132 skills for buying and running a small business. You run them inside your
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All 132 skills
general
13 week cash flow forecast A rolling 13-week, direct-method forecast of weekly cash receipts and disbursements that proves an operator can make payroll, the supplier, the tax remittances, and the monthly debt service in the same weeks its receipts actually arrive. Resolves the deal context first (founding a business from zero, acquiring a going concern, restarting a distressed one, or continuing to run one already operating with no sale or financing event underway), then schedules each disbursement on its real due calendar, computes ending cash week by week, flags every week the projected balance dips below the cash floor, and refreshes weekly with actuals so a shortfall surfaces before the bank balance does.
annual operating plan and budget Builds the operator's one-year annual operating plan and budget for a service business: the revenue targets by line of business, the named expense line items that deliver them, the owner-compensation line placed against the IRS reasonable-compensation standard, the gross and operating margins the lines roll up to, the KPI targets the plan steers by, and the variance-review cadence that governs the year. Researches the trade's wage anchor, cost structure, and margin benchmarks live, computes the budget totals and the owner-comp band deterministically, classifies favorable/unfavorable variances against a flexible budget, and records the plan to the deal dossier with provenance. The stewardship-engine instrument that turns a diligence dossier into a business the operator runs against month to month.
annual rate card and notification letter Builds the annual rate card and the honest customer notification letter for a recurring-revenue service business. Escalates each contracted line by a named, customer-verifiable index (CPI-U all-items, a PPI industry index, or a blended cost index) using the BLS index-point escalation method, checks each escalated line against its loaded-cost floor so a line the index leaves underwater is surfaced rather than blended away, sizes the LTV the increase puts at risk and the share an honest letter defends, and drafts a no-spin letter that states the real cost reason, the new rate, the effective date, and the advance notice. Recorded to the deal dossier with provenance.
arm operator Arms one cleared, unlisted, place-rooted opportunity end to end into a dossier a capable operator could act on. Runs the ethos gate first, sources the operating playbook, splits day-one demand from grow-into demand, names the load-bearing premise as a fire/no-fire condition, finds the real timing edge, arms whoever fits, coming home or never having left, lays out honest financing and live incentives, and adversarially reviews the result before it ships. The deal math serves the arming, never the reverse.
asset vs stock memo and apa review Reviews a main-street acquisition's deal structure (asset vs stock, and any step-up election) and the purchase agreement clause by clause for a specific buyer. Researches the deal's licenses, key contracts, entity type, and draft APA against the structure-forcing rules and the named reps-and-warranties checklist; records each finding to the dossier as extracted, computed, or an honest GAP, and hands the election to tax counsel.
business continuity and key man plan Names what breaks if the owner or another key person is out of the business, and sizes the key-man insurance that covers it. Inventories the single points of failure, builds a bottom-up replacement cost, sets the lender-required coverage floor, and structures a company-owned policy that does not blow up its own tax treatment. Researches the reasonable-comp baseline, the lender requirement, and the policy tax rules live; writes the continuity plan and the computed coverage to the deal dossier with provenance.
business formation launch sequence The ordered gate sequence to legally stand up a NEW business founded from zero: clear and reserve the name (state SoS business-name search + USPTO trademark + domain), designate a registered agent, choose and file the entity, get the EIN free at IRS.gov before opening any account, open the dedicated business bank account, and hold the commingling discipline that keeps the liability shield. Carries the order itself as the deliverable, ties every federal step to its authority and every state/local step to a live research door, and never confuses founding-from-zero with buying or restarting a business. Use when a person is starting a brand-new business and asks what to do first, in what order, to be legal and bankable.
business insurance procurement Builds the right business-insurance stack for a brand-new business a person is founding from zero, then drives it to a bound policy before the doors open. Researches the real coverage lines a trade needs (general liability, commercial property, commercial auto for fleet trades, umbrella, workers-comp, professional/E&O, and the trade-specific lines like garagekeepers, liquor liability, and a contractor's license bond), sets defensible limits, researches the state workers-comp requirement and any state- or contract-mandated coverage live, names how to get quotes (independent agent vs direct vs program/BOP), and sequences the binding so coverage is in force before a lease, a loan, a license, or opening day demands it. Use at formation, before a founder opens or signs a lease or loan.
business valuation report Computes the honest going-concern value of a small owner-operated business as a band, not a point: recast SDE times a multiple reasoned from this business's real quality drivers, cross-checked against the asset floor and the cash flow's serviceable ceiling, with the owner-replacement adjustment shown in the open and the named levers that would move it. Use to answer what is it worth, the valuation, the multiple, the asking price, the value band, the comps.
buy sell and family transfer agreement Settles the terms of the agreement that hands a main-street business to family, a partner, or employees: the trigger events, the transfer structure, the valuation and the IRC 2703 estate-tax price fix, the funding mechanism and its Connelly insurance consequence, the AFR installment note, the gift element, reasonable compensation, ESOP feasibility, and the governance transition. Researches each tax/valuation/ERISA authority live against this owner, family, business, and trade, computes the note schedule, gift element, Connelly estate delta, and ESOP threshold deterministically, and records every term to the deal dossier with provenance or an honest GAP.
