SAMPLE RUN

Inventory

Output of Phase 1 (Take Stock). Confirmed by the user on 2026-08-30.

Skills

What colleagues ask for that is not in the job description. The user is a project coordinator at a mid-sized marketing agency. Colleagues come to her for two things: turning a messy brief into a working plan with owners and dates, and building Notion workspaces that people actually keep using. She has set up the team's Notion workspace twice and rebuilt a client-onboarding flow that the agency still runs.

The 30-minute topic. Planning a wedding without losing your mind. She planned her own wedding in 2024 in a Notion workspace she built from scratch (budget, vendors, guest list, timeline, decision log) and has since walked two friends through the same setup. She can talk about vendor contracts, timeline pitfalls and "who decides what by when" for longer than 30 minutes.

Non-obvious skills, as the user rated them.

Skill	Level	Evidence
Notion (databases, relations, templates, sharing)	Strong	Two team workspaces, one wedding workspace, two friend setups
Process design (who, what, by when)	Strong	Day job for five years
Writing clear instructions	Solid	Onboarding docs at the agency
Visual design	Weak	Uses Canva templates, no design training
Marketing and selling	Weak	Has never sold anything online

Time

Realistic, not aspirational: 6 hours per week. Tuesday and Thursday evenings (2 hours each), Sunday morning (2 hours). The user first said "10 hours", then corrected it after listing a normal week: two evenings are gone to sport and family, and Friday evenings are unreliable. Six is the number that survives a bad week.

Money

• Upfront budget: $600, already set aside. Not to be exceeded without a decision.
• Runway: the user can sustain this for 6 months with zero return without touching savings meant for other things.
• No expectation of replacing the day job. A target of a few hundred dollars per month would justify the hours; the exact number is set with the Business Model Builder.

Tools and platforms already known

Notion (expert), Google Workspace (daily), Canva (basic), Gumroad and Etsy (as a buyer only), Instagram (private account, no audience). Works on a MacBook.

Network

Three people who qualify:

1. A cousin who works as an independent wedding planner, three years in, roughly 15–20 weddings a year, one part-time assistant. Would give blunt feedback.
2. A former colleague who sells printable planners on Etsy on the side, around $400 a month according to her. Knows the marketplace mechanics.
3. A friend who runs a two-person design studio. Has launched two small digital products, one of which failed. Useful for the "what would you do differently" conversation.

Decision point: ready or not ready

Ready. Six hours a week clears the 5-hour threshold, the budget is real money already set aside, and the runway is six months. The weak spots (marketing, design) are known and not fatal for a first product. Recorded in status.md.

Path chosen

Path A: the user already has an idea. "Sell my Notion wedding-planning template to wedding planners." Pressure test against this inventory before Phase 3:

• Hours: fits. The template exists at roughly 60 %; finishing it is evenings, not months.
• Skills: Notion, yes. Selling, no. Flagged, not fatal.
• Budget: fits with room to spare.
• One sentence: yes.
• Red flag raised by the Architect: the template was built for a couple planning their own wedding. The stated buyer is a professional planner. Those are different people with different problems and different money. The user goes into Phase 3 with that flag on the table.

SAMPLE RUN

Validation results

Output of Phase 3 (Validate With Real People). Confirmed by the user on 2026-09-04.

Note for readers of this sample: the conversations in this document, the five initial ones and the follow-ups, were simulated for this sample run. In a real run, the user talks to five real people this week. Everything else in this document is as the process produced it.

The one-sentence idea going in

"A Notion template that gives wedding planners a complete system for running a wedding, sold as a one-time download."

What would change our mind

Agreed before the conversations, as the process requires:

• Worth eight more weeks: at least three of five people say they would pay for it, and at least two name a price above $40 without being prompted.
• Drop it: planners do not want to run their business in Notion, or the only interested buyers are couples, where the market is already flooded with $10–20 templates.

Who we talked to

#	Role and context	Tools today
1	Independent wedding planner, 3 years, 15–20 weddings a year, one part-time assistant	Aisle Planner (Tier 1, $69.99/month)
2	Independent wedding planner, first year, 6 weddings booked	Google Sheets, HoneyBook Starter ($36/month)
3	Assistant to a planner, day-of coordination and timelines	Google Docs, WhatsApp
4	Recently married, planned the wedding themselves	A $12 Notion template from Etsy
5	Etsy seller of printable and Notion planners, side business	Etsy, Canva

What we asked

How do you run a wedding today? What breaks most often? What have you paid for and what did you stop paying for? If a tool solved your worst problem, what would it cost you not to have it? Would you build your system in Notion, and why not?

