Product Marketing Context

Product Marketing Context (The Brain)

Stop re-explaining your company, your buyer, and your competitors to every tool you use. Answer these questions once, in about 15 minutes, and every other skill in this stack reads the answers automatically instead of asking again.

Trigger

• When: Building the GTM brain for the first time, editing a section, or running a health audit on the existing brain.
• Not for: Any skill that reads the brain rather than builds it — every brain-dependent skill in this stack routes here first if the brain is missing, then uses its own Trigger. This skill has no downstream overlap since it is upstream of everything else.
• Example prompts:
  • "Build my brain"
  • "Set up my GTM foundation"
  • "Audit my brain"
  • "Update my ICP"
  • "Check brain health"

Inputs

• Args: None required — the wizard (Step 2) asks one question at a time. A pitch deck, pricing page, or win/loss doc pasted in advance speeds this up but isn't required.
• Defaults: No brain found → start the wizard from Section 1. Brain exists → load silently and offer [View current] [Edit a section] [Run health audit].
• Context keys:
  • /foundation/brain.md — read if it exists (load silently, skip answered sections); written to, section by section, only after user confirmation.
  • .agents/*.md, .claude/*.md — optional legacy files; offered for migration if found.
  • Brain contract: Reads all 6 sections if present. Writes: any section, but only after explicit user confirmation of the exact before/after (Operating Rule 1).

Pre-flight

• Check /foundation/brain.md — see Step 1 (Detect Brain State).
• Check for legacy files (.agents/*.md, .claude/*.md) and offer migration if found.
• No hard block: this skill is the entry point for users with no brain at all.

How It Works

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    PRODUCT MARKETING CONTEXT                     │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  ALWAYS (works standalone)                                       │
│  ✓ You tell me: product, ICP, alternatives, voice, market,      │
│    proof points — one section at a time                         │
│  ✓ Output: /foundation/brain.md, confirmed section by section   │
│  ✓ Pushes back on vague answers before storing them             │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  SUPERCHARGED (when you connect your tools)                      │
│  + Docs/Drive: pulls company overview and product facts          │
│  + CRM: pulls win/loss reasons and deal data to sharpen ICP      │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Getting Started

When you run this skill, I'll check for an existing brain first:

No brain yet:

• I'll ask for what I need, one section at a time — product, ICP, alternatives, voice, market, proof points
• You confirm each section before I save it

Brain exists:

• I load it silently and skip anything already answered
• Choose: [View current] [Edit a section] [Run health audit]

Helpful if you have it:

• A pitch deck, pricing page, or win/loss doc you can paste in
• Prior positioning or ICP notes, even rough ones

Connectors (Optional)

Connect your tools to supercharge this skill:

No connectors? No problem. Paste what you have — a deck excerpt, a pricing page, a win/loss doc — and I'll work from that.

Output Format

# Brain Update: [Section Name]

## What Changed
[Old value → New value, or "New — first time this section is filled"]

## Section Status
[Confirmed / Needs another pass — specific gap noted]

## Health Score (if audit was run)
| Section | Score | Status |
|---------|-------|--------|
| Product Context | X/100 | ... |
| ICP | X/100 | ... |
| Alternatives & Positioning | X/100 | ... |
| Voice & Tone | X/100 | ... |
| Market Context | X/100 | ... |
| Proof Points | X/100 | ... |

## Next Step
[One sentence — what to run or fix next]

---
_Brain update proposed: [Yes — exact section and field / No — audit or view only]_

Steps

Step 1: Detect Brain State

Check for /foundation/brain.md.

• Missing: Explain in one line what the brain does, then start the wizard from Section 1.
• Exists: Load all sections silently. Offer: [View current] [Edit a section] [Run health audit].
• Legacy files found (.agents/*.md, .claude/*.md): offer to migrate, showing each extracted value before writing anything.

Step 2: Run the Wizard

Ask one question at a time. After each section, show the collected answers and ask "Look good? (yes / edit / skip)." Push back on vague answers before storing them — "small businesses" is not a company size, "everyone" is not an ICP.

1. Product Context — product name; 2-3 sentence description (problem, not features); stage (pre-launch/launch/growth/scale); target market; value proposition ("[Product] helps [market] to __ so they can __")
2. ICP Definition — company size; industry/vertical; geography; primary persona (title + role); economic buyer; champion profile; top 3 pain points; buying trigger
3. Alternatives & Positioning — top 3 named alternatives (products buyers actually compare you to, not "competitors" in the abstract); status quo if they buy nothing; why they leave alternatives for you; your unique capabilities; category; market type (existing/new/resegmented)
4. Voice & Tone — 3-5 voice attributes; tone shifts by persona; language preferences ("we say X not Y"); forbidden phrases; one paragraph of copy that sounds like you
5. Market Context — market maturity; macro forces making this relevant now; "buyers need this now because __"; the 2-3 sentence market narrative
6. Proof Points Registry — approved metrics with sources; customer quotes/case study results; forbidden claims

Step 3: Write the Brain File

Once a section is confirmed, write it to /foundation/brain.md using the template at templates/brain-template.md. Write section by section, not in one batch — a mid-wizard exit should still leave a partial, usable brain plus a .brain-draft.md marker noting which section to resume from.

Step 4: Health Audit (Run Standalone or After Edits)

Score each of the 6 sections 0-100 on: does the field exist, and is it specific rather than generic (named alternatives not "competitors," numbers not "high," a real persona not "businesses"). Report strengths (80+), needs improvement (50-79), and critical gaps (<50), with one concrete fix per gap. Offer to jump straight into editing the weakest section.

Step 5: Route to What's Next

After any completed setup, edit, or audit, tell the user plainly that the brain is ready and other skills in the stack will read from it automatically. Do not name a specific downstream skill unless you have verified, in this session, that it reads this brain's real section structure correctly — an unverified skill name is a broken promise.

Outputs

• Files written: /foundation/brain.md — written section by section, only after user confirmation (Step 3). .brain-draft.md — a resume marker left behind if the wizard exits mid-session.
• Chat output format: The Output Format template above — Brain Update header, What Changed, Section Status, Health Score if an audit ran, Next Step.
• External side effects: None beyond the files above.

Verification

• Brain state checked (existing vs missing vs legacy) before any question is asked (Step 1).
• No section written to /foundation/brain.md without the user confirming the exact before/after (Step 3).
• Vague answers challenged inline, not silently accepted (Step 2).
• Health audit, when run, scores all 6 sections and names a concrete fix for every gap under 50 (Step 4).
• Downstream skill names mentioned only if their write-back to this brain has been verified correct this session (Step 5).

Do Not Use For

• n.v.t. — this skill is upstream of everything else in this stack; overlap was considered and there is none.

Quality Gate

Operating Rules

1. Never write to brain.md without user confirmation. Every write is shown as an exact before/after and requires a yes.
2. Never re-ask what the brain already knows. Load existing sections silently and skip any question already answered.
3. Push back on vague answers inline. "We sell to businesses" gets "what size, industry, role?" before it's accepted, not after.
4. Don't name a downstream skill unless its write-back is verified correct. A routing suggestion that writes to the wrong section is worse than no suggestion.

This skill is upstream of everything else in this stack — it doesn't need a Related Skills section pointing out to its dependents. Every other skill that reads or writes /foundation/brain.md should name this skill and its exact section numbers in its own file instead.