buyer credibility packet Assembles the documents and the true narrative a specific operator-buyer needs to be taken seriously by a specific seller, broker, lender, and (where relevant) franchisor in a main-street acquisition. Ships eight named credibility surfaces, each REAL-with-source, GAP-with-fill, or in-progress, and names the buyer-readiness gaps rather than papering over them.
cac ltv by channel Judges marketing spend on return by computing customer acquisition cost and lifetime value for each acquisition channel separately, then ranking the channels. Researches the trade's real channel benchmarks (cost-per-lead, referral rewards, churn, per-account margin) live, computes per-channel loaded CAC, LTV on gross margin, the LTV:CAC ratio, and CAC payback deterministically, and reconciles them into a channel ranking with a per-channel verdict, recorded to the deal dossier with provenance. Replaces a blended marketing number that hides which channel earns its keep.
callback and quality tracking Tracks callbacks, rework, warranty, and quality signals for one operating business and prices what they cost, so margin and reputation hold. Computes the callback rate and the cost of quality the one consistent way, flags the rate market-vs-off-market against researched trade bands, names every untracked signal as a GAP rather than reading silence as a flawless shop, and records the comeback provision the margin and valuation skills consume.
capex roi and depreciation Sizes a capex/modernization upfit for one acquired business, decides which levers actually pay at this trade and headcount, and prices the first-year tax treatment under IRC Sec.179 expensing and Sec.168(k) bonus depreciation. Researches the trade's real equipment and software costs live, models each return on the shop's own numbers, computes the Sec.179 + bonus first-year deduction with the dollar cap, phase-out, and business-income limitation, and reports the real cash benefit (federal vs state where the state decouples from bonus), recorded to the deal dossier with provenance. Supersedes modernization-roi and modernization-audit.
capital stack and deal structure Composes the financing for one main-street acquisition: 2 to 3 viable capital stacks, each a complete sources-and-uses with a DSCR, then designs the deal terms that follow (seller-note standby, earnout, equity injection, tax election, cap table, NWC peg) and names the open variables a live negotiation must settle. Use to answer how to structure the deal, the capital stack, sources and uses, the seller note, the equity injection, asset vs stock, the 8594 allocation, what financing fits.
chart of accounts Builds the trade-appropriate chart of accounts for a NEW or an ACQUIRED business by deal context: the numbered account skeleton the trade actually needs, each account mapped to its financial statement and IRS return line and flagged with the RESEARCH DOOR for its live tax treatment. The deal context (founding from zero / acquiring a going concern / restarting from distressed assets) is resolved up front the way the locale is, and it shapes the OPENING side: a from-zero founder gets an owner capital contribution, financed-equipment and startup-loan debt, and capitalized startup costs, NOT a seller balance sheet, seller-history AR, or an SBA 7(a) / seller note; a buyer gets the acquisition shape. The account structure and the IRS/GAAP mapping travel across states; every sales-tax, gross-receipts/business-activity tax, disposal-fee, occupation-tax, workers-comp, and state-payroll value is researched at the issuing authority for the subject's own state and county, never carried from another state. Records the assembled chart to the deal dossier with provenance.
chief of staff The front door of the kit: a chief of staff that gets to know the person, reads the generated kit map (skills-index.json) to know what the kit can do, lays out a short plan in the person's own situation language, and walks them through it one step at a time, running the right skill at each step and keeping a plan file so a later session resumes where they left off. Delegates the getting-to-know conversation whole to conversational-intake, sequences steps by the map's depends_on and composes edges, and translates every skill name into the work it does before the person hears it. Plain about the kit's edges: the skills run locally in the person's own agent, and the operator network and hosted layer are not part of the free kit. Every figure it relays is sourced, computed with a cited method, a labeled estimate with an error bar, or an explicit GAP.
cim listing teaser summary Reads a broker CIM, listing, or one-page teaser provision by provision and produces a structured summary that labels every line seller-represented and unverified, tests the asking price against the trade's real multiple, and records what the document conspicuously omits. The omissions are graded equal to the extracted facts.
closing checklist and funds flow Assembles the close as a condition set plus a money table: every pre-close condition marked Ready, Pending, or GAP traced to its source, and the funds-flow sources-and-uses that must reconcile to the deal's capital stack to the dollar. Use to answer whether a close is actually ready, who wires what to whom, and whether the funds-flow balances.
cohort and churn analysis Shows you the retention truth of a recurring-service business by reading its customers as acquisition cohorts: the logo retention curve, gross and net revenue retention, the logo-vs-revenue-churn composition, the period churn rate against the trade benchmark, the implied average lifetime and cohort half-life, and the lifetime value the retention rate produces. Researches the trade's churn and retention benchmarks, the LTV identity, and the wage/margin basis live; computes the curves, the annualized churn, the lifetime, the half-life, and the LTV deterministically from researched or disclosed inputs; and writes the retention picture, its benchmark comparison, and its GAPs to the deal dossier with provenance. Names where the subject's own curve is unknowable pre-NDA instead of dressing a benchmark up as the subject's number.
