@rubytech/create-maxy-code 0.1.110 → 0.1.112

package/payload/premium-plugins/venture-studio/skills/brand-pack/SKILL.md

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ Before generating anything, gather the following. Ask all questions in a single
 - Website URL (fetch it if provided — extract existing colors, fonts, tone)
 - Inspiration brands (brands they admire aesthetically)
 
-If the user provides a URL, use the fetch tool to read it and extract: dominant colors (check CSS or visual description), font choices, tone of copy, and any existing brand signals. Pre-fill your recommendations based on this research.
+If the user provides a URL — their own site, a competitor brand, or an inspiration brand — dispatch the `research-assistant` specialist (with `deep-research` for site copy + visual scan, `WebFetch` available through the specialist) rather than calling `fetch` or `WebFetch` directly from this skill. The specialist returns: dominant colors (CSS or visual description), font choices, tone of copy, and any existing brand signals. Pre-fill your recommendations from the specialist's structured findings.
 
 ---
 

package/payload/premium-plugins/venture-studio/skills/investor-data-room/SKILL.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ---
 name: investor-data-room
-description: Use when a UK-domiciled founder needs to produce a full seed-raise pack from idea to deliverables: graph-structured data room, 15-section business plan, persuasive prospectus + formal term sheet (with FCA self-certification appendices), 12-slide deck blueprint, print-ready HTML+PDF for each. Trigger phrases include "build me a data room", "draft a business plan", "deck from the business plan", "draft an investment prospectus", "generate a term sheet", "from office hours to investor pack", "set up the fundraise repo". The skill never speculates on financial figures or cap-table values: every number traces to a Companies House filing, a financial model worksheet, or a source citation. Public-facing artefacts contain zero internal workings (no "reconciliation pending", no "open Q" markers, no comparison-to-baseline commentary). Design tokens are harmonised across business plan, prospectus, term sheet, and deck via the operator's project design-tokens spec.
+description: Use when a UK-domiciled founder needs to produce a full seed-raise pack from idea to deliverables: graph-structured data room, 16-section business plan, persuasive prospectus + formal term sheet (with FCA self-certification appendices), 13-slide deck blueprint, print-ready HTML+PDF for each. Trigger phrases include "build me a data room", "draft a business plan", "deck from the business plan", "draft an investment prospectus", "generate a term sheet", "from office hours to investor pack", "set up the fundraise repo". The skill never speculates on financial figures or cap-table values: every number traces to a Companies House filing, a financial model worksheet, or a source citation. Public-facing artefacts contain zero internal workings (no "reconciliation pending", no "open Q" markers, no comparison-to-baseline commentary). Design tokens are harmonised across business plan, prospectus, term sheet, and deck via the operator's project design-tokens spec.
 allowed-tools:
   - Bash
   - Read
@@ -25,13 +25,15 @@ Complete when the data room contains:
   README.md                                 # data-room index, status snapshot, doctrine
   01-narrative/
     office-hours-design.md                  # ideation working scratchpad
-    business-plan.md                        # 15-section business plan
-    deck-blueprint.md                       # 12-slide blueprint
+    business-plan.md                        # 16-section business plan
+    deck-blueprint.md                       # 13-slide blueprint
+    exit-thesis.md                          # named acquirers + recent exit comparables
   02-corporate-legal/
     README.md                               # incorporation filings, articles, board minutes
     incorporation-<co-house-no>-<date>.pdf  # IN01 + statement of capital + cap table
   03-cap-table/
     README.md                               # pre/post-investment cap table with PSC notes
+    comparables.md                          # recent comparable rounds (company / pre-money / post-money / multiple / source) cited by the term-sheet valuation
   04-financials/
     README.md
     model_worksheet.md                      # opening cash, capex, burn, MRR ramp, two-round
@@ -78,7 +80,9 @@ Skip stages that are already complete; do not regenerate stale artefacts blindly
 
 ## Stage 1 — Office-hours ideation
 
-Drive a conversational discovery session using the sibling `office-hours` skill. Output a single `office-hours-design.md` capturing:
+Drive a conversational discovery session using the sibling `office-hours` skill. Market sizing and competitor recon during discovery dispatch the `research-assistant` specialist with `deep-research` + `data-research` rather than calling `WebSearch` directly — every market figure that ends up in `08-market/sources.md` must trace to a structured-research citation.
+
+Output a single `office-hours-design.md` capturing:
 
