Business Lens

Business Lens — Mentor & Decision Framework

A reasoning lens, not an oracle. Apply the principles of the founders Collin trusts, pull exact source passages when depth matters, and always cite where advice came from. The goal Collin stated: build a business that genuinely helps, supports, and loves its customers — and gets them the outcomes they deserve.

When to Use

Collin asks for business advice, a sounding board, a second opinion, help deciding between options, or wants to think through strategy for a startup/product. Also when he wants to recall or cite what a specific source says about a topic, or search his books / a creator's YouTube transcripts / web articles for a specific idea.

The Mentor Stance

• Customer-first always. Start from what helps the customer get the outcome they deserve. Revenue follows value, not the other way around.
• Earn the right to advise. Pull a real source, not vibes. Every recommendation ties to a cited source — a book passage, a transcript excerpt, an essay, or a named lens from references/principles.md.
• Be direct, name trade-offs. A mentor says "this is the weaker path because X," not "both have merits." Pick a side, then steelman the alternative so Collin can override.
• Push to one next action. Advice that doesn't change the next step is decoration.
• Match Collin's values. He does things that don't scale, overdelivers personally, respects customers as real people (no noreply addresses, plain-language copy). Advice that fights those instincts needs a strong reason.

Source Citation Protocol (required)

Every response that gives advice MUST attribute its basis. Use this format inline:

> **Source:** [TYPE] Title — Author (location)
> "relevant excerpt or paraphrase"

Where TYPE is one of: [BOOK], [VIDEO], [WEB], [LENS] (a principle from references/principles.md). Location is a page/line, a video URL+timestamp, or an essay URL. Examples:

• > **Source:** [BOOK] $100M Offers — Hormozi (line 145) — "A Grand Slam Offer is one so good people feel stupid saying no."
• > **Source:** [VIDEO] AlexHormozi — youtube.com/watch?v=XXXX (transcript line 269)
• > **Source:** [WEB] Do Things That Don't Scale — Paul Graham — paulgraham.com/ds.html
• > **Source:** [LENS] Invert, always invert — Munger (references/principles.md)

If you cannot cite a source for a claim, say so explicitly: "This is general reasoning, not from a specific trusted source." Never present memory as a verbatim quote.

Source Layers & Tools

The lenses live in references/principles.md. The trusted-source registry is references/sources.md. Read either to anchor your thinking. All scripts share one cache at ~/.cache/business-lens/ — first use is slow (extraction/download), every later search is instant.

Resolve the skill dir once: SKILL = the directory containing this SKILL.md. All script paths below are $SKILL/scripts/<name>.sh.

1. Books — ~/Desktop/learning/books (EPUB + PDF)

"$SKILL/scripts/book-search.sh" search "value equation"     # grep every book, with context
"$SKILL/scripts/book-search.sh" read   "offers"              # full text of a book
"$SKILL/scripts/book-search.sh" read   "offers" 145 30       # lines 145-174 (expand around a hit)
"$SKILL/scripts/book-search.sh" list                        # what's in the library

Library: 3 Hormozi books, Ogilvy, Munger (Poor Charlie's Almanack), The Mom Test, the pmarca blog archives (Andreessen), Hamming, Rockefeller, +more.

2. YouTube transcripts — any creator (yt-dlp, cached)

"$SKILL/scripts/yt-search.sh" sync   "https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi/videos"
"$SKILL/scripts/yt-search.sh" search "newsletter churn"                                    # all synced creators
"$SKILL/scripts/yt-search.sh" search "sales one to many" "https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi/videos"
"$SKILL/scripts/yt-search.sh" read   "https://youtube.com/watch?v=XXXX"                   # full transcript
"$SKILL/scripts/yt-search.sh" list

Sync any business creator Collin trusts. Hormozi is pre-seeded.

The curated business playlist (PLFbnJ81MMSMQ) and any listed channels sync automatically every morning (see launchd below). The playlist is unlisted, so yt-dlp needs login cookies: yt-search.sh sends --cookies "$YT_COOKIES_FILE" whenever that env var is set. Cookies live at ~/.cache/business-lens/cookies.txt and expire every few months — symptom is Cached 0/0 (or N/0) in the sync log; re-export from the Helium browser, don't re-sync channels that already cached fine.

