What's on the bench.
Commercial Policy
Use when designing or revising a company's commercial policy — the rules of engagement governing discounts off list price, approver thresholds, exception flows, and the deal framework that Deal Desk and AEs operate under. Covers discount matrix design (ARR band x term length x payment terms x strategic value), commercial policy design, exception policy, discount governance, approval thresholds, deal framework structure, and policy linting (contradictions, gaps, cliff edges, gaming surfaces). For Head of Commercial, Head of Deal Desk, VP Sales, or RevOps at the policy-design moment — NOT per-deal application (that is deal-desk) and NOT pricing model selection (that is pricing-strategist).
Commercial Forecaster
Use when building a quarterly bookings forecast, ARR projection, pipeline forecast, NRR projection, or commit/best-case/pipe-only board number — especially when the CRO needs to walk the board through funnel math + cohort ARR + per-stage conversion assumptions without the theatre of a single undefended number. Decomposes pipeline into commit, best-case, and pipe-only tiers; projects cohort-level NRR/GRR to surface leaky cohorts before they show up in the consolidated number; scores per-stage funnel confidence so soft-floor stages get treated differently from high-confidence ones. Every output explicitly names the conversion rate used, the data window, and the weighting choice. For Head of Commercial, RevOps, VP Sales, and CRO at quarterly forecast or board prep. NOT financial close (see finance/financial-analysis). NOT strategic CRO hiring/territory (see c-level-advisor/cro-advisor). NOT pricing (see sibling pricing-strategist).
Channel Economics
Use when reviewing or rebalancing direct vs. partner-led channel economics — computing fully-loaded cost-to-serve per channel, channel ROI with cash / LTV / marginal lenses, and optimal channel mix subject to constraints. For Head of Commercial, RevOps, and VP Sales doing quarterly channel review when pipeline is mixed (e.g., 60% direct + 40% partner-led) and nobody actually knows which channel makes money after CAC, support load, partner discount, deal-velocity differences, retention differential, and overhead allocation are all loaded in. Outputs cost to serve, channel ROI verdicts (DOUBLE-DOWN / MAINTAIN / DEFUND / EXIT), a sensitivity-tested channel-mix recommendation, and the diminishing-returns inflection (e.g., 'which channel actually makes money — direct or partner?').
Cto Review
/cs:cto-review <plan> — Architecture and scaling interrogation. Tech debt, scaling cliffs, team scaling, build-vs-buy. Use when committing to an architecture, planning for 10x load, or weighing a rebuild against a vendor.
Cross Eval
/cs:cross-eval <memo> — Multi-model consensus on a board memo or strategy brief. Claude + Codex + Gemini cross-review with graceful degradation. Use when a high-stakes memo needs an independent sanity check before the boardroom — e.g. a bet-the-company pivot or fundraise terms.
Vpe Advisor
VP of Engineering advisory for startups: delivery throughput (DORA 4 metrics + bottleneck identification), engineering hiring funnel (sourcing → screen → onsite → offer conversion + time-to-fill + pipeline gap), engineering team structure (squad/tribe/chapter design + tech-lead manager-trigger thresholds), and production discipline (on-call, deployment cadence, postmortem culture). Use when sprint velocity is dropping, eng hiring is broken, team structure is unclear, or deciding when to add a tech-lead manager. NOT a CTO skill (which owns architecture) — VPE owns delivery operations and how the team ships.
Scenario War Room
Cross-functional what-if modeling for cascading multi-variable scenarios. Unlike single-assumption stress testing, this models compound adversity across all business functions simultaneously. Use when facing complex risk scenarios, strategic decisions with major downside, or when the user asks 'what if X AND Y both happen?'
Org Health Diagnostic
Cross-functional organizational health check combining signals from all C-suite roles. Scores 8 dimensions on a traffic-light scale with drill-down recommendations. Use when assessing overall company health, preparing for board reviews, identifying at-risk functions, or when user mentions org health, health check, or health dashboard.
Intl Expansion
International market expansion strategy. Market selection, entry modes, localization, regulatory compliance, and go-to-market by region. Use when expanding to new countries, evaluating international markets, planning localization, or building regional teams.
Internal Narrative
Build and maintain one coherent company story across all audiences — employees, investors, customers, candidates, and partners. Detects narrative contradictions and ensures the same truth is framed for each audience's needs. Use when preparing investor updates, all-hands presentations, board communications, recruiting narratives, crisis communications, or when user mentions company narrative, messaging consistency, storytelling, all-hands, investor update, or crisis communication.
Founder Coach
Personal leadership development for founders and first-time CEOs. Covers founder archetype identification, delegation frameworks, energy management, CEO calendar audits, leadership style evolution, blind spot identification, imposter syndrome, founder mental health, and succession planning. Use when a founder feels like the bottleneck, struggles to delegate, is burning out, transitioning from IC to executive, managing a board, or when user mentions founder mode, CEO growth, leadership development, delegation, burnout, or imposter syndrome.
