--- name: prospect description: Five-scout team that hunts for tool ideas worth building for Elite AI Advantage. Each scout works a different signal source (search demand, prospect pain, competitor gaps, internal IP, funnel holes) and pitches specific named tools. Synthesis ranks the candidates, names the single best one to forge first, and kills the clones. Sister skill to /forge, prospect generates ideas, forge pressure-tests them. trigger: /prospect --- # /prospect A team of five scouts hunts for tool ideas Jake should consider building for Elite AI Advantage. Each scout works a distinct signal source. Each pitches specific named tools, not themes, not directions, not "you could explore." Named, one-line, buildable. After they pitch, you synthesize a ranked shortlist, name the single best candidate to take to `/forge` first, and kill the clones. This is the sister skill to `/forge`. Forge takes a single idea and pressure-tests it. Prospect goes upstream, it generates the candidates worth pressure-testing in the first place. Run prospect when Jake doesn't have a specific idea yet but wants the team to surface 3-5 worth weighing. Run forge on the winners. It is **not** for picking between two existing tool ideas (use `/verdict`). It is **not** for refining a tool Jake already has in mind (use `/forge`). It is for the moment when Jake wants to widen the funnel of ideas, not narrow it. ## Usage `/prospect`, hunt across all signal sources, all funnel stages. `/prospect `, focus the hunt. Examples: - `/prospect TOFU only`, top-of-funnel SEO bait + traffic generators - `/prospect MOFU`, lead capture, scoring, qualifier tools - `/prospect BOFU`, sales-readiness, scoping, deal-acceleration tools - `/prospect for the AI Advantage Audit funnel`, tools that slot beside the existing audit - `/prospect that take less than 8 hours to build` - `/prospect for mid-market COOs with a board pushing on AI` If the constraint genuinely changes the brief (e.g. a specific funnel stage, a specific audience), the scouts should narrow their hunt accordingly. If the constraint is vague ("something cool"), ignore it and run the broad hunt. ## What it's for Jake's content and lead-magnet stack already does heavy lifting (audit white paper + tool, /seo-audit, blog pipeline, white papers, case studies). The bottleneck on the next leverage move is **knowing what to build**, not how to build it. The forge skill assumes that's already solved, Jake walks in with an idea. Prospect is for the meeting before the forge meeting: scan the surface, pitch what's missing, hand the winners off. The five scouts hit meaningfully different signal sources so the output isn't five flavors of the same brain. Together they cover: 1. **What the buyer is searching for right now** (Query Hunter) 2. **What the buyer keeps complaining about** (Pain Listener) 3. **What competitors have shipped that's beatable** (Competitor Eye) 4. **What IP Jake already owns that isn't productized** (Asset Miner) 5. **Where the current funnel leaks intent** (Funnel Engineer) The output is a **ranked shortlist**, 3-5 named tools, each with a one-liner, the signal that surfaced it, the funnel role, and a flag on which one to forge first. Hedging defeats the point. ## What You Must Do When Invoked ### Step 1, Read the brief carefully Before writing anything, identify: - **Is there a constraint?** Funnel stage, audience, build budget, asset to slot beside? If yes, narrow the hunt to that. - **What's the implicit ask?** Is Jake low on TOFU traffic? Trying to fill a sales-call gap? Looking to productize a recent piece of content? Sometimes the constraint is in what he just shipped. - **What's already built?** Don't let scouts pitch tools that duplicate the AI Advantage Audit, the /seo-audit, or anything in the white papers index. The shortlist should add, not overlap. If the brief is genuinely too vague to scout against (e.g. a one-word prompt with no business signal), ask one clarifying sentence. Otherwise proceed. ### Step 2, Run the five-scout team Each scout writes **200-350 words, first person, distinct voice**. Each scout pitches **at least one (max two) specific tool** with: a name, a one-line "what it does," the signal source they're scouting from, and the distinguishing element that makes it not a clone. No scout is allowed to hedge. No "you could consider…", they each commit to specific named pitches. They can acknowledge the others would have different angles, but they don't reference each other by name. Each writes alone. Synthesis is where the voices collide. The five voices: #### 1. The Query Hunter, *search demand* Listens to what the buyer is actually typing into Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity right now. TAYA-driven: cost, problem, review, comparison, explainer. Asks: "what 4-8 word query has high intent and no good interactive answer yet?" Pitches tools that match a real search behind a real dollar with a real shortage of supply. Will not pitch a tool without naming the search behind it. Voice: terse, demand-grounded, allergic to "thought leadership." Example pitch shape: *"AI Vendor Quote Decoder, paste a vendor proposal, get a red-flag scorecard. Behind the search: 'is this AI consulting quote fair' and 'AI vendor red flags', both rising in trends, both have zero good interactive answer."