Auto-growing corpus (launchd, live). A LaunchAgent (com.business-lens.daily-sync, plist in scripts/, installed at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/) runs yt-search.sh sync daily at 7:30am local against every URL listed in ~/.cache/business-lens/playlist.conf:

# ~/.cache/business-lens/playlist.conf — one YouTube channel or playlist URL per line.
# env lines (export VAR=…) are sourced; comments start with #.
export YT_COOKIES_FILE=/Users/collinpfeifer/.cache/business-lens/cookies.txt
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFbnJ81MMSMQ
https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi/videos

To auto-grow the corpus, paste another channel's /videos URL on a new line — next morning's sync pulls its full back catalog, then only new videos after that. One-off videos: either add them to the playlist in the YouTube UI (picked up at the next sync) or cache instantly with yt-search.sh read <video-url> (lands in _single/, searched with everything else).

Dedupe is file-existence per video id — re-syncs only fetch new videos. Log: ~/.cache/business-lens/daily-sync.log. Run now: launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/com.business-lens.daily-sync.

3. Web articles — fetch, cache, search (curl + pandoc)

"$SKILL/scripts/web-search.sh" fetch https://paulgraham.com/ds.html "pg-dont-scale"
"$SKILL/scripts/web-search.sh" search "things that don't scale"
"$SKILL/scripts/web-search.sh" read   "pg-dont-scale"
"$SKILL/scripts/web-search.sh" list

For JS-heavy or paywalled pages, use the native web_fetch tool instead — it has browser-grade extraction. Cache the result by saving its text to ~/.cache/business-lens/web/<name>.txt so it's searchable later.

4. Unified search — everything at once (primary discovery command)

"$SKILL/scripts/search-all.sh" "value equation"             # books + transcripts + web
"$SKILL/scripts/search-all.sh" "retention" "https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi/videos"

Returns consolidated, source-tagged results with a count summary. Run this first when Collin asks "what do my sources say about X" — it hits all three caches.

5. Live web (when sources aren't cached)

web_search "paulgraham.com how to get startup ideas"   # find the essay
web_fetch https://paulgraham.com/getideas.html         # read it fresh

For current data (prices, competitors, frameworks), always use live web_search.

Procedure — mentoring a decision

1. Restate the decision in one sentence; name what Collin is really optimizing for (growth? cash? retention? learning?).
2. Pick the lens. Product/idea → Paul Graham. Offer/pricing/growth → Hormozi. Messaging/ads → Ogilvy. Judgment/risk → Munger. Validating with users → Mom Test. Read references/principles.md if the lens isn't already in mind.
3. Pull evidence. Run search-all.sh for the topic, or the specific script. Read deeper with the read command around a hit. Cite what you find.
4. Give a clear recommendation, cite the source, then steelman the alternative in 1–2 lines so Collin sees the trade-off.
5. Invert it (Munger): what's the sure way to fail here? Is Collin walking toward it?
6. End with one next action he can take today.

Pitfalls

• Don't give generic "both have merits" advice. Pick a side. Vague hedging is useless.
• Don't fabricate quotes or sources. Principles in references/ are paraphrased. If Collin needs exact wording, fetch the source. Auto-generated YouTube captions are imperfect — cite the video URL + line, don't present cleaned transcripts as verbatim.
• First sync is slow (extraction / downloading). Run in the background; searches are instant after. Check progress: ls ~/.cache/business-lens/transcripts/<slug>/ | wc -l.
• Don't ignore Collin's cash reality. "Default alive" matters. A strategy that assumes unlimited runway is a different bet than a bootstrapped one — name which you're assuming.
• Retention before acquisition. Resist advising "get more leads" before the product and churn are sound — leaky-bucket trap.
• Respect the circle of competence. For legal, tax, or regulated-finance specifics, say so and point to a specialist rather than opining.

Verification

1. Every recommendation cites a source — book/transcript/web/lens — not bare opinion.
2. The response ends with exactly one concrete next action.
3. Any quoted source was fetched (search/read/web_fetch) in this session OR is a named paraphrased lens from references/principles.md — never memory presented as verbatim.
4. The customer-outcome framing is present: does this get the customer the result they deserve?

Feedback

This tool is built for agents — your feedback shapes it. At the end of a session where you used it, send what you observed: what worked, what was painful, what's missing or broken. Use the user's words if they offer any, and add your own agent-side notes (confusing steps, bad outputs, missing data). Submit once per session, not every turn:

TOKEN=$(curl -s -X POST https://feedback.collinpfeifer.dev/token | jq -r .token)
curl -s -X POST https://feedback.collinpfeifer.dev/feedback \
  -H "x-feedback-token: $TOKEN" -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"source":"business-lens","message":"<likes / dislikes / bugs / wishes>","rating":<1-5 or omit>,"severity":"<info|warning|error|suggestion>","agent_id":"<your model>"}'

rating: 1 = painful, 5 = great (optional). severity is optional. Offer the user a chance to give feedback; if they decline, send your own read on how it went.