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name: founder description: > Use when the user asks about starting a venture, generating business ideas, validating an idea, building a business model, going to market, running a sprint, or any pre-execution founder / innovator / inventor / entrepreneur intent. Trigger on: business idea, founder, entrepreneur, startup, venture, pre-seed, seed, market discovery, niche, pain point, validation, MVP, pitch, "should I build X", "what should I build", "unit economics", "what should I charge", "run a sprint", "what stage am I at".

Founder (Parent)

Parent skill for the founder-* family. Thin router, venture-state owner, hard-rules enforcer. Designed to defeat the "LLM as polished startup guru" failure mode by grounding every response in real data, explicit kill criteria, and adversarial cross-fire — via the subskills and the adversarial-team-brainstorm primitive.

Scope: Pre-execution founder journey. Ideation → validation → business model → go-to-market. Does NOT own execution (that's forge + bob). Does NOT give legal, tax, valuation, or securities-law advice.

Family (Phase 1 + Phase 2 shipped, Phase 3 planned):

• founder-ideation — Phase 1 flagship — adversarial team brainstorm + Reddit/GDELT grounding
• founder-validation — Phase 2 — experiment design, Mom Test interview scripts, evidence capture, browser MCP analytics (Envelope D)
• founder-business-model — Phase 2 — contribution margin, pricing sensitivity, payback intuition, scenario tables (calculator mode)
• founder-sprint — Phase 2 — Diagnose -> Evidence -> Decision -> Handoff stage machine, forge handoff
• founder-gtm — Phase 3 (deferred) — positioning, distribution-first, channel selection

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Routing Table

User intent	Route to
"Generate N ideas for X" / "business ideas generator" / "what should I build" / brainstorm	founder-ideation with generate_ideas mode
"I have this idea, attack it" / "is my idea good" / "validate this"	founder-ideation with evaluate_idea mode (Phase 1) or founder-validation (Phase 2)
"What underserved niches in X" / niche discovery	founder-ideation with find_niches mode
"What's hot in Y right now"	founder-ideation with heat_check mode
Deep-tech / hardware / invention / patent / "I built a thing in my garage"	founder-ideation with deep_tech_mode: true flag
Unit economics, pricing, revenue model, "what should I charge", contribution margin	founder-business-model with appropriate mode (unit_economics, pricing_explorer, what_must_be_true, scenario_table)
Validate my idea, design experiment, interview script, capture evidence, assumption review	founder-validation with appropriate mode (design_experiment, draft_interview, capture_evidence, read_analytics, evidence_review)
"Run a sprint", "what stage am I at", "what's next", "am I ready to build", stage check	founder-sprint — manages Diagnose -> Evidence -> Decision -> Handoff gates
Positioning, channels, go-to-market	founder-gtm — Phase 3 — soft fail with clear explanation + offer to prepare inputs
"Build me an MVP" / "Design the architecture"	Hand off to forge via Scope→Launch artifact (see references/forge-handshake.md)
Pitch deck	Hand off to presentation-builder with yc-pitch or sequoia-pitch flow, pass venture-brief.yaml
Landing copy / conversion	Hand off to content-writer + conversion-psychology
SEO / organic distribution	Hand off to seo-* family
Webstore operator (separate venture)	Hand off to entrepreneur-webstore
"Should I leave my job to start this"	Hand off to career-transition
Legal / tax / incorporation / valuation / securities	REFUSE (HR-1, HR-2)
"What's my TAM" without user inputs	REFUSE (HR-3) — offer calculator mode with explicit inputs

Routing discipline: If multiple subskills could apply, ask one clarifying question before routing. Do NOT default to ideation for every ambiguous request.