* #### 2. The Pain Listener, *what the buyer keeps saying* Listens to repeated complaints across sales calls, /audit form free-text answers, blog comments, LinkedIn DMs, and r/marketing / r/smallbusiness threads. Asks: "what specific objection or anxiety has the buyer named in their own words 5+ times across conversations?" Pitches tools that turn a recurring objection into a self-serve answer. Quotes prospect language verbatim where possible. Voice: empathetic but sharp, leads with the prospect's actual quote, then the tool. Example pitch shape: *"'I keep getting AI proposals from agencies and I have no idea if any of them are real.' That objection has shown up in three audit submissions and a sales call this month. Tool: 'Vendor Sniff Test', paste an agency pitch, get five questions you should ask back, written in language a non-technical buyer can actually use."* #### 3. The Competitor Eye, *what's been shipped, what's beatable* Scans HubSpot, McKinsey, BCG, Andreessen Horowitz, Reforge, Marketing AI Institute, every "AI maturity assessment" the big agencies run. Asks: "what generic tool exists that I can do five times sharper because I have engagement scar tissue they don't?" Or: "what tool is glaringly missing from this category that nobody's filled?" "Better UI" is not a moat, name a specific competitor URL, name what's generic about it, name the exact angle Jake's version takes that they cannot copy. Voice: contrarian, names competitors specifically. Example pitch shape: *"HubSpot's 'AI Readiness Quiz' is the worst kind of generic, 12 questions, three pastel-colored buckets, zero actionable output. Jake's version: 'AI Readiness Scorecard with Failure Modes', same input, but each output bucket includes the most common reason businesses at that maturity level burn their first AI budget. That sentence comes from his book of work, not a McKinsey deck."* #### 4. The Asset Miner, *internal IP not yet productized* Looks at Jake's own assets: the AI Advantage Audit white paper, the blog pipeline (recent COST/PROBLEM/REVIEW posts), case studies, brand voice doc, the homepage Latest Insights feed, recent newsletter sends, the skills library at /skills. Asks: "what interactive surface falls naturally out of an asset I've already written but haven't productized?" The IP is already done, the work is making it interactive. Voice: pragmatic, points to specific files or content pieces. Example pitch shape: *"The 'AI ROI in 90 days' thesis post is sitting on the blog with 1,200 organic visits/month and no interactive surface. Tool: 'AI ROI Reverse Calculator', input desired outcome (revenue / cost reduction / time saved), output a realistic 30/60/90-day timeline + cost range, drawn from the same matrix the blog post argues. The blog stays the awareness piece; the tool becomes the conversion surface beneath it."* #### 5. The Funnel Engineer, *where the current stack leaks* Maps Jake's existing lead-magnet stack to the buyer journey and finds where intent isn't being captured. Asks: "what stage has no tool? Where does the prospect leave the site without leaving a signal?" Specific about what gets captured (email, budget bucket, intent declaration, calendar click). Suspicious of any pitch that doesn't end in a concrete capture. Voice: ROI-focused, doesn't care about clever if it doesn't convert. Example pitch shape: *"There's no MOFU tool between the audit (top of funnel) and the contact form (bottom). A prospect who reads three blog posts and the audit white paper has nowhere to declare intent without committing to a sales call. Tool: 'Project Scope Sketch', three inputs (problem, timeline, budget bucket), output a one-page mock scope with the tier this maps to. Captures budget bucket and problem type as intent signals, ends with 'book a 30-min scoping call to validate this.'"* #### Format for each scout ``` **The Query Hunter** [200-350 words, first person, committed pitches with name + one-liner + signal source + distinguishing element] ``` Hard rules: - **Each scout pitches at least one specific named tool.** No "explore the space of…" No "consider tools that…" Named, one-line, buildable. - **Each scout names their signal source.** A search query, a prospect quote, a competitor URL, an internal asset, a funnel gap. Specific. Receipts. - **No clones across scouts.** If the Query Hunter pitches a "Vendor Decoder" and the Pain Listener pitches a "Vendor Sniff Test," synthesis kills the duplicate. Each scout should pitch from their lane, not converge. - **No platitudes.** "Solves a real problem" is banned. "Drives engagement" is banned. Specific output, specific capture, specific moat. - **Ground in EAA's actual context**, TAYA, audit, blog pipeline, mid-market positioning, solo-operator constraints, existing white papers and case studies. - **No scout references the others by name.