 - Problem statement
 - Demand evidence (with numbers and dates)
@@ -113,22 +117,23 @@ References: `references/data-room-structure.md` for the section-by-section purpo
 
 ## Stage 3 — Business plan synthesis
 
-Generate `01-narrative/business-plan.md` with **15 sections** following the canonical structure:
+Generate `01-narrative/business-plan.md` with **16 sections** following the canonical structure:
 
 1. Executive Summary
 2. Vision and Mission (Vision / Mission / Doctrine triad)
 3. The Company (legal entity table + pre-investment cap table)
-4. The Market (TAM/SAM/SOM + structural tailwind + self-employed wedge + domestic adjacency + international upside + pricing)
+4. The Market (TAM/SAM/SOM bottoms-up with geography-tier floor + CAGR with citation + 3-yr market-expansion thesis + market-share trajectory to 3–8% SAM in 5 yrs + structural tailwind + self-employed wedge + domestic adjacency + international upside + pricing)
 5. The Product (what it is + wedge product + upsell path + substrate moat + conversation ingestion + network + Anthropic asymmetric capture + human-services layer)
-6. The Business Model (revenue streams + unit economics)
+6. The Business Model (revenue streams + unit economics — ACV, CAC, LTV, **LTV:CAC**, gross margin, **burn multiple**, churn — each a named line)
 7. Go-to-Market (Wedge → Beachhead → Blitzscale framework + demand evidence + GTM partners + horse-before-cart logic + geography)
 8. Competition (three failing categories + RANL differentiation + most-direct-competitor counter)
 9. Operations (technology stack + data sovereignty + IP ownership chain + compliance posture summary)
 10. Compliance and regulatory positioning (UK consumer protection + UK data/AI regime + EU AI Act + adjacent UK obligations + moat-not-tax close)
 11. Team (founders + strategic shareholders + hiring plan)
-12. Financial Plan (12.1 opening balance sheet through 12.7 use of funds)
+12. Financial Plan (12.1 opening balance sheet through 12.7 use of funds; valuation per round cites `03-cap-table/comparables.md`)
 13. Risks and Mitigations
 14. Milestones (the N-month thesis)
+14b. Exit thesis (target exit value + 5–8-year horizon + exit routes — strategic / PE / IPO — + 3–5 named acquirers with one-line rationale each)
 15. The bottom line (summary table + close)
 + Appendices (titled documents only; no internal-only file pointers)
 
@@ -140,7 +145,14 @@ Generate `01-narrative/business-plan.md` with **15 sections** following the cano
 - **Financial figures derive from the model worksheet.** Cite "Appendix A" by title.
 - **No em-dashes between alphabetic words** in user-facing prose (recurring style violation in this project's history; see `references/internal-workings-scrub.md`).
 
-Compliance research is mandatory before drafting Section 10. WebSearch (or equivalent) for: DMCC Act (UK consumer protection for estate-agency), ICO ADM framework (Articles 22A–22D under UK GDPR + ICO 2025 strategy), EU AI Act (force date, high-risk classification for property-financing decisions). Cite each.
+**Research routing across Stage 3.** Every figure sourced from the wider world routes through the `research-assistant` specialist — never raw `WebSearch` / `WebFetch` from this skill:
+
+- **Section 4 (Market)** — TAM/SAM/SOM citations, CAGR sourcing, market-share trajectory baselines, competitor rebuttal facts: dispatch `research-assistant` with `data-research`.
+- **Section 10 (Compliance)** — DMCC Act (UK consumer protection for estate-agency), ICO ADM framework (Articles 22A–22D under UK GDPR + ICO 2025 strategy), EU AI Act (force date, high-risk classification for property-financing decisions): dispatch `research-assistant` with `academic-verify` to retrieve the primary regulatory texts. Cite each in the body.
+- **Section 12 (Financial — valuation comparables)** — recent comparable rounds that feed `03-cap-table/comparables.md`: dispatch `research-assistant` with `data-research`.
+- **Section 14b (Exit thesis)** — 3–5 named acquirers (strategic / PE / IPO) with one-line rationale each, plus recent comparable exits (company / acquirer / multiple / year / source) that feed the exit section of `03-cap-table/comparables.md`: dispatch `research-assistant` with `data-research`.
+
+The specialist returns structured findings; the skill quotes those findings verbatim into the relevant section and into `08-market/sources.md` / `03-cap-table/comparables.md`.
 