coi review and tracking Reviews and tracks certificates of insurance from a business's vendors and subcontractors so the operator is not silently holding their risk. Reads each certificate against the operator's contract requirement across a named ten-field checklist, names every defect with the hold action that cures it, computes the workers-comp audit exposure of an uninsured sub, tracks expirations, and records findings to the deal dossier with provenance.
collections playbook Ages a business's open receivables into the standard buckets, measures the book against its own terms (DSO, CEI), and runs a named per-invoice dunning sequence with a tone ladder that collects past-due dollars without burning a repeat-revenue customer. Sets the late-fee authority, the escalation rail the trade and state actually permit, the write-off trigger, and the credit policy that stops the book from aging again. Every figure is a ledger line, a shown computation, or an honest GAP.
community bank cu shortlist Sources and vets the real community banks and credit unions in an operator's own town, ranks the one or two worth a visit with reasons, and prepares the account-opening packet so the operator walks in ready. Names a national fintech only as the floor where no local equivalent serves. Every institution is sourced to a real directory or an honest GAP that names the search path.
comparable transactions builder Assembles and provenance-stamps a real comparable-transactions set so a valuation band rests on closed deals, not un-shippable live research. Names the real primary comp databases (BVR DealStats, Pratt's Stats, IBBA Market Pulse, BIZCOMPS), how to access them (most are paid; mark a GAP when the operator has no subscription), what fields to pull (SDE/EBITDA multiple, revenue multiple, deal size, date, NAICS, geography), and how to screen each comp for comparability. Every comp is stamped SOURCED (database + date) or GAP; free proxies (broker multiples, BizBuySell Insight) are labeled low-confidence. Use to build the comp set, the comparables, the closed-transaction comps, the deal comps behind a valuation.
compound learnings Harvests the method-learnings and codebook corrections from a finished episode back into the central knowledge layer, so the next episode runs better-fueled. The self-reinforcing loop at the end of every episode: it routes each retro output to the right destination (fact, procedure, load-bearing change, or narrative trail) and refuses to invent a harvest when the episode produced nothing.
concept arbitrage screen Screens whether a business-model concept already working in another market could transplant to a specific target place: names the concrete origin market and the real, sourced evidence it works there, decomposes the concept into its load-bearing mechanism and splits what is portable from what is place-bound, reads the target place's demographic, economic, regulatory, and supply-chain conditions against that mechanism, and names the transplant risk plainly. Runs in the Orient phase of a found-from-zero situation, one input to the initial concept alongside place-and-market-read and opportunity-scan-brief, and never a stand-in for local proof: a transplant with no local test behind it is a labeled estimate or a GAP, never a working model.
conversational intake Turns a plain-language situation into the minimum structured record the rest of the run needs: the place, the trade, the posture, whether a specific candidate business or operator is already in hand, and the deal context. Resolves what it can from the words given, derives a short shortlist where a colloquial region or bare trade was named, and asks at most one clarifying question only when a load-bearing field is genuinely missing and blocks the lead skill. Never stalls, never assumes a relocating outsider, never invents a place, business, or person. The downstream discovery and diligence skills read the record it writes.
customer concentration analysis Measures how much of a target's revenue and SDE rides on its largest customers, sourced to a revenue-by-customer report or filed as the explicit GAP that gates the deal. Produces the concentration read the buyer underwrites against, with the arithmetic shown and the withheld split surfaced as its own finding.
deal analyzer Sequences the deal-evaluation leaf skills as a gated pipeline for one acquisition subject: each step runs only when its upstream input is present and verified, and at each gate it either advances, refuses with the named missing input, or stops on a hard fail. Produces a run log, a gate trace, and an honest verdict that names how far the analysis can go and the next input that unlocks the next step.
deal memo Synthesizes the deal engine's verified outputs into one honest document for the operator, the lender, and the seller at once. Leads with the recommendation and the stewardship verdict, carries every upstream figure with its confidence stamp intact, keeps the GAPs visible, and is built so it can recommend against the deal. Use to write the deal memo, the buy/pass recommendation, the investment memo, or the arm/do-not-arm verdict on a main-street acquisition.
diligence request list and data room index Produces the complete, named set of documents a buyer must obtain to run the deal-engine diligence cluster, mapping each line to the child skill that consumes it and tracking which ones have arrived. Runs first in the cluster, after NDA, so no child skill is found missing its inputs three weeks in.
discover target Writes a candidate already cleared by place-and-market-read into the deal engine as a schema-valid Business record with provenance, so the rest of the engine can query it by lane. Records every known financial as a sourced leaf and every unknown buyer-critical field as an honest GAP; stays community-level with no owner-person data.
dscr stress test Stress-tests a composed acquisition capital stack against the risks that actually default acquired small businesses, and renders a three-part verdict: debt serviced, owner wage held, people kept. Computes each stressed figure from a shown method off sourced inputs or marks it an explicit GAP; flags any deal that clears the lender floor only by zeroing the owner's pay or cutting the crew.