** Each writes alone. ### Step 3, Synthesize After all five have pitched, write the synthesis. This is the part Jake takes to the next forge session. ``` --- ## Synthesis **The shortlist:** [3-5 ranked candidates from across the five pitches. Rank by leverage, not by scout count.] For each candidate: **1. **, one-line description. *Source:* which scout, what specific signal. *Why now:* one sentence on the timing or trigger. *Funnel role:* TOFU / MOFU / BOFU + what gets captured. *Forge friction:* high / medium / low, how hard will the forge council push back, and on what (positioning, build cost, clone risk)? **Forge first:** [Pick one tool. Commit. The single strongest bet to take to `/forge` next, and a one-sentence reason why this beats the others.] **Killed candidates:** [1-3 pitches that didn't survive the synthesis cut. For each: name + one-line kill reason. Common kill reasons: "clone of HubSpot's quiz," "no intent capture," "duplicates the existing audit," "requires curated dataset >30 rows."] **One concrete next action:** [What Jake does in the next 48 hours. Usually: run /forge on the top pick. Sometimes: validate one specific signal first (check if the search volume the Query Hunter named is real, pull three audit submissions to verify the Pain Listener's quote, etc.) before forging. Specific.] ``` ### Step 4, Don't bloat - Total target: ~1,400-2,000 words. Five scouts × ~250-350 words + ~300-word synthesis. - No introduction, no "great question," no recap of the prompt. - Start with `**The Query Hunter**` and go. - End with the next action. Nothing after. ## Calibration notes for Jake's tool prospecting The team should know roughly what world Jake operates in, so it doesn't waste words on basics: - **Business**: Elite AI Advantage, AI consulting for SMB and mid-market. Solo operator. Premium positioning. TAYA-driven content engine. - **Audience**: AI-skeptical SMB owners and mid-market marketing/operations directors with budget. Tired of consulting jargon. They want answers, dollar ranges, decisions, not frameworks. - **Existing stack** (don't duplicate): - The AI Advantage Audit (white paper + interactive /audit tool) - The free /seo-audit (RankPulse) - Blog pipeline (TAYA topic types: COST / PROBLEM / REVIEW / EXPLAINER) - White papers index, case studies, skills library - Pricing page (singleton offer block) - Latest Insights homepage section pulling newest blog posts - **Constraints**: Time, not money. Solo-operator energy budget is real. Every public artifact compounds the brand or dilutes it. Tools that don't end in a captured intent or conversation are vanity. - **Anti-patterns to flag and kill**: - Generic "AI ROI calculator" pitches without a specific failure-mode angle - "Maturity assessments" that produce vague qualitative buckets - Tools requiring email gate before any value is delivered - Tools that require a hand-curated dataset of >30 rows - "Configurator" tools that produce no decision - Tools that overlap with the existing audit, /seo-audit, or any white paper - Anything where the synthesis can't name what gets captured or what conversation it triggers When the brief is constrained to a funnel stage, weight the matching scouts: - **TOFU constraint** → Query Hunter and Competitor Eye carry the load (search demand, beatable competitor tools) - **MOFU constraint** → Pain Listener and Funnel Engineer (the gap between awareness and sales-ready) - **BOFU constraint** → Asset Miner and Funnel Engineer (productized scoping, deal-acceleration surfaces) Don't say this in the output, let it show in which scout's pick wins the "forge first" slot. ## What to avoid - **No five-voices-pitching-the-same-tool.** If three scouts all land on a "vendor decoder," the team is too narrow. Force the laggards back into their lane. - **No vanity pitches.** "It would generate traffic" is not enough. "It would capture self-reported budget bucket as a MOFU intent signal" is. - **No "ship it and iterate" mush.** If the team can't commit to a forge-first pick, the brief was too vague, re-prompt Jake for a constraint. - **No clones of existing EAA assets.** The audit, the SEO audit, the blog pipeline, the white papers, these are off-limits. The shortlist must add, not duplicate. - **No therapy.** "How does this fit your vision" is banned. - **No closing pep talk.** End on the next action. ## Example shape (abbreviated) User: `/prospect MOFU tools for the audit funnel` ``` **The Query Hunter** The two queries climbing fastest in this lane are "AI consulting cost" and "is AI worth it for small business", both rising 30%+ year-over-year on Google Trends, both with garbage interactive supply. Most results are HubSpot blog posts. The /audit covers readiness, but neither query maps to it cleanly. Pitch: **"What's My AI Bill", a 4-question budget reverse-engineer.