What they said

Planner 1 would not move her business into Notion: "I pay Aisle Planner for the contracts, the timeline and the client portal. I am not rebuilding that in a note-taking app." Her recurring problem is not her own system, it is the couple's side of the work: getting decisions and information out of couples on time. "I send a checklist by email and then I chase. Every wedding, the same forty emails." She would pay for something her couples would actually use, "but only after I've seen it work with one couple".

Planner 2 is price-sensitive and interested, but with a condition: "Anything the couple sees has to look like it came from a professional. If it looks like a spreadsheet, I lose the premium." She currently sends couples a Google Sheet and dislikes it, and the chase is the same as Planner 1's: "Half my evenings are reminder emails about decisions they promised me two weeks ago." She said she would pay "fifty to a hundred, once" for something that makes her look organised to the couple.

Planner 3 has no budget authority and no interest in changing tools. Her days are spent collecting missing details from couples by WhatsApp and email for the timeline. Useful mainly as a check: the chase is real on the assistant level too, the software decision is not hers to make.

Couple 4 bought a $12 Notion template, customised most of it and would not pay more than $20 for any template. "It was fine. I changed 80 % of it anyway."

Seller 5 was blunt about the Etsy market for Notion wedding templates: "Five thousand listings, most between nine and twenty dollars, sales come from Etsy search and ads eat the margin. It is a volume game and you are late."

What surprised the user

• The assumption that planners would buy a template was wrong. Planners buy software with a client-facing surface, and they pay $36–70 a month for it without complaint.
• The pain every planner described was the same and it was not on the original list: the couple's homework. Decisions, deadlines, information, all collected by hand, by email, over and over.
• The couples market is real but is a $10–20 impulse market with 5,000+ competing listings. The user's template would be one more.

Assessment

Nice to have or actively searched for? For couples: nice to have, and already served. For planners: the original template solves nothing they would pay for. The couple-homework problem is actively felt, currently solved with email and chasing, and two of three planners said they would pay to make it go away if the result looks professional.

Decision: No-go on the original idea. Pivot.

Verdict on "Notion wedding template for planners": NO-GO. Planners do not want to run their business in Notion, and they already pay $36–70 a month for software that does more. The only people who would buy this template are couples, who pay $10–20 and have 5,000+ alternatives on Etsy. Eight weeks on this would be eight weeks on a product with the wrong buyer in a market that is already full.

Pivot: keep the buyer (independent planners), change the product. Not a system for the planner, but a couple-facing portal the planner hands to each couple: a branded Notion page with the decisions due, deadlines, timeline and vendor contacts, with forms the couple fills in without an account, so answers land in the planner's workspace instead of forty emails. Sold to planners as a one-time purchase with a setup guide.

Follow-up conversations (2 of the 2–3 required): Planner 1 said she would trial it with her next couple if it takes under an hour to set up. Planner 2 said "yes, if it looks like mine" and asked for the price. Both fit the pivot. One more conversation with a planner outside the user's network is scheduled before Stage 2 starts.

SAMPLE RUN

Idea

Compressed description of the validated idea. Written after the third follow-up conversation on 2026-09-06 (a planner outside the user's network, found through a local wedding directory, who described the same forty-emails problem unprompted).

What it is

The Couple Portal. A Notion template that an independent wedding planner duplicates once per couple, brands with her name and colours, and shares as a link. The couple sees one page: what is decided, what is due by when, the running timeline, vendor contacts and files. Decisions are submitted through forms on the page, without a Notion account, and land in the planner's workspace. Sold as a one-time purchase with a setup guide and three email templates for introducing the portal to a couple.

Who it is for

Independent wedding planners with roughly 5–25 weddings a year who already pay for planning software (Aisle Planner, HoneyBook or similar) or run on spreadsheets, and who collect decisions from couples by email today. First customers: planners in the user's network and their referrals.

What problem it solves

The couple's side of the work. Planners spend hours per wedding chasing decisions and information by email. Their software either has no couple-facing surface that couples actually use, or it lives behind a login couples avoid. The portal replaces the email chase with one branded page and a place for answers to land.