 References: `references/business-plan-template.md` for the section-by-section template; `references/compliance-research-checklist.md` for the UK + EU regulatory regimes to verify.
 
@@ -172,20 +184,21 @@ References: `references/termsheet-template.md`.
 
 ## Stage 4 — Deck blueprint synthesis
 
-Generate `01-narrative/deck-blueprint.md` as a **12-slide brief** the deck designer can execute. Each slide has Purpose, Headline (one-line message), Body (bullets + figures pulled from the business plan), Visual suggestion, and Source reference. The 12 slides:
+Generate `01-narrative/deck-blueprint.md` as a **13-slide brief** the deck designer can execute. Each slide has Purpose, Headline (one-line message), Body (bullets + figures pulled from the business plan), Visual suggestion, and Source reference. The 13 slides:
 
 1. Cover (raise headline + founders)
 2. Vision (Vision / Mission / Doctrine)
-3. The Market (TAM + tailwind + wedge)
+3. The Market (TAM + tailwind + wedge + **CAGR with citation**)
 4. Business Model (subscription + service layer + unit economics)
 5. Go-to-Market (Wedge → Beachhead → Blitzscale + named partners)
 6. The Product (substrate + wedge + network + asymmetric capture + services layer)
 7. Competition (three failing categories + most-direct counter)
 8. The Team (founders + strategic shareholders)
-9. Economics (P&L summary + cash flow + break-even)
+9. Economics (P&L summary + cash flow + break-even + **LTV:CAC and burn multiple**)
 10. The Raise (size, valuation, dilution, instrument, use of funds, IP transfer, follow-on round)
-11. Milestones (M0 to M-final timeline)
-12. Other Information (compliance + platform dependency + contact)
+11. Exit (target exit value + 5–8-year horizon + routes — strategic / PE / IPO — + 3–5 named acquirers with one-line rationale)
+12. Milestones (M0 to M-final timeline)
+13. Other Information (compliance + platform dependency + contact)
 
 Production notes attached: format (16:9 landscape, PDF + source deck), design tokens reference (the operator's project design-tokens spec, path supplied at Stage 5 invocation), chart-source consistency with the financial model, speaker-note attribution.
 

package/payload/premium-plugins/venture-studio/skills/investor-data-room/references/business-plan-template.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# Business plan template — 15-section structure
+# Business plan template — 16-section structure
 
 The canonical structure used by `01-narrative/business-plan.md`. Every public-facing artefact (deck, prospectus, term sheet) derives from this file. Apply the internal-workings scrub (see `internal-workings-scrub.md`) on every revision.
 
@@ -14,13 +14,13 @@ Three blocks. **Vision.** Where the company ends up at full execution. **Mission
 Legal entity table (legal name, Companies House number, incorporation date, registered office, SIC, PSC status, sole proposed director on IN01) + pre-investment cap table (sourced from the IN01 verbatim) + post-investment dilution pointer.
 
 ### 4. The Market
-Subsections: Size of the addressable market (TAM with citation per figure); Structural tailwind (margin squeeze, regulatory tailwind, or equivalent); Self-employed wedge or analogous high-growth segment; Domestic adjacency (next-vertical expansion); International upside (channel partner enabling it); Pricing and TAM (per-customer ACV × addressable count = TAM number).
+Subsections: Size of the addressable market (TAM with citation per figure, bottoms-up construction; geography-tier floor — **late pre-seed TAM is expected to clear $1B US / $500M UK / $500M EU**, flag if the named geography sits below its floor); Market growth rate (single CAGR figure with citation + a one-line 3-year market-expansion thesis stating why the market gets bigger and why this company captures more share as it does); Market-share trajectory (path to 3-8% of SAM within 5 years, reconciled line-by-line against the ARR target in Section 12); Structural tailwind (margin squeeze, regulatory tailwind, or equivalent); Self-employed wedge or analogous high-growth segment; Domestic adjacency (next-vertical expansion); International upside (channel partner enabling it); Pricing and TAM (per-customer ACV × addressable count = TAM number).
 
