Marketing Agentic SDLC Skill

Evidence-First marketing planning protocol for AI coding agents (Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Google Antigravity, Codex). The sibling of @antoneeo/agentic-sdlc-skill, transplanted from software engineering to marketing strategy.

What it does

Turns an AI agent into a disciplined marketing strategist that produces a professional, professionally-recognized marketing plan (SOSTAC structure) with three engineered guarantees:

1. Evidence ledger — every market number is classified FACT / BENCHMARK / ASSUMPTION and carries an [EV-nn] reference to its source. No invented numbers.
2. Mechanical validator (mkt_check.py + sdlc_core.py — the entry point plus the family's shared spine; copy both, or neither) — budget sums (±1%), funnel math recomputed cell by cell (±5%) and the objective→tactic→KPI chain are checked mechanically, not rhetorically: check, validate, ledger, budget, funnel, trace, index, plus the spine's stale/mark/benefit/gate/plan/orient/migrate. benefit reports what the review gates have already caught, beside what the doctrine costs to read; it always exits 0 and carries no verdict.
3. Adversarial CMO review — an independent, fresh-context reviewer attacks the strategy before the user sees it (generic-positioning swap test, untraced claims, orphan tactics).

The agent asks the user only for facts the user uniquely owns (product, price, budget, capacity); everything else — market sizing, competitor analysis, channel benchmarks — is derived from real web research.

Install

npm i -g @antoneeo/mkt-agentic-sdlc-skill

That's it — the skill is copied into every detected AI client automatically (the package's postinstall runs the installer). Restart the agent to load it.

If your npm blocks install scripts (--ignore-scripts, some CI/pnpm setups), run the installer manually:

npx mkt-sdlc-install-skill

The mkt-sdlc-install-skill command is only on your PATH after a global (-g) install. After a local npm i, invoke it via npx as above.

Initialize a project:

cd my-business-project
npx mkt-sdlc-init        # creates mkt_docs/ + protocol pointers

It also wires the SessionStart orientation hook into .claude/, so an agent opening the project is handed the reading guide, the generated manifest, the guide router and the last handoff before it does anything — instead of only when it remembers to look. That wiring used to be a manual step documented in ENFORCEMENT.md; being manual, it was skipped, and a project could run fully governed with an agent that never met the process.

The hook command names a validator, so where that validator lives decides which file gets it: a repo that vendors it gets a repo-relative command in the shared .claude/settings.json (portable — commit it); otherwise the path is machine-specific and goes to the git-ignored .claude/settings.local.json, and each teammate runs init once. Re-running init never duplicates the hook, and a hook whose validator no longer resolves is reported as broken with the correction rather than counted as installed.

Engagement levels (Rule Zero)

| Level | Scope | Process | |---|---|---| | E1 Quick | single question / asset feedback | direct answer, sourced numbers | | E2 Campaign | one campaign or channel plan | mini-brief + targeted research + campaign doc | | E3 Full Plan | complete marketing plan | full SOSTAC workflow, 9 phases, all gates | | Research Spike | time-boxed market question | mkt_docs/spikes/RESEARCH_[topic].md |

Several people, one project

The workstream registry (audit/handoff.md) is generated from one file per open workstream, so two people opening or closing two workstreams on two branches edit two different files and their merge is clean. Row-per-workstream alone was not enough — a file-global Date: header defeats row-level ownership — so the header is derived from the sources and no writer touches it. The generated view can still conflict; that conflict is resolved by re-running index, never by hand, and validate refuses CLEAN until the file matches its sources. The append-only review log gets merge=union (a built-in driver, no per-clone configuration). It all works with no VCS at all: it is files and a generator.

Modes

• Standalone — everything on the filesystem under mkt_docs/.
• Hybrid with devPNT — plans and strategy artifacts governed as versioned devPNT documents (MKT-VISION, ICP/Personas, Threat Map, Strategy, Tactical Plan, Measurement Plan), with proposal/approval workflow and independent review gates.

The Hybrid seam ships as its own file, hybrid.md — the authoritative hierarchy and the ownership matrix naming which artifact is mastered where. A Standalone engagement never reads it, which is why it is not in the operating contract every session loads.

Installing or updating the npm package wires the session-orientation hook machine-wide (user-level Claude Code settings; removal is a standing opt-out that no update overrides -- ENFORCEMENT.md par.4).

The family: three lenses, one spine

| Package | Faithful to | Unit of work | |---|---|---| | @antoneeo/agentic-sdlc-skill | this repository's code | feature | | @antoneeo/kb-agentic-skill | the documents you supply | topic | | @antoneeo/mkt-agentic-sdlc-skill (this one) | market evidence | engagement |

Triage, the Vision Gate, the review gates, the guide router, question discipline and the validator spine are byte-identical across the three; only the fidelity discipline and the vocabulary change. When two live in the same project, routing.md decides which lens owns a given piece of work — with the market-facing override: anything whose purpose is to persuade the market is this lens's, whatever its source.

Which model to run it on

The skill names capability tiers, never providers — a model name in doctrine rots at the next release. The binding is yours to make, and the rule is one line:

A session's floor is the highest floor among the roles it performs itself.

Authoring a governed artifact — the vision, the analysis, the use cases, the threat model — is a deep-tier role: its output is judgement, and nothing downstream scores it. So a session that will DESIGN wants your strongest model. A session that only executes an already-approved plan, or does small maintenance, can sit a tier lower. The cheapest tier is the wrong choice for the main session whatever the task, because the failure there is not a wrong answer — it is silently not applying the process: a triage never run, a router verdict declared without the lookup, a gate nobody noticed. That failure is invisible to every check in here.

The reviewer's tier is not automatically yours. On some clients a subagent inherits the session's model; on others it takes one from its own definition, so a strong session can be reviewed by a weak one — and a weak session can buy a strong review. Set it deliberately; the model column in the review log is where the choice becomes visible.

Avoid one combination: authoring below the floor AND reviewing below the floor on the same unit. One disclosed weakness is a disclosed weakness; two is an artifact nobody competent ever read. Where your client offers nothing better, the review still runs and both facts are recorded — a disclosed worst case beats skipping the review.

License

Apache-2.0 — the full terms are in the LICENSE file, the attribution in NOTICE. Copyright 2026 Antonio Pinto.

If you redistribute this skill, or a version you modified, keep LICENSE and NOTICE with it.

Using the skill in your own project carries no obligation: the documents it creates or templates there are yours, and so is a copy of the validator and its tests placed in that project to check its own documents.

Versions up to 0.11.0 were released under the MIT license and remain available under it.

If you use the skill in commercial work, a mention on your product page or website is appreciated. It is a request, not a condition of the license. A ready-made badge:

[![Made with mkt-agentic-sdlc](https://img.shields.io/badge/made%20with-mkt--agentic--sdlc-blue)](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@antoneeo/mkt-agentic-sdlc-skill)