Validation evidence

• 3 of 3 planners described the chase-by-email problem without prompting; 2 of 3 said they would pay, one named "fifty to a hundred, once".
• 3 of 3 follow-up conversations confirmed the pivot (two with planners from the first round, one with a planner outside the network); one planner will trial it with her next couple.
• The original idea (a full planner system in Notion) was rejected by every planner and is recorded as no-go in validation-results.md.
• Evidence against: six people, eight conversations, three of the people from the user's own network. Willingness to pay is stated, not proven, until the first stranger pays.
• Assumption to verify in the MVP: Notion forms accept responses from people without a Notion account. If not, the portal falls back to a shared page plus a free form tool, and the "no login" promise has to be re-checked.

Business type

Online course / templates (digital product, one-time purchase). Specialist plan per the deployment matrix: Market Analyst, Business Model Builder, Pricing Strategist, Content Strategist, Audience & Growth Strategist, MVP Planner, Launch Readiness Agent, Product Quality Reviewer. This sample run stops after the Launch Readiness Agent; the Content Strategist, Audience & Growth Strategist and Product Quality Reviewer were not run for the sample.

SAMPLE RUN

Market analysis: the Couple Portal

Input files read: idea.md, inventory.md, status.md. Prices below were checked on 2026-09-06 from public pricing pages and listings; they change, re-check before launch. Where a number is an estimate, it says so.

Summary

The Couple Portal does not compete with other Notion templates. It competes with two things: the planner's existing software (Aisle Planner, HoneyBook) and the free default, a checklist sent by email. The software is expensive and built for the planner, not the couple. The email is free and hated. The gap is a couple-facing surface that looks professional, needs no login, and costs the planner a one-time amount instead of another subscription. The market is small and reachable, which is the right shape for six hours a week. The risk is not competition; it is that planners will accept the email pain rather than change a habit.

1. Competitors and alternatives

1.1 Aisle Planner (direct, for planners who pay for software)

Wedding-specific planning software. Pricing checked (March 2026 pricing article): Sales Essential $49.99/month (sales and business tools, no project management), Tier 1 $69.99/month (up to 15 active projects), Tier 2 $109.99/month (16–25 projects), higher tiers to $229.99/month. Includes lead management, proposals and contracts, wedding timeline creation, and a guest website with RSVP.

Positioning: the complete system for professional planners. Weakness relevant to us, as stated by a paying customer: Planner 1 pays Tier 1 and still chases decisions by email. In her words, the couple-facing parts of her system sit behind a login her couples do not use. The tools exist; the couple does not go there. That is the gap.

1.2 HoneyBook (indirect, generic client management)

Client management for creative service businesses (photographers, planners, designers), not built for weddings specifically. Pricing checked: Starter $36/month ($29 annual), Essentials $59/month ($49 annual), Premium $129/month ($109 annual). Known for interactive proposals and workflow automation, per a 2026 review. Planner 2 uses Starter for contracts and sends couples a Google Sheet for everything else; she described its client-facing part as "where they sign and pay, not where we plan".

Weakness, from that account: the couple-facing part is built for signing and paying, not for planning. Planners on HoneyBook still need something to hand the couple.

1.3 Notion wedding templates on Etsy (adjacent, wrong buyer)

5,000+ listings in Etsy's search for Notion wedding planner templates. In the listings we sampled, prices ran from roughly $10 to $34, most under $20, several shown with a discount. Built for couples planning their own wedding.

Weakness for the buyer we care about: none of these are made to be handed by a planner to a couple, none are branded for a planner, none route answers back to the planner. They are the market the user's original idea would have entered, and the market the process rejected in Stage 1.

1.4 Generic Notion client-portal templates (adjacent)

Notion's own marketplace lists 441 templates in the client-portal category, labelled "Free + Paid", the first page of them free, aimed at freelancers and agencies. This run did not sample the paid ones' prices; the Pricing Strategist should open ten before setting ours. We did not find a wedding-specific, couple-facing portal in the category search.

Weakness: generic. A planner would have to rebuild the wedding logic (decisions due, timeline, vendors) herself, which is the work she will not do.

