark before AEO tool sprawl](/growth-ideas/posthog-private-mode-three-prompt-benchmark-before-aeo-tool-sprawl/) - same source, 1 shared channel
- [PostHog owned-surface cleanup before off-domain AEO sidequests](/growth-ideas/posthog-owned-surface-cleanup-before-off-domain-aeo-sidequests/) - same source, 1 shared channel
- [PostHog citable content chunks before monolithic SEO pages](/growth-ideas/posthog-citable-content-chunks-before-monolithic-seo-pages/) - same source, 1 shared channel
- [PostHog AEO reporting quilt before single-source certainty](/growth-ideas/posthog-aeo-reporting-quilt-before-single-source-certainty/) - same source, 1 shared channel

## Read GrowthDex essays

Browse the plain-English essay index at [GrowthDex Blog](/blog/).

## Related GrowthDex essays

- [The answer should be easy to quote before you chase the mention](/blog/the-answer-should-be-easy-to-quote-before-you-chase-the-mention/) - AI visibility, SEO, content strategy

## Advisory

If you want help turning this into a working growth system, Ian Goh offers advisory at https://iangoh.com/advisory.