 ### 5. The Product
 Subsections: What it is (substrate description, CRM-agnostic / data-sovereign positioning); The wedge product (narrowest unit of value, public-by-default if applicable); The upsell path (wedge → high-value output → full substrate); The substrate moat (operator-data + ontological graph + flywheel); Conversation ingestion (or equivalent lock-in mechanic); The network (federation thesis); Asymmetric-capture position (the LLM-binary wrap argument, with commercial-practice insurance); Human-services layer (training, support, white-glove, anti-fragile-against-frontier-AI).
 
 ### 6. The Business Model
-Revenue streams (subscription tiers + future network-effect revenue), unit economics (ACV, CAC, gross margin, churn placeholder), compute-mark-up doctrine ("never mark up the LLM compute; customer pays the LLM provider directly").
+Revenue streams (subscription tiers + future network-effect revenue). Unit economics — each metric is a named line: **ACV**, **CAC**, **LTV**, **LTV:CAC ratio** (target ≥ 3:1 by Month 12), **gross margin** (target ≥ 70% steady-state), **burn multiple** (net burn ÷ net new ARR; target ≤ 2× during wedge, ≤ 1× post-PMF), **churn** (logo + revenue). Compute-mark-up doctrine ("never mark up the LLM compute; customer pays the LLM provider directly").
 
 ### 7. Go-to-Market
 Wedge → Beachhead → Blitzscale framework (with months and funding source per phase), demand evidence (40+ EOIs, paid intents, founder dogfood, partnership status — every number cited), GTM partners (one row per named partner with role and source), horse-before-cart logic (public-first wedge that earns trust for the private high-value upsell), geography.
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ Three regulatory regimes: UK consumer protection (DMCC Act for estate agency / e
 Founders (foregrounded) with role + concise career summary + key credentials + pre-investment shareholding. Strategic shareholders from incorporation (advisors, family, JV partners on the cap table from day one). Hiring plan table with month-triggered roles + salary + trigger condition.
 
 ### 12. Financial Plan
-12.1 Opening balance sheet (M0 after capex). 12.2 Year-1 Income Statement (revenue + COGS + every opex line + depreciation + EBIT + corp tax + net loss). 12.3 Year-1 cash flow summary table (period-by-period opening, net flow, closing cash). 12.4 Closing balance sheet (M12). 12.5 Two-round funding strategy (timing, size, pre-money, purpose, gating evidence per round). 12.6 Contingency levers. 12.7 Use of funds (this round) by bucket.
+12.1 Opening balance sheet (M0 after capex). 12.2 Year-1 Income Statement (revenue + COGS + every opex line + depreciation + EBIT + corp tax + net loss). 12.3 Year-1 cash flow summary table (period-by-period opening, net flow, closing cash). 12.4 Closing balance sheet (M12). 12.5 Two-round funding strategy (timing, size, pre-money, purpose, gating evidence per round) — **valuation per round cites `03-cap-table/comparables.md`** (recent comparable rounds: company / pre-money / post-money / multiple / source). 12.6 Contingency levers. 12.7 Use of funds (this round) by bucket.
 
 ### 13. Risks and Mitigations
 Two-column table: risk + mitigation. Cover Loop / Anthropic / competitor-ships-earlier / wedge-fails-to-convert / founder-transition / counsel-delays / Round-2-market / investor-structure.
@@ -46,6 +46,9 @@ Two-column table: risk + mitigation. Cover Loop / Anthropic / competitor-ships-e
 ### 14. Milestones (the N-month thesis)
 Month-by-month table: M0 close + closing conditions; M1 first paying customer; M3 product-engineer hire + ~10 customers; M6 wedge phase complete; M7 Round 2 raise opens; M9 Round 2 closes; M12 break-even.
 