1.5 Email plus a spreadsheet (the real competitor)

Free, immediate, and what all three planners do today. Its weakness is the whole business case: forty emails per wedding, decisions lost in threads, and a Google Sheet that makes a premium planner look like an amateur (Planner 2's words, not ours).

The threat is not that email is good. It is that changing a habit costs the planner an hour she does not have during season. The product has to be set up in under an hour or it loses to the status quo.

2. Market gaps

1. A couple-facing surface that couples use. The expensive software has portals behind logins; the couple does not log in. None of the alternatives we looked at offers a page that works from a link.
2. Branding for the planner at a one-time price. The planners we spoke to pay $36–70 a month for their own tools (higher tiers go to $130 and beyond) and resent adding another subscription. A one-time purchase that carries their brand is unoccupied ground.
3. Answers that land somewhere. Every alternative we looked at either collects nothing (a shared page) or collects it into the planner's software behind the couple's login. Forms on a public page that feed a database is the mechanism none of them sells. Whether Notion's forms accept responses without an account is the assumption the MVP checklist tests first.

3. Recommended positioning

"The page you hand every couple." Not a planning system, not a template, not software. A branded page per couple that ends the email chase, set up in under an hour, paid once.

This plays to the user's strengths from inventory.md: process design (the decision-and-deadline logic is the product) and Notion depth (forms, relations, sharing are the implementation). It avoids her weaknesses: no design work beyond a clean default, no ongoing content machine, no sales calls; the planner buys because the page speaks for itself.

Positioning to avoid: "Notion for wedding planners". Every planner we spoke to rejected running her business in Notion. The portal must be presented as something she adds next to Aisle Planner or HoneyBook, not instead of them.

4. Target audience, sharpened

First: independent planners with 5–25 weddings a year who already pay for Aisle Planner or HoneyBook. They have money, they have the pain, and they have a professional standard to protect. Planner 1 and Planner 2 are this person.

Not first: planners with 40+ weddings and staff (assumption: at that volume they have systems and people for the chase), day-of coordinators (no budget, no couple-side work), and couples (wrong product, saturated market).

Where they are: local wedding directories, planner associations, Instagram (as a directory, not as a channel to build), and each other's referrals. The market is small enough that ten personal messages a week is a strategy, not a stopgap.

5. Differentiation

1. No-login couple experience. The page works from a link; decisions are submitted through forms without an account. Demonstrate it in a 60-second screen recording; that recording is the sales page.
2. Under-an-hour setup, guaranteed in writing. Setup guide with a timer in the headline. If it takes longer, the planner gets a 30-minute setup call at no charge. This converts the biggest objection into the offer.
3. The planner's brand, not ours. Name, colours, logo, tone: the couple never sees the product's name. Planners buy the premium look; the invisibility is the feature.

What could make this market difficult

Small addressable base per city, seasonality (Planner 1's remark: nobody changes tools in season), and a habit that costs nothing to keep. If the first ten conversations outside the user's network do not produce three trials, the problem is adoption cost, not positioning, and the setup time is the lever to pull first.

SAMPLE RUN

Business model: the Couple Portal

Input files read: idea.md, market-analysis.md, inventory.md, status.md. Worked through with the user in one session; the two decisions below were hers.

Decisions taken with the user

1. One-time purchase, not a subscription. Evidence from validation: planners resent adding subscriptions and named a one-time price unprompted. A subscription would also need ongoing content to justify it, which six hours a week cannot carry.
2. Setup call included for the first five buyers, then sold separately, with one exception. The biggest objection is setup time. Including a 30-minute call for the first five turns early buyers into references and produces the setup timings the guide needs. After five, the call becomes a $60 add-on so the user's hours stay protected. The exception is the guarantee in the guide: if setup takes longer than an hour, the call is free for anyone. That promise is the product's answer to its biggest objection and stays.

1. Pricing model and its workload

Working price for this document: $79 one-time (the Pricing Strategist confirms or changes it in pricing-strategy.md). Delivered as a Notion template link plus a PDF setup guide and three email templates.

Workload per sale after the first five: near zero. Delivery is automatic through Gumroad, support is answered by the guide, and the template is duplicated by the buyer. Workload per sale for the first five: 30 minutes of call plus 15 minutes of preparation.