employee handbook Names the handbook sections an acquired small business must carry, state-conditional and gated on the verified employee count: at-will, EEO and anti-harassment, wage-hour and classification, I-9 and state E-Verify, leave, OSHA hazard communication, benefits and accommodations, and conduct/discipline/separation. Researches each section's governing rule and coverage threshold live from DOL, EEOC, USCIS, OSHA, and the subject state's labor code against this employer, place, and trade; records a required/conditional/not-required call per section to the deal dossier with provenance, and names the headcount GAP that gates the rest. Every state-variable rule (E-Verify, family-care leave, final pay, non-compete enforceability) is researched for the subject's own state, never carried from one state's answer.
entitlement scan Finds the grants, credits, and incentives a specific business qualifies for, and names the ones it does not. Researches each program's live rule and status against this business, place, and trade against the governing federal, state, county, and utility authorities for that locale; records sourced findings to the deal dossier with provenance. Use when standing up the incentive case on an acquired business or screening incentive exposure in diligence.
entitlement stack optimizer Takes the eligible programs an entitlement scan found and turns them into a sequenced, priced filing plan: ranks the clean dollars by benefit against paperwork burden and deadline, screens every dollar for poison-pill strings (clawbacks, forced overstaffing, equity dilution, surveillance/data handover, predatory structure), and writes back what to file first, what to skip, and which money costs more than it pays. Use to decide filing order, to screen incentive terms before an operator signs, and to compose the entitled-capital layer of the financing.
entity formation Recommends the right legal entity for a specific Main Street operator, forms it in the state they actually live in, and prepares the unavoidable government-queue steps so the operator walks through them ready. Writes each entity fact to the operator record only against a real filing or IRS confirmation, or marks an honest GAP; runs the local-first gate against out-of-state privacy shells.
equipment condition and reserve schedule Builds the asset-by-asset condition read and replacement-reserve schedule for the physical equipment a business runs on: per asset its age, remaining useful life, replacement cost, annual sinking-fund reserve, and depreciated in-place value, plus the deferred-maintenance bill and the depreciated FF&E asset floor. Researches missing asset data to its source and writes an honest GAP when the FF&E list is withheld.
equity investor terms and raise Designs the equity side of a funded search or single-deal independent-sponsor raise: the investor term sheet (preferred return, carry/promote with hurdles, sponsor acquisition and management fees, the search-fund stepped-equity and vesting convention), the governance package (board seats, protective provisions, information rights), the investor reporting cadence against ILPA norms, and the securities-law frame (Reg D 506(b) vs 506(c), the Rule 501 accredited-investor test, Form D). Honest about what is market vs negotiable, marks deal-specific terms as GAP, and routes securities compliance to counsel. Use to answer how to structure the equity raise, the investor terms, the preferred return, the carry or promote, the sponsor fees, the cap table for investors, what investors expect to receive and how often.
escrow holdback and indemnity terms Sizes and judges the escrow/holdback and indemnity package for one main-street acquisition: the holdback amount and release schedule, the survival period by rep category, the cap, the basket, the materiality scrape, sole-remedy, sandbagging, the working-capital true-up, and the seller-note right-of-offset. Sizes the holdback from the deal's real liability profile and names which terms are market vs onerous for this seller. Use to answer how big the escrow should be, the indemnity caps and baskets, the survival period, and whether the terms claw back the seller's proceeds.
esop feasibility study Determines whether an Employee Stock Ownership Plan is a feasible ownership-transition structure for a closely held service business by running the named feasibility tests against it: minimum-size eligibility, ERISA adequate-consideration valuation, IRC 404 deductible-contribution capacity, debt-service financing capacity, repurchase obligation, and the C-corp 1042 / S-corp tax structure. Researches the IRS code anchors, the live DOL/ERISA adequate-consideration status, and the trade size norms, computes the size screen, contribution capacity, coverage, and repurchase estimate deterministically, and reconciles them into a one-word feasibility verdict with the binding constraint named, recorded to the deal dossier with provenance.
exit options comparator Lays a retiring owner's real exit paths side by side and grades each on the terms the owner actually cares about, including a plain statement of where this company is NOT their best option. Researches each path's live structure and the valuation band against this owner, business, place, and trade; writes the comparison and an honest recommendation to the seller business-record.
exit runway Runs the stewardship engine toward a chosen exit as a gated sequence: an operating baseline, owner-comp normalization, continuity and key-man de-risking, successor identification, exit-path selection, the funded transfer instrument, and sell-side QoE/data-room readiness. Each step advances only when its leaf stewardship skill's gating output is present and verified, otherwise it refuses with the named missing input and the live anchor that fixes the step's place in the sequence (the IRS reasonable-comp standard, the SDE-multiple band, the ESOP payroll-size feasibility line, the key-man buy-sell funding rule). Takes the chosen exit as an input, carries each leaf's output unchanged, never re-derives it, and writes a sourced gate trace plus an honest verdict to the deal dossier.
