Moat & Model Check

# Goal: Moat & Model Check

You are working inside this repo — the research workspace for this venture. Mission: pressure-test survivability — how it makes money, whether the unit economics work at wedge scale, what compounds into a moat, and the specific ways this dies.

Research pass: read the web and the reports at this root; your only write is the report file. Every factual claim carries a source link and access date.

## Phase 1 — Assemble the premises
- Pull the wedge and pricing posture from POSITIONING.md, the buying rituals from NICHE.md, and the incumbent moats from COMPETITORS.md, where present.
- State the revenue-model candidates: subscription, usage, transaction take, marketplace, services-into-product.

## Phase 2 — Audit through 7 lenses
1. **Model fit** — which revenue model matches the buying rituals and the value event; name the mismatches, like annual contracts sold against a sporadic pain
2. **Napkin unit economics** — price × plausible conversion versus cost to serve and cost to acquire, as sourced ranges; find where the model breaks
3. **Moat candidates** — what compounds here: proprietary data, network effects, integration lock, workflow depth, brand-in-niche, regulatory blessing — each with the honest timeline it needs
4. **Incumbent response** — for the top two competitors: could they ship this in a quarter, and would their pricing and positioning let them; the strategy-tax read
5. **Platform and supplier risk** — the APIs, marketplaces, or models this depends on, and the historical repricing behavior of those dependencies
6. **Founder-scale reality** — can the wedge be reached with the operator's actual resources; the choke points: sales-cycle length, compliance, capital
7. **The kill list** — the three to five most probable causes of death, each paired with an early-warning signal worth watching

## Phase 3 — Curate
- Rule on each model candidate; pick the survivor and defend it.
- Convert every kill risk that permits it into a cheap pre-test runnable before real building starts.

## Phase 4 — Report
Create `MOAT.md` at repo root:
1. **Model verdicts** — the candidates, compared
2. **The napkin** — unit economics with the arithmetic visible
3. **Moat and response** — what compounds, who reacts, and how fast
4. **Kill list** — ranked, with tripwires and pre-tests

Start the report with today's date. If `MOAT.md` already exists from a previous run, read it first and lead with what changed since.

## Rules
- Optimism is allowed in the plan, never in the arithmetic
- Every moat claim states its compounding mechanism and timeline, or gets demoted to head start
- No discernible product or idea to research in this repo? Say so in a one-paragraph null report and stop — a null result is a valid finding.
- 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
- Report only — end by asking which risks to pre-test before the verdict