53 added, 7 removed. Audit A to A.
---
name: suede-free-tools
description: "Suede-affiliated engineering-as-marketing strategy for selecting, scoring, and scoping calculators, graders, generators, and other free interactive tools. Use when the user wants a lead, link, education, or product-adoption asset with a measurable path to the paid product. NOT FOR: downloadable lead assets (use suede-lead-magnets), implementation of a full website (use suede-site-alchemy), or search diagnostics (use suede-seo-audit)."
metadata:
version: 2.0.0
---
# Suede Free-Tool Growth Strategy
Suede uses engineering as marketing when a genuinely useful tool can create qualified discovery and a natural bridge to the paid product. Select, score, and scope the smallest maintainable calculator, grader, generator, or utility whose output earns attention rather than merely capturing it.
## Initial Assessment
**Check for product marketing context first:**
If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.
Before designing a tool strategy, understand:
1. **Business Context** - What's the core product? Who is the target audience? What problems do they have?
- 2. **Goals** - Lead generation? SEO/traffic? Brand awareness? Product education?
+ 2. **Goals** - Lead generation? SEO/traffic? Brand awareness? Product education? What is one lead worth (LTV and close rate from this source)?
- 3. **Resources** - Technical capacity to build? Ongoing maintenance bandwidth? Budget for promotion?
+ 3. **Resources** - Technical capacity to build? Ongoing maintenance bandwidth? Budget for promotion? Timeline?
+ 4. **Existing Behavior** - What tools or manual workarounds does the audience use today? How are leads generated now?
+
---
## Core Principles
### 1. Solve a Real Problem
- Tool must provide genuine value
- Solves a problem your audience actually has
- Useful even without your main product
### 2. Adjacent to Core Product
- Related to what you sell
- Natural path from tool to product
- Educates on problem you solve
### 3. Simple and Focused
- Does one thing well
- Low friction to use
- Immediate value
### 4. Worth the Investment
- Lead value × expected leads > build cost + maintenance
+ Populate all four terms before calling the go/no-go, and show the arithmetic:
+ - **Lead value** = customer LTV × close rate for this lead source, from the intake numbers.
+ - **Expected leads** = monthly search volume for the SEO target keyword × a stated visit-to-use rate × a stated use-to-capture rate.
+ - **Build cost** = the MVP scope below, in engineer-days.
+ - **Maintenance** = engineer-days per quarter to keep data, dependencies, and the hosting current.
+
+ State every rate you assumed and where it came from. If a term cannot be sourced,
+ say which one and mark the go/no-go unresolved rather than filling it in.
+
---
## Tool Types Overview
| Type | Examples | Best For |
|------|----------|----------|
| Calculators | ROI, savings, pricing estimators | Decisions involving numbers |
| Generators | Templates, policies, names | Creating something quickly |
| Analyzers | Website graders, SEO auditors | Evaluating existing work |
| Testers | Meta tag preview, speed tests | Checking if something works |
| Libraries | Icon sets, templates, snippets | Reference material |
| Interactive | Tutorials, playgrounds, quizzes | Learning/understanding |
**For detailed tool types and examples**: See [references/tool-types.md](references/tool-types.md)
---
## Ideation Framework
### Start with Pain Points
1. **What problems does your audience Google?** - Search query research, common questions
2. **What manual processes are tedious?** - Spreadsheet tasks, repetitive calculations
3. **What do they need before buying your product?** - Assessments, planning, comparisons
4. **What information do they wish they had?** - Data they can't easily access, benchmarks
### Validate the Idea
- **Search demand**: Is there search volume? How competitive?
- **Uniqueness**: What exists? How can you be 10x better?
- **Lead quality**: Does this audience match buyers?
- **Build feasibility**: How complex? Can you scope an MVP?
---
## Lead Capture Strategy
### Gating Options
| Approach | Pros | Cons |
|----------|------|------|
| Fully gated | Maximum capture | Lower usage |
| Partially gated | Balance of both | Common pattern |
| Ungated + optional | Maximum reach | Lower capture |
| Ungated entirely | Pure SEO/brand | No direct leads |
### Lead Capture Best Practices
- Value exchange clear: "Get your full report"
- Minimal friction: Email only
- Show preview of what they'll get
- Optional: Segment by asking one qualifying question
+ The gating trade-off itself — per-field conversion cost and how to frame the
+ exchange — is owned by `suede-lead-magnets`. Use its gating tables when deciding
+ what to ask for; the table above only covers where the gate sits in a tool.