financing lane selector Decides which federal financing regime governs a given acquisition or founding before any capital-stack or startup-financing skill runs: SBA 7(a)/504 main-street, the SBA International Trade Loan 'Grocery Guarantee' agriculture lane, FSA Direct or Guarantee farm programs, USDA Business & Industry, conventional/other, or a named hybrid split across two of those. Runs the classification and each lane's eligibility fork against a named subject's NAICS, asset class, and deal shape, one PASS/FAIL/GAP line per fork, then hands off to the matching downstream skill. Use to answer which loan program fits this deal, is this a farm loan or an SBA loan, does FSA or SBA apply, what lane does this acquisition or founding sit in.
first location site selection and proforma Chooses and stands up the FIRST physical location for a brand-new business a person is founding from zero, and proves whether it pencils. Runs a site-selection screen (trade area and foot-traffic/drive-time demand from Census/BLS, demographics, co-tenancy, parking and access), a first-time-tenant lease read (LOI, TI allowance, personal guaranty, use/exclusive clause, CAM/NNN, escalators), the local zoning permitted-use and certificate-of-occupancy path, the tenant-improvement build-out, and a founding break-even pro forma: occupancy-cost ratio, all-in capital to open AND fund the ramp, the do-not-sign-below break-even, and the month-by-month cash trough the founder must fund before there is any revenue. Use at the FOUND path's pick-a-location step, for a from-zero founder, not a buyer of a going concern and not a distressed restart.
fit to operator screen Matches a cleared opportunity to the operator who actually fits it, screened first on whether they will respect and learn the craft and retain the people. Reads the specific human against the specific business, whether they are coming home or never left, bands the fit with reasons, and names the arming that closes the gaps. Declines an operator who fails the respect screen, however clean the capital.
found demand validation The FOUND-from-zero Gate A: validate real demand, willingness-to-pay, and first committed customers for a brand-new business someone is FOUNDING from scratch, BEFORE forming an entity or spending capital. Defines the offer and the target customer, sizes the local addressable demand from public structural data (Census CBP/SUSB and BLS QCEW by NAICS and CBSA, self-discovering the place), runs real validation (customer interviews, pre-sales / signed LOIs, a smoke test), and renders a go/no-go gate on evidence of PAYING demand, not enthusiasm. For a person starting a new business from zero, not buying a going concern and not restarting a distressed operation. Use before the LLC is filed, the lease is signed, or the loan is sought.
founder startup plan Builds the year-one operating plan and budget for a business someone is FOUNDING from zero: a venture with no base revenue, no seller's tax returns, and no carried-over cost structure to start from. Establishes the pre-opening uses-of-funds, the month-by-month revenue ramp from a true zero, the daily cash reality (card and cash receipts, deposit timing, the float), the operating burn until the business covers its own fixed cost, the cumulative cash trough and the break-even month, the first hires placed against when revenue can carry them, and the honest runway math (does the funded cash outlast the trough). Grounded in SBA 10-Steps / SBA Microloan / SCORE / SBDC and Census-BLS sizing, with state and local rules self-discovered, never frozen. Use to answer can a brand-new founded business pencil, what does it cost to open and survive to break-even, how much runway do I actually have, what is the path to break-even when there is no day-one revenue. This is the FOUND-from-zero plan, distinct from annual-operating-plan-and-budget (which requires a base dossier of seller history) and from restart-and-assembly-feasibility (which assembles existing distressed ingredients).
franchise fdd review Abstracts the Franchise Disclosure Document and the signed franchise agreement for an acquisition of a franchised business, and reviews whether the buyer can keep operating under the brand after the sale. Works the named list of FDD items and agreement provisions, quotes each operative term by Item number or section or marks it GAP, flags off-market and onerous terms, and stages the read for a licensed franchise attorney and the franchisor transfer conversation. Not legal advice.
greenfield startup financing Finances a brand-new small business that a person is FOUNDING from zero, where there is no operating history a lender can underwrite and no business being bought. Builds the realistic from-zero funding stack (founder equity injection, SBA Microloan through a nonprofit intermediary as the realistic vehicle, the harder SBA 7(a) startup case, CDFI and microgrant rungs, and the conventional/personal pieces), sized to a sources-and-uses against the founder's own startup-cost build, and names the real difficulty plainly: there is no day-one revenue and a bank will not finance a bare startup without the founder stack. Use to answer how do I fund a NEW business I am starting, what loans exist for a startup with no revenue, the microloan, the startup financing, the from-zero stack, do I qualify for a 7(a) to start.
group buy coordinator Pools the buying power of the network's independent operators so they get the scale economics a consolidator would capture, while they stay independent and the savings flow to them. Maps the shared spend, finds where pooled volume actually moves price, negotiates member-accountable terms, and distributes the saving against each operator's real baseline; records the pooled-buy plan to the network record with provenance.
grow plan Runs the growth engine for one business as a gated sequence: a unit-economics baseline, price realization, route density, organic service-line expansion, capital deepening, geographic expansion, and inorganic growth with a leadership layer. Each step advances only when its leaf growth skill's gating output is present and verified, otherwise it refuses with the named missing input and the live anchor that fixes the step's place in the sequence (an IRC Sec.179 / 168(k) threshold, the 3:1 LTV:CAC line, or a trade margin benchmark). Carries each leaf's output unchanged, never re-derives it, and writes a sourced gate trace plus a verdict to the deal dossier.