+### 14b. Exit thesis
+Target exit value (£m), horizon (5–8 years), exit routes considered (strategic acquisition, PE rollup, IPO) with a one-line view on which route is most likely and why. **3–5 named acquirers**, each with a one-line rationale (why they would buy: distribution gap, technology gap, defensive play, vertical entry). Sourced from `08-market/sources.md` and `03-cap-table/comparables.md` (recent exit comparables: company / acquirer / multiple / year / source). Body references "Appendix B" by title.
+
 ### 15. The bottom line
 Summary table of headline numbers (raise size, pre-money, post-money, dilution, runway, Y1 revenue/loss/cash-burn/closing-cash/ARR, break-even month, Round 2 timing/size). Closing paragraph.
 

package/payload/premium-plugins/venture-studio/skills/investor-data-room/references/data-room-structure.md

@@ -9,8 +9,9 @@ Standard ten numbered sections plus root README, internal-narrative subdirectory
 
 **Currently present.**
 - `office-hours-design.md` — APPROVED office-hours output (internal).
-- `business-plan.md` — 15-section public business plan.
-- `deck-blueprint.md` — 12-slide brief.
+- `business-plan.md` — 16-section public business plan.
+- `deck-blueprint.md` — 13-slide brief.
+- `exit-thesis.md` — target exit value, 5–8-year horizon, exit routes (strategic / PE / IPO), 3–5 named acquirers with one-line rationale each.
 
 ### 02-corporate-legal
 **Purpose.** Statutory documentation. First section any investor's lawyer asks for.
@@ -20,12 +21,12 @@ Standard ten numbered sections plus root README, internal-narrative subdirectory
 ### 03-cap-table
 **Purpose.** Who owns what, before and after the round. Most-scrutinised number in seed-stage diligence.
 
-**Standard contents.** Pre-investment cap table (per IN01), post-investment cap table (with dilution math), fully-diluted including option pool, founder vesting schedule (if any), share register, subscription letters.
+**Standard contents.** Pre-investment cap table (per IN01), post-investment cap table (with dilution math), fully-diluted including option pool, founder vesting schedule (if any), share register, subscription letters, `comparables.md` (recent comparable rounds — company / pre-money / post-money / multiple / source — that the term sheet's valuation cites).
 
 ### 04-financials
 **Purpose.** The investability of the raise: runway, burn, revenue ramp, break-even, contingency.
 
-**Standard contents.** `model_worksheet.md` (opening cash, capex, monthly burn, MRR ramp, two-round funding strategy, contingency levers), historical accounts (if any), bank statements, unit economics, VAT status.
+**Standard contents.** `model_worksheet.md` (opening cash, capex, monthly burn, MRR ramp, two-round funding strategy, contingency levers), historical accounts (if any), bank statements, unit economics (must include **LTV:CAC ratio** and **burn multiple** as named lines alongside ACV / CAC / LTV / gross margin / churn), VAT status.
 
 ### 05-commercial
 **Purpose.** Customer pipeline, demand evidence, GTM partners, route-to-revenue.
@@ -45,7 +46,7 @@ Standard ten numbered sections plus root README, internal-narrative subdirectory
 ### 08-market
 **Purpose.** Size of the prize, shape of demand, competitive landscape. Every market figure in the business plan must trace to a row in this section.
 
-**Standard contents.** `sources.md` (every figure with citation), `competitor-value-claims-rebuttal.md` (vendor-by-vendor rebuttal framework), TAM/SAM/SOM file, customer-segmentation analysis, regulatory landscape, international-expansion potential.
+**Standard contents.** `sources.md` (every figure with citation), `competitor-value-claims-rebuttal.md` (vendor-by-vendor rebuttal framework), TAM/SAM/SOM file (bottoms-up; **geography-tier floor** — late pre-seed TAM is expected to clear $1B US / $500M UK / $500M EU; flag any named geography that sits below its floor), `market-growth-rate.md` (single CAGR figure with citation + one-line 3-year market-expansion thesis), `market-share-trajectory.md` (path to 3–8% SAM within 5 years, reconciled to the ARR target in the business plan), customer-segmentation analysis, regulatory landscape, international-expansion potential.
 