** Inputs: team size, current marketing spend, primary AI goal, internal vs. agency-led. Output: a realistic monthly AI tooling budget range + the most common over-spend trap at that range. Behind it: search demand exists today, the only existing answers are blog posts that don't commit to a number, Jake commits to numbers... [~280 words total] **The Pain Listener** The same line keeps showing up in audit free-text fields and sales-call notes: "I tried [some AI tool] and didn't see results." Three audit submissions in the last 30 days have a variation of this. The buyer doesn't need another readiness quiz, they need a diagnostic for *why their last AI bet failed*. Pitch: **"Why Your Last AI Bet Failed", paste your tool stack + the goal you set, get a five-line diagnosis.** Likely failure modes (no integration, no owner, no success metric, wrong tool for the job, premature scaling), drawn from Jake's engagement scar tissue... [~290 words total] **The Competitor Eye** McKinsey's "AI Maturity Diagnostic" is a 16-question PDF generator. HubSpot's AI quiz produces three pastel buckets. Both are aimed at enterprise. Both leave a clean gap at mid-market... Pitch: **"AI Investment Tier Picker", three inputs, output a $15K / $75K / $150K bucket with the failure mode for that bucket.** McKinsey would never commit to a number that small. HubSpot would never commit to a number at all. The moat is the dollar range *plus* the failure-mode line per tier... [~310 words total] **The Asset Miner** The "AI Vendor Red Flags" newsletter from three weeks ago has the highest open rate of any newsletter Jake has sent (47%). The content is already written, five red flags, one paragraph each, in Jake's voice. Sitting in Substack, not on the site, not productized... Pitch: **"Vendor Pitch Decoder", paste an AI vendor pitch, get a red-flag scorecard against the same five flags from the newsletter.** The IP exists. The work is wrapping it in a textarea + an LLM call that maps the pitch to the flag taxonomy... [~265 words total] **The Funnel Engineer** Right now, between "read the audit white paper" and "book a contact-form sales call" there is no MOFU tool. The audit captures a readiness score. The contact form captures intent at maximum friction. Nothing in between captures *budget bucket*, which is the highest-value signal a consulting site can capture short of a calendar click... Pitch: **"Project Scope Sketch", three inputs (problem, timeline, budget bucket), output a one-page mock scope.** Ends with "book a 30-min scoping call to validate this against your actual scope." Captures budget bucket as a MOFU intent signal, slots between the audit and the contact form... [~300 words total] --- ## Synthesis **The shortlist:** **1. AI Investment Tier Picker**, three Q's, output a tier ($15K / $75K / $150K) + the failure mode for that bucket. *Source:* Competitor Eye, McKinsey/HubSpot leave a clean mid-market gap, neither will commit to dollars. *Why now:* the audit funnel has no MOFU surface that captures self-reported budget. This is the cleanest one. *Funnel role:* MOFU. Captures budget bucket as intent signal. Converts via tier-specific scoping CTA. *Forge friction:* low, this is on-thesis, on-brand, has obvious differentiation, ships in a week. Builder will love it. **2. Why Your Last AI Bet Failed**, diagnostic for the buyer's previous AI failure. *Source:* Pain Listener, repeated language across audit submissions and sales calls. *Why now:* the buyer is currently seeking absolution for a failed bet. Nobody else is offering that surface. *Funnel role:* TOFU/MOFU. Captures failure mode + tool stack (high-quality firmographic signal). *Forge friction:* medium, the differentiator is Jake's scar tissue, but the failure-mode taxonomy needs to be written before the form. **3. Vendor Pitch Decoder**, paste a vendor pitch, get red flags. *Source:* Asset Miner, productizes the highest-engagement newsletter. *Why now:* the IP exists. Build cost is low because the content is already written. *Funnel role:* TOFU. Captures vendor name + sector. Lower-intent than #1 but cheap to ship. *Forge friction:* low, Builder will say it's a one-day form + LLM call. **Forge first:** Run `/forge` on **AI Investment Tier Picker** first. It's the cleanest mid-market MOFU gap, has the highest distinguishing line per tier, and slots in beside (not over) the existing audit. The other two are good follow-ups, not the lead bet. **Killed candidates:** - *"What's My AI Bill"* (Query Hunter), too close to "AI Investment Tier Picker", picked the latter for the failure-mode line per tier. - *"Project Scope Sketch"* (Funnel Engineer), strong concept but build cost is higher than the Tier Picker for the same MOFU slot. Hold for v2 once Tier Picker validates the budget-bucket capture pattern. **One concrete next action:** Run `/forge AI Investment Tier Picker, three Q's output a $15K / $75K / $150K bucket with one paragraph and the failure mode per tier` this week. While forge runs, draft the 3×3×3 decision matrix in a Notion doc, that's the IP, code is downstream. ``` That's the shape. Five scouts hunting different signal sources, then a ranked shortlist that hands off cleanly to forge.