hiring scorecard and interview kit Builds a role scorecard and a structured interview kit so an operator hires the producer seat on evidence, not on a culture-fit chat. Defines the role mission and measurable outcomes, researches the trade's real wage anchor, credential/license floor, the state work-authorization rule, the state final-pay and at-will rule, the state workers-comp class and filed rate, and the federal pre-offer legal line live from each issuing authority for THIS state and county, lays out a weighted scorecard whose rows and anchors are fixed before the first candidate, maps the same behaviorally anchored questions plus a work sample to every candidate, and records the design and the scored hire/no-hire decision to the deal dossier with provenance. Replaces the unstructured interview the validity research shows barely predicts performance.
in network referral Routes a customer need an operator cannot or should not serve to the best-fit fellow operator on fit, or plainly outside the network when no member fits. The referral is a warm, exclusive, unpaid hand-off recorded with its fit reasons; value flows to the receiving operator and the customer is served, never harvested by a platform in the middle.
in network succession match Matches a retiring operator's graded in-network-steward exit path against the live pool of searching operators and the live pool of existing in-network operators eyeing a Grow-stage tuck-in, then runs the lighter, trust-accelerated screen a buyer already legible to the network earns. Reads the seller's exit-options-comparator record and the entry-side pool from operator-profile-and-search-thesis and run-operator-search, scores the match on craft-respect, financing-capacity, priority-fit, and license-continuity gates, and compresses the standard diligence list to the lines the network's own record already makes legible, while holding independent valuation, license verification, lien search, and the lender's own underwriting non-waivable. The same match mechanism runs an existing operator's Grow-stage tuck-in search against the same seller pool.
intake source Brings a source in, keeps the raw capture and its provenance, and processes it into the human-readable wiki as a current-best snapshot that can be re-read and re-processed later. The front door of the knowledge layer; the wiki holds the facts with their sources, the source itself joins the queryable web of sources.
job costing and margin by service line Builds a true-cost and gross-margin schedule for one business broken out by service line, so the operator knows which line actually makes money and which is carried. Costs every service line against the same named direct-cost components, computes gross profit and gross margin the one consistent way, flags each line market-vs-off-market against researched trade bands, and names every missing cost as a GAP rather than a silent zero.
knowledge capture Captures the tacit craft, relationships, and judgment that live only in the seller's and the long-tenured staff's heads, attributed to the people who hold it, so the soul of the business survives the handoff. Foxfire as software: interview and shadow the experts, structure the capture into the indexed operating record, and name what the transition window cannot reach as a GAP.
kpi dashboard Defines the trade's real KPI set and builds the one-screen dashboard an operator runs the business by. Researches each KPI family's live benchmark band for the subject's trade and place, computes the subject's own value from the dossier or names a GAP, grades each against the researched band, and records the dashboard to the deal dossier with provenance. The KPI set is trade-conditional: universal stewardship families, instantiated with the metric that fits the lane.
layoff and reduction in force plan Works the real legal sequence a genuine multi-person reduction in force triggers when a cash crunch forces cutting a group of people for an economic reason, not one person for cause: the WARN Act coverage screen and its 60-day notice, timing, recipients, and required content; the state mini-WARN layer; a documented non-discriminatory selection method screened for adverse impact; COBRA continuation notices and their deadlines; the unemployment-insurance implications of the layoff; the state final-pay rule; and the group-program severance and release rules a RIF triggers that a single termination does not. Researches the controlling federal standards and the subject's state mini-WARN, unemployment-insurance, and final-pay rules live, then records a per-item finding and an exposure flag to the deal dossier with provenance. Handles the event gravely and kindly, by the book, and never renders a cleared or exempt verdict on a contested threshold call.
lease abstract and assignment review Abstracts a signed commercial lease for an acquisition and reviews whether the business can keep operating from the location after the sale. Works a named checklist of lease provisions, quotes each operative clause by section or marks it GAP, flags off-market and onerous terms, and stages the read for a licensed attorney. Not legal advice.
lender credit memo Writes the honest SBA 7(a) credit memo a bank underwriter reads to say yes: the verified numbers carried with their upstream provenance, the management case, the risks named with mitigants, the GAPs left visible. Synthesizes work already verified upstream and introduces no new figure; a missing input is a named GAP, never a number invented to fill the form.
letter of intent Drafts the full staged letter of intent for a main-street acquisition: every clause populated from the composed structure and the verified earnings, each number sourced or computed or GAP, each clause carrying its binding status and a redline note, then stopped at a hard legal gate for local-attorney review.
license permit renewal calendar Builds the dated renewal calendar for a business's recurring licenses, permits, registrations, and periodic filings, so none lapse. Researches each authority's live renewal cadence and anchor date against THIS business, place, and trade from the real authority (state SOS, DOR, the licensing board, the IRS, the EPA), computes the next-due and start-chasing dates deterministically, and records a dated entry, a named not-applicable, or an honest GAP with provenance. Federal cycles travel unchanged; every state/local cadence is researched live, never a frozen one-state answer.