2. Customer journey

Step	What happens	Owner
Discovery	Personal message to a planner with a 60-second recording of the couple's view, or a referral from a planner who uses it	User (10 messages a week)
Consideration	Planner opens a public demo portal (a fictional couple) and the setup guide's first page	Product
Payment	Gumroad checkout	Gumroad
Delivery	Gumroad delivers the PDF with the template link and the email templates; the planner duplicates the template into her workspace	Gumroad, Notion
Setup	Under an hour by the guide; first five buyers get a call	User (first five only)
First use	Planner sends the portal to her next couple with email template 1	Planner
Retention	None needed for a one-time product. Ask for a referral and a sentence of feedback after the planner's first wedding with it	User

3. Minimum monthly revenue that justifies the hours

Six hours a week is about 26 hours a month. The user set her threshold at $300 net per month: below that, over six months, the project is a hobby and she would rather know.

Net per sale at $79: Gumroad takes 10 % plus payment processing (about 2.9 % plus $0.30), so roughly $10.50 in fees and about $68.50 net. Five sales a month clears the threshold (about $343). That is the number every later document is measured against: five sales a month, from month three on.

4. Cost structure and break-even

Cost	Amount	Note
Notion	$0	Free plan is enough to build and share the template. Assumption to verify: if form responses or sharing limits require it, Notion Plus at roughly $10–12 a month
Gumroad	$0 fixed	Fees per sale only, see above
Canva	$0	Free plan for the guide's cover and the demo branding
Screen recording	$0	Built into macOS (the user works on a MacBook, see inventory.md)
Domain and website	$0 at launch	The Gumroad page and a public demo portal are the website. A domain is a month-three decision, after five sales
Total fixed	$0–12 a month

Break-even on cash is the first sale. Break-even on the $600 budget is not the right question, because the budget is not being spent: the user decided to keep it in reserve for a paid listing or a designer after the first ten sales.

5. Contingency if nobody buys in 30 days

Diagnose before changing anything. Three cases, one lever each:

Case	Signal	Lever
Reach	Fewer than 20 planners reached the demo portal	Outreach volume: 20 messages a week for two weeks, directories in two more cities
Conversion	20+ saw the demo, no trial requests	The demo: record the couple's view again, shorter, with the forms first; test the headline "the page you hand every couple" against "end the email chase"
Product	Trials started, no purchase	Setup time. Sit with two trial planners, time the setup, cut the template until it is under 45 minutes

Not a lever in the first 30 days: price. With six people's evidence and a $79 ticket, a lower price would hide which of the three problems we have.

Six-month view

Month	Sales	Net	Notes
1	3	$205	The first five buyers get calls, so calls run into month two
2	4	$274	First referrals
3	5	$343	Threshold reached, or the contingency runs
4–6	5–8	$343–548	Setup-call add-on adds $60 per taker

These are targets the launch plan holds the user to, not forecasts. If month three is below five sales, the Launch Readiness Agent's kill criteria decide.

SAMPLE RUN

Pricing strategy: the Couple Portal

Input files read: idea.md, business-model.md, market-analysis.md, inventory.md, status.md.

Summary

Launch price: $79, one price, no tiers, no freemium. Anchored as "one to two months of your planning software, once". Raise to $99 when two things are true: 20 buyers and a version 1.1 with a branding kit. The revenue difference between $79 and $129 is small in the scenarios below; the difference in number of customers is not, and in a referral-driven market customers are the growth engine.

1. Tier structure

One price. Reasons, in order of weight:

1. The buyer has one job to do: hand a page to a couple. There is no "pro" version of that job. A tier would invent a difference the product does not have.
2. Freemium fails on mechanics. A free portal without forms is a shared page, which the planner can build herself in an evening; a free portal with forms is the product. There is nothing to hold back that is not the product.
3. Six hours a week cannot support tiers. Two versions to maintain, two guides, two sets of support questions. The user's time is the scarce resource, not the buyer's willingness to compare.

The one add-on that makes sense is the setup call at $60 after the first five buyers, as decided in business-model.md, with the guide's guarantee untouched: if setup takes longer than an hour, the call is free. That is a service with a real cost, not a tier.

2. Anchoring

The planner's reference price is not "a Notion template" (she thinks of those as the $10–34 things from Etsy, most under $20, see market-analysis.md). Her reference price is her software: $36–70 a month for the HoneyBook and Aisle Planner plans our interviewees use, $432–840 a year on monthly billing. The sales message sets the anchor before the price appears:

You pay for planning software every month. The couple's side of the work still runs on email. The Couple Portal fixes that side, once: $79, yours for every wedding after.

