Positioning & Wedge

# Goal: Positioning & Wedge

Mission: Choose an evidence-backed beachhead and positioning wedge for the selected venture.

Read repo instructions, CHARTER.md and relevant notes/reports at root and in reports/. Charter constraints bound recommendations. In a conductor, read INDEX.md and venture-run.json for scope, criteria, decisions and input versions; otherwise record these in this report. Your only write is this report. No outreach, purchases or code changes.

## Phase 1 — Anchor
- Read applicable NICHE.md, DEMAND.md, COMPETITORS.md and MARKET.md from root/reports/. Extract buyer, pain, budget and credible gaps.
- Resolve scope conflicts; name missing inputs and uncertainty. Do not present a recommendation as an operator selection.

## Phase 2 — Investigate
1. **Beachhead** — narrow buyer with acute pain, sufficient reachable demand and operator access.
2. **Alternative** — competitor, workaround or doing nothing; why switch now?
3. **Category** — existing category versus a new explanation, including education cost.
4. **Difference** — compare proposed claim with live competitor pages. Limited search cannot prove universal uniqueness.
5. **Objections** — real buyer/review language and evidence-based responses; label hypotheses.
6. **Price** — posture and billing unit tied to value and competitive options; mark untested willingness to pay.
7. **Message** — compare drafts against actual competitor copy for clarity, credibility and relevance.

## Phase 3 — Decide
- Produce two or three internally consistent options if evidence supports them; do not pad.
- Recommend one and state flip conditions. Obtain selection or exercise explicit delegation before 66–67. A changed buyer/pain is a pivot requiring upstream revalidation.

## Phase 4 — Report
Create `POSITIONING.md` at repo root:
1. **Options** — buyer, alternative, category, claim, price, evidence and counterevidence.
2. **Recommended wedge** — reasoning, objections, scope and selection status/authority.
3. **Draft messages** — one-liner and supporting claims traceable to research; hypotheses labeled.
4. **Next test** — cheapest message/price test, success/stop criteria and flip conditions.

Start with today's date. If `POSITIONING.md` already exists, read it first and lead with what changed; preserve prior work before an authorized replacement. Include scope, input versions, stable finding IDs, evidence, counterevidence and next steps; use the conductor's metadata when supplied.

## Rules
- Separate direct evidence, proxies, inference and assumptions. Material factual claims need source links and access dates; date events too. Repeated citations are not independent evidence. Disclose inaccessible sources and shortfalls; never invent quotes or numbers.
- Include meaningful counterevidence and what would change the recommendation. Stop at the agreed research budget; if none, state a bounded search plan and unresolved gaps.
- If a `reports/` directory exists at the repo root, write the report there instead of the root.
- Before asking, present the top findings as a ranked list in plain words.
- No defined venture after clarification? Write a one-paragraph null report. Thin research yields provisional positioning with limits, not confident differentiation.
- Report only — end by asking which wedge to select; record authority before carrying it into the model and verdict.