Culture Architect
Build, measure, and evolve company culture as operational behavior — not wall posters. Covers mission/vision/values workshops, values-to-behaviors translation, culture code creation, culture health assessment, and cultural rituals by stage. Use when building company values, assessing culture health, designing cultural rituals, creating culture codes, handling culture clashes, or when user mentions culture, values, culture debt, founder culture, or culture code.
Cs Onboard
Founder onboarding interview that captures company context across 7 dimensions. Invoke with /cs:setup for initial interview or /cs:update for quarterly refresh. Generates ~/.claude/company-context.md used by all C-suite advisor skills. Use when setting up the C-suite advisors for the first time, or when company context is missing or more than 90 days old — e.g. after a fundraise or pivot.
Context Engine
Loads and manages company context for all C-suite advisor skills. Reads ~/.claude/company-context.md, detects stale context (>90 days), enriches context during conversations, and enforces privacy/anonymization rules before external API calls. Use when starting any C-suite advisor session, when context looks stale or missing, or before sending company data to an external service.
Competitive Intel
Systematic competitor tracking that feeds CMO positioning, CRO battlecards, and CPO roadmap decisions. Use when analyzing competitors, building sales battlecards, tracking market moves, positioning against alternatives, or when user mentions competitive intelligence, competitive analysis, competitor research, battlecards, win/loss, or market positioning.
Company Os
The meta-framework for how a company runs — the connective tissue between all C-suite roles. Covers operating system selection (EOS, Scaling Up, OKR-native, hybrid), accountability charts, scorecards, meeting pulse, issue resolution, and 90-day rocks. Use when setting up company operations, selecting a management framework, designing meeting rhythms, building accountability systems, implementing OKRs, or when user mentions EOS, Scaling Up, operating system, L10 meetings, rocks, scorecard, accountability chart, or quarterly planning.
Change Management
Framework for rolling out organizational changes without chaos. Covers the ADKAR model adapted for startups, communication templates, resistance patterns, and change fatigue management. Handles process changes, org restructures, strategy pivots, and culture changes. Use when announcing a reorg, switching tools, pivoting strategy, killing a product, changing leadership, or when user mentions change management, change rollout, managing resistance, org change, reorg, or pivot communication.
Agent Protocol
Inter-agent communication protocol for C-suite agent teams. Defines invocation syntax, loop prevention, isolation rules, and response formats. Use when C-suite agents need to query each other, coordinate cross-functional analysis, or run board meetings with multiple agent roles.
Stress Test
/em:stress-test — Business assumption stress testing. Use before betting on a plan whose core assumptions are unvalidated — e.g. stress-testing 'enterprise buyers will tolerate a 6-month pilot' or a hockey-stick revenue model.
Postmortem
/em:postmortem — Honest analysis of what went wrong. Use after a failed launch, missed quarter, or bad hire to run a blameless 5-Whys retrospective with a change register — e.g. dissecting why the Q3 release slipped six weeks.
Hard Call
/em:hard-call — Framework for decisions with no good options. Use when every option is painful and a structured 10/10/10 + regret-minimization pass is needed — e.g. choosing between a layoff and a down round, or killing a beloved product line.
Challenge
Pre-mortem plan analysis. Imagine the plan failed 12 months from now and work backwards to find the weaknesses. Surfaces assumptions, dependencies, and execution risks before committing resources. Use when before significant resource commitment, before presenting to a board or investors, when feedback has been one-sidedly positive, or when there is pressure to move fast and figure it out later.
Chief Data Officer Advisor
Chief Data Officer advisory for startups: AI training data rights and consent provenance, data product strategy (warehouse vs lakehouse vs mesh, build-vs-buy), B2B customer-data-as-asset valuation and M&A readiness, data team org evolution. Use when deciding whether to train models on customer data, choosing data architecture, valuing data for fundraising or M&A, sequencing data hires, or when user mentions CDO, chief data officer, data strategy, data mesh, lakehouse, training data, data product, data monetization, or customer data asset. NOT a tactical data engineering skill — strategic decisions only.
Chief Customer Officer Advisor
Chief Customer Officer advisory for startups: retention decomposition (gross retention vs NRR honesty, churn root-cause taxonomy), customer segmentation strategy (differential investment across tiers + ICP fit scoring), CS team coverage model (pooled vs named CSM thresholds + ratio math), and CS team org evolution (CS vs Support vs AM distinctions). Use when designing retention strategy, segmenting customers for differential investment, sizing CS team, or sequencing CS hires. Strategic only — does not duplicate engineering/business-growth tactical skills.