Secondary anchor: the hours. Planner 1 described "forty emails per wedding". At 15 weddings a year that is a real number the planner can feel; the page does not need to invent an hourly rate for her.

What not to do: compare with Etsy templates. The comparison drags the anchor to $15 and undoes the positioning.

3. Competitor comparison

Alternative	Price	Where $79 sits
Aisle Planner Tier 1	$69.99 a month	A little more than one month of it, paid once
HoneyBook Starter	$36 a month	About two months of it, paid once
Etsy Notion wedding templates	$10–34, one-time, for couples	Two to eight times higher, on purpose: different buyer, different job
Generic Notion client-portal templates	Many free; paid prices not sampled in this run	Unknown. Sample ten before launch and record them here
Email plus spreadsheet	$0	Competes on hours, not dollars

$79 sits far above the template market and far below a year of any software. That is the intended position: expensive enough to be taken seriously by someone who pays $70 a month, cheap enough to buy without a decision meeting with herself.

4. Test scenarios

Assumptions, stated as such because there is no sales data yet: ten personal messages a week, about 40 a month, produce 20 planners who open the demo portal (a 50 % open rate is optimistic for cold outreach, realistic for referrals; the launch plan tracks the real number). Conversion from demo to purchase is the unknown; the rates below are guesses that the first 30 days replace with data. Net per sale is price minus Gumroad's 10 % and payment processing.

Scenario	Price	Net per sale	Assumed conversion	Sales per month	Net revenue per month	Customers after 6 months
A	$49	about $42.40	12 %	2.4	about $102	14
B	$79	about $68.50	10 %	2.0	about $137	12
C	$129	about $112	6 %	1.2	about $134	7

Reading: B and C earn the same; B produces almost twice the customers, and customers are where referrals come from. A earns less and pulls the anchor toward the template market. None of the scenarios reaches the five-sales-a-month threshold from business-model.md on outreach alone; the threshold needs referrals, which is another argument for the scenario with the most customers.

5. Launch price versus long-term price

Launch: $79. Not a discount, not a founding price, not a countdown. The first five buyers get the setup call instead of a lower price, which costs the user time rather than anchor.

Long-term: $99, triggered by 20 buyers and version 1.1. The version must contain substance a buyer can see (a branding kit with three colour themes and a logo slot, plus a vendor-contact importer). Raising the price on buyer count alone would be a price increase without a reason, and planners talk to each other.

What would change this recommendation: if the first ten demo viewers all ask "does it work without Notion", the price is not the problem and should not move; the product's dependency is. If three planners say "I'd pay more for X", write X down and put it in version 1.1 rather than raising the price of version 1.0.

SAMPLE RUN

MVP blueprint: the Couple Portal

Input files read: idea.md, business-model.md, inventory.md, status.md.

1. The one thing that delivers value

A couple opens a link, sees what is decided and what is due, and submits a decision through a form without logging in. The planner sees the answer in her workspace. If that loop works and looks professional, the product works. Everything else is packaging.

2. Can it be built in two weekends?

In the equivalent of two weekends, yes, because 60 % exists. The user has no free weekends (inventory.md: two evenings and a Sunday morning, six hours a week), so the question becomes: two weeks of her normal slots. The user's own wedding workspace already has the decision log, timeline and vendor database. What is new is the couple-facing page, the forms and the branding slots. Estimate: week one (6 hours) for the template and the form test, week two (6 hours) for the guide, the emails, the demo portal, the recording and the Gumroad listing.

Cut from version 1.0, explicitly:

• Branding kit with multiple colour themes (version 1.1)
• Vendor-contact importer (version 1.1)
• Any integration with Aisle Planner or HoneyBook (never, unless ten buyers ask)
• Multi-language versions (never at this scale)
• A custom website or domain (month three, after five sales)
• A video course on using it (the guide is six pages; if it needs a course, the template is too complicated)

3. Scope of version 1.0

The template (Notion):

• Welcome page: planner's name, logo slot, colours, a two-line "how to use this page"
• Decisions due: a database view of open decisions with deadlines, each linked to a form ("Submit your decision") that writes into the planner's workspace
• Timeline: the wedding-day and lead-up timeline, read-only for the couple
• Your vendors: contacts and confirmed details, read-only
• Files: contracts and inspiration the planner chooses to share
• Planner side: one dashboard listing all couples, open decisions across couples, and a "duplicate for new couple" instruction at the top

The setup guide (PDF, six pages): duplicate, brand, share, send; with a timer promise on page one ("under an hour, or you get a free setup call", the guarantee from business-model.md) and a troubleshooting page for the three questions every planner will ask (sharing settings, form responses, what the couple sees).