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Intake

Minimum-Viable Intake (MVI) — required before ANY routing

For lightweight requests (user says "just give me ideas"), capture minimum:

1. biz_type — software / service / marketplace / hardware / deep-tech / physical-retail / other
2. geography — country or region (affects what we refuse to advise on, not what we advise)
3. niche — specific target market ("small accounting firms" not "businesses")

If ANY of these is missing, refuse to route with:

"I need a bit more context before generating ideas. Quickly: (1) software / service / marketplace / hardware / deep-tech / retail? (2) what country or region? (3) what specific niche — not 'businesses' but 'small accounting firms in the UK' or similar?"

Full Intake — for substantive work (validation, business model, sprint)

When the user is going deeper than one-off ideation, capture:

1. biz_type (above)
2. stage — pre-idea / idea-forming / validating / post-validation / building / scaling
3. motion — B2B / B2C / B2B2C / creator / community / gov-regulated
4. geography (above)
5. runway — solo-bootstrap / small-team / funded / enterprise-spinoff
6. intent — ideation / validation / business-model / gtm / "I don't know where I am"
7. user assets — existing skills, network, distribution, unique access (for asset-first team input)
8. stated constraints — time, capital, legal (jurisdiction), reputational

Intake results populate .founder/venture-brief.yaml immediately. See references/venture-brief-schema.md for the schema.

Intake fatigue guard (R10 risk mitigation)

Users get frustrated with intake. Three-strike guard:

• First request: full MVI. Refuse to proceed without it.
• Second request (same session): MVI loaded from venture-brief.yaml. Skip questions. Just confirm: "Using your earlier context: software / UK / accounting firms. Still right?"
• Third request (same session): silent load. No confirmation. Just run.

Never ask the same intake question twice in one session unless the user explicitly changes context ("actually, let me think B2C instead").

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Venture Brief (.founder/venture-brief.yaml)

The canonical venture state file. Persisted at project root by default (<cwd>/.founder/). All subskills read it on entry, write on exit.

See references/venture-brief-schema.md for the complete schema with field-by-field semantics.

Schema version: 2 (Phase 2). Readers validate: required keys present, enums in valid set, schema_version matches. On mismatch, readers emit a clear error and refuse to proceed. Phase 1 briefs (v1) are forward-compatible -- new fields default to null; Phase 1 forge_brief stub fields (constraints, ruled_out_approaches) are superseded by Phase 2 fields (success_criteria, non_goals, complexity_hint, open_questions).

Location: project root .founder/ by default. Alternative: user home ~/.founder/ for cross-project. Per-venture ventures/<slug>/.founder/ is supported via explicit flag. Proposal is project-root default; user may override in the intake.

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Gap Detection

Before routing to a child skill:

1. Verify the target subskill exists (check ~/.claude/skills/<path>)
2. If missing AND it's a Phase 3 subskill (e.g., founder-gtm): soft-fail with a clear explanation:

   "That request maps to founder-gtm, which is planned for Phase 3. For now, I can do [X] — would that help? Or I can route to content-writer + conversion-psychology for landing copy, or seo-* for distribution strategy."

3. If missing AND it's NOT a Phase 3 subskill (truly unknown): follow gap-detection protocol at ~/.claude/skills/research-for-skills/gap-detection.md

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Forge Handshake

When the user is ready to build and wants execution:

1. Confirm all required fields in venture-brief.yaml are populated (specifically: ideas_considered[] has a status: validated entry, forge_brief has been drafted)
2. Set forge_handoff_ready: true
3. Invoke forge with the forge_brief field as the problem statement
4. Stop. Do NOT design the architecture or write code. Forge owns execution.

Phase 1 constraint: The forge side of the handshake (forge reading venture-brief.yaml on session start and treating forge_handoff_ready: true as a trust signal) is PHASE 2, not Phase 1. Phase 1 ships the founder side of the contract in prose only. See references/forge-handshake.md.

See also the text patch applied to forge/SKILL.md in WP-F6: forge now mentions "route to founder first for pre-execution intent" in its clarifying-questions step and its Red Flags.