licenses and permits inventory Produces the exact, sourced set of licenses, permits, and registrations a specific trade must hold in a specific state, county, and city, who issues each, what each costs, and which are held versus missing versus unverified. Names the transfer and key-man risks that reshape an acquisition. Use in formation, before an operator opens or a buyer closes.
local advisor bench buildout Builds the local professional bench, a community banker, a business-insurance agent, an attorney, and an accountant, before any crisis forces the search. Sources each seat to a real, currently licensed professional found through the state's own registry or a real national directory, vets each on trade fit, licensure currency, and responsiveness, and packages a first-contact script plus a trigger calendar naming when the operator should call each seat ahead of the cash crunch or the compliance scare that would otherwise force a same-day search with no relationship in hand. Written for the newcomer postures, returning or relocating, leaving tech, newly arrived, who start this bench at zero; an embedded operator's existing relationships fill in what the buildout would otherwise have to source.
local customer acquisition plan Builds a local customer-acquisition plan for a service business sized to its trade and place, across three locally-tuned channels: a Google Business Profile foundation, Local Services Ads (pay-per-lead, badge-screened), and a structured referral engine. Researches the trade's live channel eligibility, cost-per-lead, screening requirements, and referral norms, computes the cost per ACQUIRED customer and the months-of-margin payback deterministically, and records the plan to the deal dossier with provenance. Prices the acquired customer, not the lead.
locale and trade calendar builder Generates the operator's own compliance and cash cadence from their actual state, county, and NAICS, so the operate-stage skills travel instead of carrying one county's frozen calendar. Researches each recurring obligation (sales/use tax, state income/franchise and annual report, local business-license renewal, employment-tax deposits, workers-comp, unemployment, trade-license renewals) from its issuing authority for THIS locale and trade, computes each next-due and start-chasing date deterministically with stdlib date arithmetic, and emits a dated calendar dossier that ties every date to its authority or marks it a GAP. Use at operate stage once the place and trade are known.
make phone call Places a phone call on an operator's behalf, or prepares one for a person to place, and captures the purpose, script, and outcome to the record. Runs as an agentic node when a telephony API can carry the call or a human node when a person must; a voice interview for operator-profile-and-search-thesis is one use.
manage seller relationship The seller-side human relationship across the whole deal, from first contact through the transition period, that the seller note, earnout, staff retention, and customer continuity all depend on after price is agreed. Holds the tension between negotiating hard and keeping the trust the deal depends on, with honesty as the through-line.
manager hire and incentive comp plan Builds the compensation and incentive plan that installs a manager to run a service business when the owner wants to step back to semi-absentee. Anchors the base to the researched market wage for the role, sizes an at-risk incentive that self-funds above an owner hurdle, and computes the owner's residual cash flow after the loaded manager cost, so the buyer knows whether the hire pencils. Recorded to the deal dossier with provenance.
modernize respectfully Builds an AI-adoption-readiness and respectful-modernization plan for an EXISTING operator who already runs the business in place, entering the rail at OPERATE (no buy, no sell, no deal). Runs the respect-and-readiness gate first against the CREED, reads the business as it actually runs, scores AI-adoption readiness across data, staff, process, and governance (anchored to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework), screens every proposed move against a real-work bar so generic optimization-slop never ships, sequences the changes reversible-and-augmenting first, keeps and upskills the people with the craft captured before any tool touches it, hands the money and the dollars it is entitled to to capex-roi-and-depreciation and entitlement-scan rather than re-deriving them, and ends on a bounded pilot with a named measure and a do-no-harm rollback. Every claim sourced, computed, or an explicit GAP. Use it when an owner wants to modernize a running shop without gutting the craft or the people.
monthly close checklist Runs the named monthly financial close so the books are trustworthy: the fifteen close steps an owner-operator runs each period to tie the ledger to the world, book the accrual-basis adjusting entries, review the result, and lock the period. Researches each step's governing rule and the trade's real cost shape against this business, place, and trade; records a reasoned status per step into the deal's close packet.
nda review Reads a seller or broker NDA clause by clause before the buyer signs, renders each clause market or off-market for a main-street acquisition, and hands the buyer a redline list and the questions for their attorney. Stages every output for licensed counsel; flags enforceability, never opines on it.
network banking relationship Stands up the pooled deposit relationship and the shared community-bank or credit-union lending relationship across two or more operators in the network, the real capability group-buy-coordinator's own item 8 names and hands off to and that does not otherwise exist. Reads each member's sourced deposit and financing facts, computes the FDIC/NCUA insurance exposure of a pooled balance, sizes the network's aggregate lending ask against a real institution's own legal lending limit or member-business-loan cap, and names the real mechanisms (a reciprocal-deposit placement, a loan participation, the Community Reinvestment Act incentive) that let one community institution serve the whole network without breaching its own ceiling or dissolving any member's independence. Every figure is sourced, computed, a labeled estimate, or an explicit GAP; no relationship is recorded as in force without a real account, placement, or participation confirmation.
non compete and transition services agreement Drafts the post-LOI non-competition agreement and transition services agreement for a main-street acquisition: the covenant scoped to the real trade area with consideration beyond the purchase price, and a paid bounded TSA that transfers the relationships, each term sourced or computed or GAP, staged for a local attorney at a hard legal gate. Use after the LOI is signed to turn its non-compete and transition clauses into the executable agreement set.