Three email templates: introducing the portal to a new couple, the reminder when a decision is overdue, and the "we're done, here is your archive" message after the wedding.

The demo portal: a public copy for a fictional couple, used in every sales message and on the Gumroad page.

4. Tools, matched to the user's skills

Job	Tool	Why this and not something else
Build and deliver the template	Notion	The user's strongest skill. Delivery is a duplicate link
Sell and deliver	Gumroad	Checkout and delivery of the PDF in one place; no website needed at launch
Guide layout	Canva, then export to PDF	Free, template-driven, matches her basic design level
Demo recording	macOS screen recording, trimmed in QuickTime	Free, no learning curve
Support	Existing email address, answered within 48 hours	Volume will be low; a help desk would be theatre

No custom website, no email tool, no analytics beyond Gumroad's, no paid tools. The $600 stays in reserve, as decided in business-model.md.

5. "Launched" checklist (binary)

• A form submission from a browser with no Notion login lands in the planner's database (the assumption from idea.md; if it fails, the fallback is a shared page plus a free form tool, and the no-login promise is re-checked before anything else is built)
• Template duplicated from a fresh account in under 60 minutes by someone who is not the user (Planner 2 volunteered)
• Demo portal is public and loads on a phone
• Setup guide PDF is exported and opens on a phone
• Three email templates are in the PDF
• Gumroad product is live at $79 with the PDF attached and the template link inside the PDF
• Test purchase completed with a real card and refunded
• 60-second recording of the couple's view is trimmed and uploaded
• Ten planners identified by name for the first outreach week

Nine boxes. When all nine are ticked, it is launched. Not before, not with "nearly".

6. First three paying customers

Day 1 is not a post. It is three messages.

1. Planner 2 from validation, who said "yes, if it looks like mine": the message contains her name already on the demo portal (a copy branded for her) and the price. This is the most likely first sale.
2. Planner 1, the cousin, who will trial it with her next couple: she gets the buy link and the setup call slot for Thursday. If she will not pay full price, that is information, not a discount conversation.
3. The planner from the third follow-up conversation, found through the local directory: same message as to Planner 2, without the pre-branding, with the 60-second recording.

Days 2–7: ten more planners from the same directory and from the two cities where the user's friends got married, one personal message each, no template blast. Every message ends with the demo link, not with the buy link. After week one the rhythm is ten messages a week, every week, as business-model.md assumes.

If by day 14 fewer than two planners have asked for a trial, one of the three cases in business-model.md's contingency table is emerging; the launch plan's day-30 criteria decide whether to continue, and which lever to pull.

SAMPLE RUN

Launch plan: the Couple Portal

Phase 2 output of the Launch Readiness Agent. Input files read: idea.md, market-analysis.md, business-model.md, pricing-strategy.md, mvp-blueprint.md, inventory.md, status.md.

Result of the pre-launch audit (Phase 1, from pre-launch-review.md)

One important finding, no critical ones: market-analysis.md and mvp-blueprint.md promise every buyer a free setup call if setup takes longer than an hour, while business-model.md and pricing-strategy.md sell the call as a $60 add-on after the first five buyers. A buyer reading the guide and the checkout page would see two different promises. Resolved with the user: the guarantee stays for everyone (a free call when setup exceeds an hour), the $60 add-on is for planners who want a call regardless; both files now say so. Two minor findings were fixed in the files directly: the Etsy price range was quoted as "$10–20" in some places and "$10–34" in others (now "$10–34, most under $20" in the specialist files; the Stage 1 files keep the "$10–20" the Etsy seller gave in her interview); and the planners' software cost appeared as "$36–70" and "$36–130" (now "$36–70 for the plans our interviewees use, higher tiers to $130"). No gaps between promised and delivered scope.

