Positioning

Positioning

The marketing equivalent of declaring taste: no message gets written before the position is decided. Produce a POSITIONING.md that commits to a point of view — the thing generic marketing refuses to do.

Read TASTE.md and CLAUDE.md first, and BRAND.md if the design department is active (voice lives there — don't redefine it). If TASTE.md is missing, run the taste-layer skill before this one. (Check for and open these with your Read/Glob tools, not shell commands — OS portability.)

What POSITIONING.md must decide

Every line is a commitment, not a hedge. "Everyone / anything / the best solution" is a non-answer — reject it.

• Who it's for — and who it's NOT for. Naming the excluded audience is what makes the position real.
• The one thing it's best at. A single sharp claim, not a feature list.
• The enemy. The status quo, alternative, or habit it displaces. Position is defined against something.
• The core message. One sentence a real person would say — no jargon, no superlative.
• Proof. Why the claim is credible: a mechanism, a number, a demonstrable fact. A claim without proof is slop.
• Voice. One line, or a pointer to BRAND.md. How this brand sounds and how it refuses to sound.
• Banned for this product. The specific clichés this project must never use (see the anti-slop list below, plus any category-specific ones).

Rules

• Commit, don't cover. One position, chosen. Trying to appeal to everyone is the definition of marketing slop.
• Concrete over abstract. "Cuts invoice time from 3 days to 20 minutes," never "streamlines your workflow."
• Earn every claim. No superlative without proof attached in the same breath.
• Sound like a person. If a human wouldn't say it out loud, it doesn't go in.

Anti-slop banned phrases (baseline)

"Elevate / unlock / supercharge / revolutionize / seamless / game-changer / cutting-edge / in today's fast-paced world / take it to the next level / one-stop solution / empower your..." — and any empty superlative. Extend the list per project.

Output

Write POSITIONING.md at project root. Short and declarative — read at the start of every marketing session and by marketing-critic on every deliverable. Link it from CLAUDE.md.

Before calling it done

There's a named audience it's NOT for, a named enemy, and every claim has proof beside it. If it reads like it could describe any product in the category, redo it.