+
---
## SEO Considerations
### Keyword Strategy
**Tool landing page**: "[thing] calculator", "[thing] generator", "free [tool type]"
**Supporting content**: "How to [use case]", "What is [concept]"
### Link Building
Free tools attract links because:
- Genuinely useful (people reference them)
- Unique (can't link to just any page)
- Shareable (social amplification)
---
## Build vs. Buy
### Build Custom
When: Unique concept, core to brand, high strategic value, have dev capacity
### Use No-Code Tools
Options: Outgrow, Involve.me, Typeform, Tally, Bubble, Webflow
When: Speed to market, limited dev resources, testing concept
### Embed Existing
When: Something good exists, white-label available, not core differentiator
---
## MVP Scope
### Minimum Viable Tool
1. Core functionality only—does the one thing, works reliably
2. Essential UX—clear input, obvious output, mobile works
3. Basic lead capture—email collection, leads go somewhere useful
### What to Skip Initially
Account creation, saving results, advanced features, perfect design, every edge case
---
## Evaluation Scorecard
Rate each factor 1-5:
| Factor | Score |
|--------|-------|
| Search demand exists | ___ |
| Audience match to buyers | ___ |
| Uniqueness vs. existing | ___ |
| Natural path to product | ___ |
| Build feasibility | ___ |
| Maintenance burden (inverse) | ___ |
| Link-building potential | ___ |
| Share-worthiness | ___ |
**25+**: Strong candidate | **15-24**: Promising | **<15**: Reconsider
+ Anchors for the three decisive factors — score these against the anchor, not on
+ impression, and cite the evidence used:
+
+ | Factor | 1 | 3 | 5 |
+ |--------|---|---|---|
+ | Search demand exists | No query with measurable volume | A query family in the hundreds of searches/month | A head term in the thousands/month |
+ | Build feasibility | Needs a data pipeline, licensed data, or an ongoing integration | Two to four engineer-weeks with known components | One engineer-week, one screen, no backend state |
+ | Maintenance burden (inverse) | Depends on data refreshed on a schedule or a third-party API | Occasional content or dependency updates | Static computation, nothing to refresh |
+
---
- ## Task-Specific Questions
+ ## Output Format
- 1. What existing tools does your audience use for workarounds?
- 2. How do you currently generate leads?
- 3. What technical resources are available?
- 4. What's the timeline and budget?
+ Return exactly these sections:
+ ### 1. Recommended Tool
+ Name and the one-sentence job it does for the user.
+
+ ### 2. Scorecard
+ The filled table with a score per factor, the total, and the verdict band. For the
+ three anchored factors, name the evidence behind the score.
+
+ ### 3. MVP Scope
+ Two explicit lists: **In** (what v1 does) and **Out** (what is deliberately
+ deferred). No item appears in both.
+
+ ### 4. Gating Decision
+ Which option from Gating Options, and the trade-off accepted in one line.
+
+ ### 5. SEO Target
+ The single target query for the tool page, plus the supporting-content query.
+
+ ### 6. Instrumentation Handoff
+ The two or three usage events the tool must emit (use, complete, capture) so
+ `suede-analytics` can read the funnel. This skill does not define the metrics
+ plan itself.
+
---
## Boundaries
- Do not claim search demand, lead volume, link potential, or build feasibility without evidence and dated assumptions.
- Do not build, deploy, publish, collect leads, or connect production data unless the user authorizes implementation.
- Do not invent tool outputs or use a calculator as disguised professional, legal, medical, or financial advice.
- Do not decide pricing, data-retention, or consent policy for the user.
## Routing
- Use `suede-lead-magnets` for downloadable assets and `suede-site-alchemy` for the public conversion surface.
- Use `suede-seo-audit` for search validation and `suede-analytics` for usage measurement.
- Use `suede-emails` for the post-capture lifecycle sequence.
+ - Use `suede-content-strategy` for the supporting content around the tool page.
+ - Use `suede-ads` and `suede-social` for tool distribution and launch promotion.
+ - Use `suede-ab-testing` to design and evaluate tests on the tool page or its gate.