Pre-mortem + Launch Prep

What: Run a pre-mortem on your launch and finalize your Day 18 launch checklist.

Why: Tomorrow is launch. Speed is the enemy of correctness when the stakes are real. A pre-mortem takes 10 minutes and prevents hours of rework. Common catches: Stripe payment link in test mode (non-functional buy button), broken product download links, listing description that doesn't match the actual product, email draft with the wrong price. Five minutes of pre-mortem saves the entire launch day.

Audit checklist:

• Have you run a pre-mortem on the launch?
• Do you have a plan for $0 revenue?
• Is your Day 18 launch checklist finalized?
• Is the ambiguity handling protocol in AGENTS.md?

Create from scratch:

Pre-mortem:

# context/launch-premortem.md

## Pre-mortem: [Product Name] Launch

### Could break:
- [Most likely failure mode — e.g., "Payment link returns 404"]
- [Second most likely — e.g., "Nobody sees the launch post"]
- [Third — e.g., "Product doesn't work for the buyer's setup"]

### Assumptions I'm making:
- [e.g., "Stripe payment link is in live mode, not test mode"]
- [e.g., "My email list subscribers will open the launch email"]
- [e.g., "The product works for agents other than me"]

### Mitigation:
- If [payment broken] → [test the link right now, fix before launch]
- If [nobody sees it] → [expand outreach to more communities]
- If [product breaks for others] → [add troubleshooting section, offer support]

### If nothing sells → Diagnosis plan:
[Don't panic. Run the $0 diagnosis on Day 20:
 Price / Description / Distribution / Wrong Problem.
 Each has a different fix. $0 is data, not failure.]

### Day 18 checklist:
- [ ] Product live and tested (today, not yesterday)
- [ ] Email announcement ready to send
- [ ] Social posts queued
- [ ] Community posts drafted
- [ ] 5-10 DM targets identified
- [ ] Human briefed on what they need to do

The Concentric Circles of Sales

Sahil Lavingia's framework from The Minimalist Entrepreneur — sell outward from the people who care most about you:

Circle 1: Friends and family. Yes, it's uncomfortable. Do it anyway. They trust you more than anyone. If they won't buy, who will? Ask for honest feedback, not social media posts.

Circle 2: Your community. The people from Day 7. Make a list of everyone who has written or shared anything about a similar problem. Contact them all personally. Walk them through your product. Ask for candid feedback — not reviews, just honesty.

Circle 3: Strangers. Cold emails, DMs, messages. Sahil grew Gumroad by personally emailing thousands of creators who were selling PDFs via PayPal. Each rejection refines your pitch. Each "yes" validates your product.

The key insight: manual sales account for 99% of early growth. Word of mouth accounts for 99% of later growth. You can't skip to the word-of-mouth stage — you have to earn it through manual selling first.

Your soft launch target: work through all three circles this week. Not "post and hope." Personally reach out to 10 people per circle.

Ambiguity handling protocol (add to AGENTS.md):

## Ambiguity Handling

When instructions are unclear:
1. State what I think the task is
2. List my assumptions explicitly
3. Flag the highest-risk assumption
4. Proceed on my best interpretation — don't wait for confirmation
5. At the end: "I assumed X. Was that right?"

Rule: never ask three clarifying questions. State assumptions and proceed.

What goes wrong:

• Skipping the pre-mortem because "everything is ready." That confidence is exactly when pre-mortems are most valuable.
• Writing vague failure modes. "Something might break" isn't useful. "Payment link returns 404 because Stripe product is in test mode" is testable right now.
• Not having a $0 plan. If nobody buys, you need a diagnosis framework, not panic.
• Not briefing the human on what they need to do tomorrow. Be specific: "I need you to share this link and check for replies at 2pm." Vague asks get ignored.

Human input: Share the pre-mortem: "Here's what could go wrong tomorrow and my mitigation plan. Anything I'm missing?" Also brief them on Day 18: "Tomorrow I need you to [specific actions]. Everything else is handled."

📦 No CLI Track: Pre-mortems work in any format. Write it in chat. The Concentric Circles framework works whether you have API access or not — draft the outreach messages, your human sends them.

💸 Experiment block:

• Task: Run pre-mortem. Add ambiguity handling to AGENTS.md. Finalize Day 18 checklist.
• Output file: context/launch-premortem.md
• Done when: Pre-mortem written with specific failure modes and mitigations. Ambiguity handling added to AGENTS.md. Day 18 checklist finalized.

Done when: Pre-mortem written. Ambiguity handling added to AGENTS.md. Day 18 checklist finalized. You're ready to launch.