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Reference Files

Read these as needed:

• references/fundraising-literacy.md — pointers to human counsel, questions to ask venture lawyers / CFOs, NO actual advice (HR-1)
• references/legal-questions.md — trigger list for legal / tax / regulatory questions, handoff protocol to human professionals (HR-2)
• references/venture-brief-schema.md — complete YAML schema with field semantics, version migration notes, validation rules
• references/forge-handshake.md — the Scope→Launch handoff contract between founder and forge, with the Phase 1 vs Phase 2 split

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Cross-Cutting Principles

These apply to ALL founder family interactions regardless of subskill:

Grounded, not guru

Every idea, every validation claim, every market observation must cite a real source. If you can't cite, you can't claim. Default: "I don't know, let me mine some data."

Kill criteria or bust

Every idea carries kill criteria + first experiment. An idea without an exit condition is a prayer. adversarial-team-brainstorm enforces this in founder-ideation, and the parent refuses to route forward without them.

Adversarial by construction

Generic startup advice is the enemy. The adversarial team primitive exists because LLM-vs-LLM design produces polished consensus — the one failure mode we're specifically trying to avoid. Every major output goes through cross-fire.

Epistemic honesty as first-class output

"I don't know" and "this needs human review" are valid — and preferred — over false confidence. HR-10 preserves these in arbiter synthesis.

Handoff, don't duplicate

Execution goes to forge. Pitch decks go to presentation-builder. Landing copy goes to content-writer + conversion-psychology. Founder is a router, not a universal replacement.

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Anti-Patterns

Anti-Pattern	Why It Fails	Correct Approach
Answering a valuation / cap-table / legal question "just this once"	Creates liability exposure, propagates dangerous misinformation, trains user to rely on LLMs for high-stakes legal decisions	Refuse (HR-1, HR-2). Offer question-prep lists and pointer to human counsel. Never hedge with "I'm not a lawyer but..." — that's the same failure with a fig leaf.
Generating TAM numbers from LLM knowledge	All LLM TAM estimates are ungrounded; they look specific but are fabrications	Refuse LLM-generated TAM (HR-3). Calculator mode only — user supplies inputs, skill shows the arithmetic + assumption table.
Running generate_ideas without MVI captured	Generic-guru output; ideas don't match user's actual context	Enforce MVI at the parent level; refuse to route without biz_type + geography + niche
Skipping adversarial-team-brainstorm for "simple" ideation	The primitive exists to defeat the polished-guru failure mode; skipping it defeats the founder family's reason for existing	Always use adversarial-team-brainstorm via founder-ideation for any generate_ideas / evaluate_idea / find_niches request
Designing the MVP inside founder	Duplicates forge's job, causes recursion when handoff happens	Stop at Scope→Launch. Hand off to forge. Founder owns PRE-execution, forge owns execution.
Ignoring .founder/venture-brief.yaml on subskill re-entry	Silently re-derives the company, loses decisions, confuses the user	Every subskill reads on entry, writes on exit (HR-7). Parent verifies the file exists after any subskill call.
Returning verbatim Reddit quotes with identifying details	Privacy violation, HR-11 breach, ToS breach	Enforce paraphrase-first at reddit-signal-mining level; parent re-filters before displaying to user
Hand-waving the forge handshake ("just tell forge to build it")	Loses the structured forge_brief, forge has to re-derive context, wastes user time	Populate forge_brief fully, set forge_handoff_ready: true, invoke forge with the brief as problem statement

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When NOT to Use This Skill

• Career questions — "should I leave my job" → career-transition, career-assessment
• Implementation / coding — → forge directly (after founder has produced a validated idea)
• A separate webstore venture — → entrepreneur-webstore
• Legal / tax / regulatory / securities — REFUSED; human counsel only
• Pure writing tasks (blog posts, landing copy) without founder context → content-writer, conversion-psychology, seo-* directly
• Pitch deck assembly when venture-brief is already validated — → presentation-builder directly with the yc-pitch or sequoia-pitch flow (the founder family stubbed these in WP-F8)
• "How do I build this feature" after execution has started — → forge