Map second- and third-order consequences before you ship.

Six specialist agents stream a navigable consequence tree for any event, a pricing change, a rollout, an acquisition, so the exec team walks in already knowing what breaks three moves out.

Run Cascade
AuthorMariete
AgentCascade
Runtime~ 6 minutes
IndustryStrategy
  1. 1

    Describe the task

    Cascade takes a single decision, described in plain English, and maps what happens next. Six specialist agents fan out from your event, each tracing a different domain of consequence: economic, social, technological, political, legal, and environmental. What comes back is a navigable tree you can expand branch by branch, three moves deep by default.

    The sharper your framing, the sharper the tree. Tell Cascade exactly what changes, who it touches first, and how deep to go, and every branch stays anchored to that event instead of drifting into generic what-ifs.

    Map the consequences of raising our Pro plan from $49 to $79/month, effective next quarter. Trace out to third-order effects across: - Existing customers (churn risk, downgrade to Starter, support tickets) - New signups (conversion drop, price-anchoring on the free tier) - Competitors (whether they follow or hold, and how sales positions against it) - Revenue (net effect after expected churn, month by month for two quarters) Flag the highest-risk branch at each depth and say what would have to be true for it to break bad. End with the three consequences leadership is most likely to overlook.

  2. 2

    Give Cascade context

    Point Cascade at the decision and the context it lives in, your current pricing, a rough sense of segment sizes, and any past change you can compare against. With that grounding, the branches stay specific to your business instead of describing pricing changes in the abstract.

    The single most useful input is a prior change to anchor against. If Cascade knows how your customers reacted the last time you touched price, it weights the churn and downgrade branches against real behaviour rather than a generic elasticity guess.

    Required context
    A plain-English description of the event, what changes, by how much, and when it takes effect
    Current-state context, present pricing or policy, and rough segment sizes the change touches
    Optional context
    A prior comparable change and how customers reacted, sharpens the churn and downgrade branches
    A depth setting, go deeper than three levels on the branches you care most about
    A decision deadline, so the tree highlights the consequences that would land first
    current-pricing.csvsegment-sizes.xlsxlast-price-change-notes.pdf
  3. 3

    What Cascade creates

    Cascade streams the tree as it builds, so you watch branches open in real time. The finished output is a navigable, depth-3 consequence tree, every node a specific downstream effect with the highest-risk path flagged at each level, plus a short list of the consequences most teams miss.

    From Cascade: Mapped consequences of the $49 → $79 Pro price change, three orders deep across four branches.

    68Consequence nodes mapped
    3rdOrder depth reached
    4High-risk paths flagged
    Highest-risk branches4 paths
    BranchDepthConsequenceBreaks bad if
    Existing customers3rdStarter downgrades trigger a support surge that swamps the queueMore than 12% of Pro accounts downgrade in the first month
    Competitor response2ndMeadowlark holds price and runs a “we didn’t raise ours” campaignThey ship the campaign before our renewal cohort locks in
    New signups3rdFree-tier anchoring drops Pro conversion below the new revenue break-evenConversion falls more than 4 points and stays there past Q2
    Most-overlooked consequences3 items
    ConsequenceOrderWhy it gets missed
    Annual contracts renew at the old price for up to 11 months2ndRevenue lift is delayed, not immediate, easy to over-forecast
    Sales loses the “cheapest in category” talk track3rdShows up in win rates a quarter later, not on the pricing page

    "The existing-customer branch is the one to watch, it stays green unless downgrades pass 12% in month one, then it cascades into the support queue. Want me to expand that path to fourth order, or model the revenue branch month by month first?"

  4. 4

    Follow-up prompts

    Expand the highest-risk branch one level deeper

    Cascade defaults to three orders, but any single branch can go further. Push the flagged path to fourth order to see where the support-queue surge actually lands.

    Expand the existing-customer branch to fourth-order effects. Focus on what the support-queue surge does to response times, CSAT, and the renewal cohort right behind it.

    Model the revenue branch month by month

    Turn the revenue node into a timeline so leadership sees when the price change is actually net-positive after churn and delayed annual renewals.

    Take the revenue branch and model it month by month for two quarters. Net the expected churn and downgrades against the higher price, and show the month the change turns net-positive.

    Pull an exec-ready summary

    Cascade lays out the navigable tree and the overlooked-consequences list on one screen, so you can walk the exec team through the highest-risk branches straight from the canvas.

    Give me an exec-ready summary of this tree: the four high-risk branches at the top, then the three most-overlooked consequences, each with its probability and the source it is based on.

  5. 5

    Tips and troubleshooting

    Name the numbers, not just the direction

    “Raise the price” fans out into vague branches. “$49 → $79, effective next quarter, on the Pro plan” lets Cascade weight churn and conversion against a real delta, and the tree comes back specific instead of hypothetical.

    Depth-3 is a default, not a ceiling

    Every branch stops at three orders unless you ask for more. If one path clearly matters most, tell Cascade to go deeper there rather than expanding the whole tree, you get detail where it counts without drowning in nodes.

    Give it a past change to anchor against

    Cascade reasons better from precedent than from theory. Even rough notes on how customers reacted the last time you moved price sharpen the churn and downgrade branches more than any elasticity assumption.

  6. Ready to try it yourself?

    Describe the change in a sentence, and walk into the review already knowing what breaks three moves out.

    Run Cascade