Pipeline

Pipeline

A pipeline's job is not to make you feel good about your forecast. Its job is to tell you the truth.

Pipeline is a truth-enforcing control skill for active sales opportunities.

Use this skill when you need to:

• identify which deals are truly advancing vs sitting idle
• detect stalled or fake-active opportunities
• enforce stage discipline
• surface the few deals that need attention this week
• improve forecast accuracy by cleaning pipeline pollution
• turn a messy deal list into a pipeline you can actually trust

This skill does NOT:

• find new targets (use @dpetcr/prospect)
• qualify a single engaged contact from scratch (use @AGIstack/lead)
• write or structure formal proposals (use @dpetcr/proposal)
• redesign your full sales process from zero

Pipeline vs Lead

These skills handle different layers of the sales process.

Typical flow:

1. @dpetcr/prospect filters who is worth pursuing
2. outreach happens
3. @AGIstack/lead judges engaged opportunities
4. Pipeline manages the whole active book
5. @dpetcr/proposal supports formal closing progression

Use Lead for one opportunity.
Use Pipeline for the full active system.

What This Skill Does

Pipeline helps:

• identify stalled deals
• detect stage pollution
• find unsupported forecast optimism
• surface which deals need action now
• spot weak next-step discipline
• reveal where the pipeline is unhealthy
• recommend clean-up actions that improve control

Pipeline is not a design lecture.
It is an operating view for active opportunities.

What to Provide

Useful input includes:

• deal or account name
• current stage
• owner
• last activity date
• next scheduled step
• expected close timing
• deal size or value
• blockers or risks
• notes from recent conversations

The more concrete the pipeline data, the more reliable the diagnosis.

Standard Output Format

PIPELINE HEALTH
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Status: [Healthy / Warning / Critical / Broken]

BREAKDOWN
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Hygiene: [Strong / Weak] — [one-line reason]
Stagnation: [Low / Medium / High] — [one-line reason]
Balance: [Healthy / Uneven] — [one-line reason]
Forecast Credibility: [High / Medium / Low] — [one-line reason]

TOP 5 TO ACT ON NOW
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. [Deal] — [why it matters now]
2. [Deal] — [why it matters now]
3. [Deal] — [why it matters now]
4. [Deal] — [why it matters now]
5. [Deal] — [why it matters now]

STALLED / FALSE-ACTIVE DEALS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• [Deal] — [days inactive] — [why it no longer looks truly active]
• [Deal] — [days inactive] — [why it no longer looks truly active]

STAGE RISKS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• [Stage] is accumulating stalled deals
• [Deal] appears over-advanced for the evidence available
• [Deal] has no credible next step
• [Forecast] is inflated by weak late-stage deals

IMMEDIATE ACTIONS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. [Action]
2. [Action]
3. [Action]

WORKS WELL WITH
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• @dpetcr/prospect for pre-contact filtering
• @AGIstack/lead for single-opportunity judgment
• @dpetcr/proposal for formal deal progression

If user provides a small pipeline, include deal-by-deal detail.
If user provides a large pipeline, summarize first, then expand only the top-risk and top-opportunity deals.

Core Truth Principles

• A deal without a real next step is weaker than it appears.
• A stage name means nothing without stage evidence.
• A stale deal is not active just because it still exists in CRM.
• Forecast quality comes from honesty, not optimism.
• Pipeline control is about truth, not comfort.

Heuristic Health Assessment

When user asks about overall pipeline health, assess these dimensions:

Hygiene

Look for:

• deals with no recent activity
• vague or missing next steps
• close dates that look arbitrary
• old deals still sitting in active stages

Stagnation

Look for:

• stages where deals enter but rarely exit
• deals aging without visible movement
• repeated follow-up with no real progression
• “still alive” deals that show no buying behavior

Balance

Look for:

• too much weight in early stages
• too many late-stage deals with weak evidence
• weak pipeline replenishment
• an unhealthy mix of deal age and stage position

Forecast Credibility

Look for:

• close dates unsupported by current behavior
• advanced-stage deals lacking stakeholder movement
• proposal/late-stage deals with no scheduled next step
• pipeline value that depends on fake-active deals

Use these dimensions as judgment aids, not fake precision.

Review Routes

Use these default routes:

Advance

• deal has momentum
• stage evidence is real
• next step is clear

Recover

• deal may still be viable
• momentum has weakened
• action is needed quickly

Watch

• deal is not dead, but not worth heavy effort this week

Downgrade

• stage is too optimistic for the evidence
• move deal back to a more honest stage

Close Out

• no credible momentum remains
• remove from active forecast and stop pretending

When to Use Pipeline

Use this skill when:

• you want to review the health of an active deal book
• you need to find stalled or fake-active deals
• you want to know what deserves attention this week
• you need a more honest forecast view
• you need to clean up stage discipline

Do not use this skill when:

• you are still selecting targets before contact (@dpetcr/prospect)
• you are judging one engaged opportunity (@AGIstack/lead)
• you need proposal help (@dpetcr/proposal)
• you need broad sales-process consulting rather than pipeline control

Execution Protocol (for AI agents)

When user provides pipeline data, follow this sequence:

Step 1: Parse Pipeline

Extract:

• deal names
• stages
• owners
• last activity
• next steps
• values
• expected close timing
• blockers

Step 2: Detect False Activity

Identify deals that look active in name only:

• no recent activity
• no real next step
• late stage without supporting evidence
• close date based on hope rather than movement

Step 3: Assess Health

Review:

• Hygiene
• Stagnation
• Balance
• Forecast Credibility

Step 4: Surface Top 5

Pick the 5 deals that most deserve attention now:

• biggest upside with real recoverability
• biggest forecast risk
• biggest stage-discipline issue
• biggest next-step urgency

Step 5: Assign Route

For each key deal, recommend:

• Advance
• Recover
• Watch
• Downgrade
• Close Out

Step 6: Produce Actions

Return:

• overall pipeline status
• main risks
• top 5 priorities
• concrete actions for this week

Step 7: Handoff When Needed

If a deal needs one-opportunity judgment, suggest @AGIstack/lead.
If a deal is ready for formal closing progression, suggest @dpetcr/proposal.
If user is still filtering targets before contact, suggest @dpetcr/prospect.

Activation Rules (for AI agents)

Use this skill when the user asks about:

• pipeline health
• stalled deals
• forecast reliability
• stage discipline
• deal-book review
• what needs attention across many active opportunities

Do NOT use this skill when:

• the task is pre-contact filtering
• the task is single-lead qualification
• the task is proposal writing
• the task is a non-sales workflow unless explicitly reframed into active opportunity control

Ambiguous cases

If pipeline is mentioned but the user may mean a general workflow, ask: "Are you asking about a sales opportunity pipeline, or a different kind of process?"

Proceed as Pipeline only if the context is active opportunities and stage control.

Quality Check Before Delivering

• Health status is clear
• False-active deals are identified
• Top 5 priorities are justified
• Stage risks are explicit
• Forecast credibility is addressed
• Actions are concrete
• Handoffs to related skills are used when helpful

Boundaries

This skill supports active opportunity control for sales pipelines.

It does not replace:

• legal or compliance review
• finance approval logic
• CRM administration
• hiring, onboarding, or delivery workflow design
• ethical judgment about forecast reporting

Adapt outputs to your actual sales motion, stage definitions, and operating rules.