 ### 09-operations
 **Purpose.** Day-to-day regulatory, compliance, and operational infrastructure.

package/payload/premium-plugins/venture-studio/skills/investor-data-room/references/deck-blueprint-template.md

@@ -1,23 +1,24 @@
-# Deck blueprint template — 12 slides
+# Deck blueprint template — 13 slides
 
 Each slide is specified by Purpose, Headline (one-line message), Body (bullets + figures pulled from the business plan), Visual suggestion, and Source reference. The deck is the presentation surface; the business plan is the source of truth.
 
-## 12-slide layout
+## 13-slide layout
 
 | # | Slide | What it lands |
 |---|---|---|
 | 1 | Cover | Company name, raise headline, three foregrounded founders, Companies House identifier. |
 | 2 | Vision | Vision / Mission / Doctrine triad. |
-| 3 | The Market | TAM with citation, structural tailwind (margin-squeeze / regulatory / equivalent), self-employed or analogous wedge, domestic adjacency, international upside, pricing band. |
+| 3 | The Market | TAM with citation, structural tailwind (margin-squeeze / regulatory / equivalent), self-employed or analogous wedge, domestic adjacency, international upside, pricing band, **CAGR with citation**. |
 | 4 | Business Model | Subscription tiers + hardware + service layer + future network-effect revenue + unit economics + compute-no-markup doctrine. |
 | 5 | Go-to-Market | Wedge → Beachhead → Blitzscale framework, demand evidence numbers, named GTM partners, horse-before-cart logic. |
 | 6 | The Product | Substrate description, wedge, upsell path, substrate moat, conversation ingestion, network, asymmetric capture, services layer. |
 | 7 | Competition | Three failing categories + most-direct-competitor counter (CRM-agnostic vs migration-required). |
 | 8 | The Team | Founders + strategic shareholders, with one-line credential per person and shareholding %. |
-| 9 | Economics | Y1 revenue, P&L loss, cash burn, M11 cash low, M12 closing cash, closing ARR, break-even month. Two-panel chart: MRR ramp with burn overlay + monthly cash balance. |
+| 9 | Economics | Y1 revenue, P&L loss, cash burn, M11 cash low, M12 closing cash, closing ARR, break-even month, **LTV:CAC and burn multiple**. Two-panel chart: MRR ramp with burn overlay + monthly cash balance. |
 | 10 | The Raise | Size, pre-money, post-money, dilution, instrument, use of funds, IP transfer at close, Round 2 size + timing, pre-emption. Pie chart of post-investment cap table. |
-| 11 | Milestones | M0 to M-final timeline with MRR curve and Round-1 / Round-2 close markers. |
-| 12 | Other Information | Compliance (DMCC + UK ICO + EU AI Act), platform-dependency disclosure with the commercial-practice-insurance answer, contact card (founders + email + web). |
+| 11 | Exit | Target exit value, 5–8-year horizon, exit routes (strategic / PE / IPO), 3–5 named acquirers with one-line rationale each. Sourced from `01-narrative/exit-thesis.md`. |
+| 12 | Milestones | M0 to M-final timeline with MRR curve and Round-1 / Round-2 close markers. |
+| 13 | Other Information | Compliance (DMCC + UK ICO + EU AI Act), platform-dependency disclosure with the commercial-practice-insurance answer, contact card (founders + email + web). |
 
 ## Production notes attached to the blueprint
 

package/payload/premium-plugins/venture-studio/skills/office-hours/SKILL.md

@@ -32,14 +32,13 @@ You are a **YC office hours partner**. Your job is to ensure the problem is unde
 
 ## Phase 1: Context Gathering
 
-Understand the project and the area the user wants to change.
+Understand the operator's business and the area they want to change.
 
-1. Read `CLAUDE.md`, `TODOS.md` (if they exist).
-2. Run `git log --oneline -30` and `git diff origin/main --stat 2>/dev/null` to understand recent context.
-3. Use Grep/Glob to map the codebase areas most relevant to the user's request.
-4. **List any prior office-hours design docs on disk** under the operator's project (e.g. the data-room `01-narrative/` directory when invoked from `venture-studio`, or the operator-supplied path otherwise). If prior designs exist, list them: "Prior designs for this project: [titles + dates]"
+1. Read any operator-supplied notes path the caller passed in (a brief, a market scan, a prior memo). If no path was passed, skip.
+2. **List any prior office-hours design docs on disk** under the operator's project: the data-room `01-narrative/` directory when invoked from `venture-studio`, or the operator-supplied project root otherwise. If prior designs exist, list them: "Prior designs for this project: [titles + dates]"
+3. For market, competitor, or prior-art recon, dispatch the `research-assistant` specialist with the `deep-research` skill rather than calling `WebSearch` directly. The specialist returns structured findings the design doc can cite.
 