1. The 30 days

Every task fits six hours a week: two evenings of two hours and Sunday morning. Nothing below assumes a free weekend. Launch day is 28 September; the 30-day window runs to 28 October.

Week	Task	Hours	Done when
1 (15–21 Sep)	Finish the template; the no-login form test; Planner 2 runs the 60-minute duplication test	6	Checklist items 1–2 ticked
2 (22–28 Sep)	Demo portal, guide, three emails, Gumroad listing, test purchase, 60-second recording, ten planners named for week three	6	Checklist items 3–9 ticked; the product is launched on 28 Sep
3 (29 Sep–5 Oct)	Day-1 messages to Planners 1, 2 and the directory planner; ten more personal messages; first setup calls	6	Thirteen messages sent, every reply answered within 48 hours
4 (6–12 Oct)	Ten messages; ask every buyer for one sentence of feedback and one referral; write the referral email template	5	Ten sent, feedback collected, template written
5 (13–19 Oct)	Ten messages; setup calls for buyers four and five if they exist	5	Ten sent
6 (20–26 Oct)	Ten messages; collect the numbers for the review	5	Ten sent, numbers in status.md
Day 31 (Thu 29 Oct)	Review with the orchestrator, in the first evening slot after day 30	1	Metrics filled in below, decision made

Not in the plan on purpose: social media posts, a website, a blog, ads. None of them fits the hours, and none of them beats a personal message with a demo link in a market this small.

2. Accountability

The user tells two people the launch date and the day-30 review date before week one starts: the cousin (Planner 1) and the design-studio friend, who has shipped and failed before. Every Sunday she sends both a three-line message: messages sent, demo views, sales. Missing a Sunday counts as a miss and is written into status.md. The orchestrator runs the day-30 review; the date is in status.md.

3. Kill criteria at day 30

Measured from launch day, 28 September, to 28 October.

Outcome	Numbers	Decision
Continue	3 or more paying customers, or 2 customers plus 3 planners in an active trial	Keep going. Month three's target of five sales stands
Diagnose	1–2 customers; or 0 customers with 20 or more demo views; or 0 customers with fewer than 20 demo views but 20 % or more of messages answered	Run the contingency table from business-model.md (written for zero sales, it applies to one or two as well): reach, conversion or product. One lever, two weeks, then re-measure
Stop	0 customers, fewer than 20 demo views and fewer than 20 % of messages answered	The market will not talk to a stranger about this. Stop the outreach, keep the product on Gumroad, do not invest another hour. Write the learnings into memory.md

What does not count as a reason to continue: "people said it looks great", interest without a demo view, and the user's own conviction. Only the numbers in the table.

4. The one metric

Demo views per week, counted as clicks on the short link the user puts in every message (a free short-link service with a click counter; the demo portal is never linked any other way). Sales lag it, messages precede it; demo views are the middle of the funnel and the number the user can move every week. Target: 5 a week from week four, which is ten messages at the 50 % open rate pricing-strategy.md assumes (week three sends thirteen and should show a little more). Ten a week would mean referrals have started; that is the signal to watch for. Written down every Sunday.

5. After 30 days

If it works (continue): the first reinvestment is hours, not dollars. Move two of the six weekly hours from building to outreach permanently; the product needs no more building. The $600 stays untouched until the first ten sales, as decided in business-model.md. At 20 sales and version 1.1, raise the price to $99 as pricing-strategy.md sets out. Consider a domain and a one-page site only if referrals mention "I couldn't find you".

If it does not work (stop at day 30 or after the diagnosis cycle): export Gumroad analytics and the short-link counts, write one page of learnings into memory.md (which messages got replies, which did not, what the demo viewers asked), and take two weeks off the project before deciding anything. Options after the pause, in order of cost: reuse the template as a portfolio piece for freelance Notion setup work; sell the couple-side page to couples at $19 as the market actually is; or close the project. No coaching pivot, no "maybe as a course": if a one-page product for a defined buyer does not sell in 30 days of personal outreach, the answer is in the market, not in the format.

6. What the user takes away regardless

A working portal she can use for the next friend's wedding, eight documents that describe a real business instead of an idea, some forty messages to planners and every conversation that came out of them, and a number: the demo-to-sale conversion in this market. That number is worth more than the $600 she did not spend.