Positioning Filter

Positioning Filter — lock your angle

Most people fail not because their offer is bad but because it's indistinct. This skill forces a single, defensible angle through three questions and a cut test, then saves a positioning statement and a one-line differentiator the user can reuse across their bio, content, and pitch.

Personalization

This skill works in your brand voice. Before running, load the brand profile at ~/.claude/brand-profile.md.

• If it doesn't exist, run the personalize skill first (or just tell me your name, niche, offer, and audience — I'll create it).
• If a field this skill needs is blank, I'll ask one or two quick questions and save the answers back to the profile so you only answer once.
• Never invent facts or results about the user — use only what's in the profile, or ask.

Steps

1. Question 1 — What's my unique angle?

Pull the user's What-you-do, Audience, and Proof from the profile, then ask them to finish these until one feels sharp and true:

• "Everyone in my niche says ___. I say ___ instead."
• "The thing I do differently is ___."
• "My unfair advantage / weird background is ___." (their past job, their own transformation, a method they use, a specific audience they get deeply). Push for a contrast — an angle only earns attention when it pushes against the default advice. Write the strongest candidate down.

2. Question 2 — Why would my audience care?

An angle is only positioning if the audience feels it. Translate the angle into the audience's language using the profile's Main-pain:

• "For [audience] who are tired of [the common approach], I [angle] so they can [outcome]."
• Pressure-test: does this hit a pain they'd say out loud? If it's clever but they wouldn't nod, it's a slogan, not positioning. Rewrite until it lands on a real pain.

3. Question 3 — How does it ladder to my offer?

The angle has to point at what they sell, or it's just personality. Connect them:

• "My angle naturally leads someone to want [offer] because ___."
• If the angle attracts an audience that would never buy the offer, it's the wrong angle — flag that and adjust.

4. The "what to cut" test

Positioning is defined as much by what you refuse to be. Run these cuts:

• Cut the audience: who is this explicitly NOT for? Name them. Repelling the wrong people sharpens the pull on the right ones.
• Cut the topics: list 2–3 things in the niche the user will deliberately NOT talk about, so they own a lane instead of covering everything.
• Cut the hedges: strip "I also do X, and Y, and Z." One spearpoint beats five. Write down what got cut — it's proof the positioning is specific.

5. Assemble the positioning statement + one-liner

Write a short positioning statement in this shape:

"I help [specific audience] [achieve outcome] by [unique angle/method], without [the thing they dread]. Unlike [the default in the niche], I [differentiator]."

Then compress it into a single reusable differentiator line for their bio/hook, e.g. "The [outcome] guy for [audience] who hate [common approach]." Keep both in the user's tone and banned/loved words.

Output — save it

Write the result to ~/offers/positioning.md (create ~/offers/ if needed). Include: the chosen angle, the audience-facing "why they care" line, the offer ladder link, the cut list (who/what it's NOT), the full positioning statement, and the one-line differentiator. Confirm the path and tell the user they can paste the one-liner into their bio and reuse the statement on any sales page.

Example (input → output)

Input: User teaches non-technical people to build software with AI tools. Niche is flooded with "learn to code" and "AI hacks" content.

Output (saved to ~/offers/positioning.md):

• Angle: "Everyone says learn to code. I say you don't need to — you need to build one real thing people pay for."
• Why they care: "For career-changers who are tired of tutorials that go nowhere, I get you to a working, sellable product, not a certificate."
• Ladders to offer: points straight at the "build your first paid product" program.
• Cut: not for professional developers; won't cover algorithms, whiteboard interviews, or which framework is best.
• Positioning statement: "I help non-technical career-changers build and sell their first software product using AI, without learning to code the hard way. Unlike coding bootcamps, I optimize for a paying customer, not a portfolio."
• One-liner: "The 'skip the bootcamp, build the product' guy for non-technical builders."

Notes / edge cases

• If the user gives three different angles, make them pick ONE to lock now; they can test others later. Diffuse positioning is the failure mode.
• Generalize from the user's own story and audience — never borrow another creator's angle wholesale.
• If the angle doesn't ladder to any offer they have, that's a signal to fix the offer (hand off to offer-builder) or the angle, not to ship it as-is.