-5. **Ask: what's your goal with this?** This is a real question, not a formality. The answer determines everything about how the session runs.
+4. **Ask: what's your goal with this?** This is a real question, not a formality. The answer determines everything about how the session runs.
 
    Via AskUserQuestion, ask:
 
@@ -56,7 +55,7 @@ Understand the project and the area the user wants to change.
    - Startup, intrapreneurship → **Startup mode** (Phase 2A)
    - Hackathon, open source, research, learning, having fun → **Builder mode** (Phase 2B)
 
-6. **Assess product stage** (only for startup/intrapreneurship modes):
+5. **Assess product stage** (only for startup/intrapreneurship modes):
    - Pre-product (idea stage, no users yet)
    - Has users (people using it, not yet paying)
    - Has paying customers
@@ -275,7 +274,7 @@ If no matches found, proceed silently.
 
 ## Phase 2.75: Landscape Awareness
 
-Read ETHOS.md for the full Search Before Building framework (three layers, eureka moments). The preamble's Search Before Building section has the ETHOS.md path.
+**Search Before Building — three layers, eureka moments.** Before proposing solutions, you check what the world already thinks about this space, so you can spot where conventional wisdom is wrong. The three layers are: (1) **existing solutions** — what people already use to solve this exact problem; (2) **adjacent solutions** — what they use to solve neighbouring problems that hint at the same job-to-be-done; (3) **eureka moments** — places where layers 1 and 2 reveal a shared assumption everyone is making that this session's evidence shows is wrong. A eureka moment is a single sentence: "Everyone does X because they assume Y, but the evidence we have suggests Y is wrong here." Layer 3 is the only layer that justifies building something different.
 
 After understanding the problem through questioning, search for what the world thinks. This is NOT competitive research (that's /design-consultation's job). This is understanding conventional wisdom so you can evaluate where it's wrong.
 
@@ -302,7 +301,7 @@ Read the top 2-3 results. Run the three-layer synthesis:
 - **[Layer 2]** What are the search results and current discourse saying?
 - **[Layer 3]** Given what WE learned in Phase 2A/2B — is there a reason the conventional approach is wrong?
 
-**Eureka check:** If Layer 3 reasoning reveals a genuine insight, name it: "EUREKA: Everyone does X because they assume [assumption]. But [evidence from our conversation] suggests that's wrong here. This means [implication]." Log the eureka moment (see preamble).
+**Eureka check:** If Layer 3 reasoning reveals a genuine insight, name it: "EUREKA: Everyone does X because they assume [assumption]. But [evidence from our conversation] suggests that's wrong here. This means [implication]." Record the eureka moment in the design doc's Premises section so it travels with the artefact.
 
 If no eureka moment exists, say: "The conventional wisdom seems sound here. Let's build on it." Proceed to Phase 3.
 

package/payload/premium-plugins/venture-studio/skills/zero-to-prototype/SKILL.md

@@ -284,6 +284,10 @@ For go-to-market planning:
 4. **Progress over perfection** — Ship, measure, iterate
 5. **Synthesis over summary** — Connect dots, don't just list facts
 
+## Research routing
+
+Customer-discovery prior-art lookups, prospect-finding (`references/boolean-search.md` invocations, Earlyvangelist identification), citation-backed claims (PMF benchmarks, market signal precedents), and academic-grade evidence all route through the `research-assistant` specialist with the `deep-research`, `data-research`, and `academic-verify` skills. Dispatch the specialist; do not call `WebSearch` or `WebFetch` directly from this skill. The specialist returns structured findings with citations the PMF, Landing, and PRD artefacts can quote.
+
 ## Framework Reference Files
 
 All frameworks are in `references/` directory: