v3.3.0 to v3.4.0

+ version: 3.4.0

+ description: Build and maintain the shared GTM brain — product context, ICP, positioning, voice, market context, proof points, plus optional strategy and execution, and the deal-reality fields (objections, switching forces, customer language, anti-persona) — that every other skill in this stack reads before producing output. Works standalone with your own answers, supercharged when you connect docs or a CRM. Trigger with "build my brain", "set up my GTM foundation", "audit my brain", "update my ICP", "add my objections", "capture what customers say", "refresh my brain", "what's stale in my brain", "my brain gaps", "build my brain from my website and docs", or "my context".

+ last_updated: 2026-10-14

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

+ - "Add my objections" or "capture what customers say"

+ - "Update my strategy" or "update my execution"

+ │ proof points, deal reality — one section at a time │

+ Deal-reality fields captured: X of 10

+

+ - **Exists:** Load all sections silently. Offer: [View current] [Edit a section] [Refresh stale fields] [Answer open gaps] [Add material] [My context] [Run health audit]. If `/foundation/gaps.md` has open gaps, say how many in one line. If fewer than 10 of the deal-reality fields are captured, say how many in one line ("4 of 10 deal-reality fields captured") and that [Edit a section] picks up the rest. Do not treat this as a gap or ask for them unprompted.

+ 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 __"); how it is packaged (plans, modules); words to always or never use for it; claims already approved to make; how you charge and how buyers buy (what the price scales with, self-serve or sales-led). "Subscription" alone is not a business model: per seat, per usage or platform fee?

+ 2. **ICP Definition** — company size; industry/vertical; geography; primary persona (title + role); economic buyer; champion profile; top 3 pain points; buying trigger; the 2-3 jobs customers hire you for ("When __, I want to __, so I can __"); what the problem costs them, with a number and where it came from (label an estimate as one); who is NOT a fit and why you turn them down; the standing buying-committee roles (champion, economic buyer, technical blocker, end user), what each cares about and what makes each block. These are defaults; a committee for one deal belongs to `buyer-personas`

+ 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); for each named alternative, where it falls short for this ICP; the four switching forces (push: what drives them away, pull: what draws them to you, habit: what keeps them, anxiety: what worries them about switching); the 3-5 objections heard most in deals, who raises each, and the approved response (if there is no approved response, record the objection and leave the response open)

+ 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; customer language: exact words customers use for the problem and for you, each with who said it and where (call, email, survey). Never paraphrase. No source, no entry: it goes to the gaps file

+ 7. **Strategy** (recommended, not required for a complete brain) — top 3 priorities this quarter; launches on the calendar (name, date, tier T1-T4); the number you are measured on (metric, baseline, target, date); active bets; what you are explicitly not doing; the one conversion action the funnel is built to drive (for example "book a demo")

+ Score each of Sections 1 to 6 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"). A section absent from a cold-start brain scores 0; a section present with fields missing scores 50 or lower. Report strengths (80+), needs improvement (50-79), and critical gaps (<50), with one concrete fix per gap. Also report: open gaps (count of `open` gap blocks), the oldest field in each section, provenance coverage (share of fields with a source tag; legacy untagged fields count as untagged), stale fields (older than the section's limit in `references/brain-schema.md`), Sections 7 and 8 status ("not built" is reported as such, never as a gap or a zero), and the deal-reality fields: how many of the ten are captured, with the one that would help most named (for example "no `objections`: every battlecard will re-ask"). A missing deal-reality field never lowers a section score. Offer to jump straight into editing the weakest section.

+ 3. **Extract.** Pull atomic facts only, one per block, in the format in `references/evidence-format.md`. Drop greetings, scheduling, and opinions with no owner. Every fact needs a source and a date; calls and customer emails need a verbatim quote. Tag the target field. Calls, interviews, surveys and win/loss documents support `4.customer_phrases`, `3.objections`, `3.switching_forces`, `3.alt_shortfalls`, `2.cost_of_problem`, `2.jobs_to_be_done` and `2.anti_persona`. A pricing page supports `1.business_model` and `7.conversion_action` (public copy, rank 4). Leave out email addresses, phone numbers and private details. Append the blocks to `/foundation/evidence.md`, then show a summary: counts by source and by target section, plus ten sample facts.

+ - `4.customer_phrases` is never clustered or merged. Each phrase stays as spoken with its own evidence id; show how many different customers used it.

+ - Customer phrases (Steps 2, 8) are stored verbatim with a source; an unsourced phrase becomes a gap, never a brain entry (Operating Rule 10).

+ - The audit (Step 4) reports how many of the ten deal-reality fields are captured and never scores their absence as a gap.

+ | Customer phrases verbatim, each with a source | Yes |

+ | Deal-reality fields never lower a section score| Yes |

+ 10. **Customer words stay verbatim.** `customer_phrases` entries are exact quotes, each with a source (an evidence id, or who said it and when). Never paraphrase, merge, tidy or invent one. A phrase with no source is not stored; it becomes a gap. Customer words guide copy but are not proof: a number a customer mentioned goes to Section 6 through `proof-points`.