off market owner outreach letter Writes one customized first-touch letter to the owner of one specific unlisted business, so a genuine operator-buyer earns a reply instead of being filed with the buyout junk mail. Pulls every factual claim from a real source or marks it a fill token; ships a per-claim provenance ledger so the honesty is checkable.
opening balance sheet and books conversion Stands up the buyer's opening balance sheet at close and converts the seller's books to the buyer's. Records each acquired asset at its allocated purchase-price value (IRS Form 8594 / ASC 805), books the liabilities the buyer actually assumes, sets the new entity's accounting method and tax year, registers fresh tax accounts, and maps the seller's trailing P&L into a fresh chart of accounts. Use on Day 1 of ownership.
operate quarter Runs the quarterly operating cadence for one business as a gated sequence: quarter-end close, 13-week cash forecast, pricing review, collections sweep, compliance renewals and filings, and hiring. Each step advances only when its leaf skill's gating input is present and verified, otherwise it refuses with the named missing input and the live filing deadline that anchors the step. Carries each leaf's output unchanged, never re-derives it, and writes a sourced gate trace plus an honest verdict to the deal dossier.
operator profile and search thesis Opens a wide, low-pressure door for a would-be operator and meets them where they are: business-first by default (engage the pitch or target they bring and run the relevant evaluation), or, only when they genuinely do not know yet, the deeper strengths and values conversation that helps them find a direction. Builds the operator profile progressively from what the person naturally shares plus what the work needs, and produces a place-first, trade-first search thesis when there is enough to ground one. Carries the honest skills bridge in whichever direction the person needs, naming the gap between what they bring and what the trade demands. The rest of the discovery toolkit runs from the profile, however thin or thick it is.
operator runbook Compiles the captured craft of a business into a living, attributed field manual the new owner and the staff actually run from, organized by the trade's real work, so the trade is carried forward and elevated at every handoff. Run in the transition and first hundred days, on the attributed knowledge base knowledge-capture produces.
opportunity rank brief Fuses the three discovery reads for one candidate set into a single ranked, sourced brief with a buy / restart / assemble path call for each candidate, and names the deciding GAP for the top one. Runs after the succession band, the dated currency signals, and the operator fit exist; every line sourced to a read, computed with a stated method, or an honest GAP. Community-level and business-level only, no person-level fact.
opportunity scan brief The discovery ranker for a run that has a place or a trade but no candidate business yet. Ranks the opportunities directly off the place-and-market-read output: for a place, the trades and situations worth committing to there, each tagged with the posture it implies (keep, buy, found, or modernize); for a bare trade, the sub-opportunities and the candidate places worth a deeper read. Every rank carries a named basis under the estimate stance, sourced or labeled estimate or an explicit GAP. It never requires a candidate, an operator profile, or a per-business succession read, which is what separates it from opportunity-rank-brief.
osha compliance checklist Names the 29 CFR 1910 OSHA obligations a specific service trade actually trips, as a checklist, and the ones its facts do not. Researches each standard's live text and the subject state's OSHA jurisdiction, decides per obligation whether the shop's facts TRIGGER it, excuse it, or leave it a GAP, and records the checklist to the deal dossier with provenance. Trade-conditional: a metal-bay shop with chemicals, lifts, grinders, and compressed air trips a different subset than a soft-services trade.
owner comp and distribution plan Sets a defensible reasonable salary for an S corporation owner-operator and plans the remaining cash as lawful distributions. Researches the trade and state wage anchors for every role the owner performs, the live FICA rates and Social Security wage base, and the distribution-mechanics rules, blends the wage deterministically by the cost (many-hats) approach, cross-checks it against the market and independent-investor tests, and records the plan to the deal dossier with provenance.
owner drawdown and liquidity plan Structures how an aging owner pulls cash out of a business WHILE still operating, distinct from a full exit: phased operating distributions, a partial stock redemption or partnership liquidation, a phased buy-down/buy-in by a successor or partner on the installment method, an ESOP partial sale, or a partial recapitalization. Runs each route through its governing tax test (S-corp vs partnership distribution rules, IRC 302/318 redemption-vs-dividend, IRC 453 installment, IRC 1042 ESOP, SBA 7(a) partner buyout), names the traps plainly, and writes the phased plan to the deal record with provenance or an honest GAP.
pass through surcharge schedule Builds an index-pegged fuel or materials pass-through surcharge schedule for a service business's recurring contracts, so a volatile cost moves automatically with a published index instead of being renegotiated or buried in the base price. Names the one volatile cost driver, pegs it to a public index neither party controls (EIA Weekly On-Highway Diesel by PADD region for fuel, BLS PPI for a material), sets the baseline at contract execution, computes the surcharge by one stated mechanism (step, percentage, or threshold-escalation) deterministically, proves the schedule is margin-neutral cost recovery rather than a disguised markup, and specifies the FTC-compliant invoice disclosure and the state tax treatment, recorded to the deal dossier with provenance.
payroll setup Stands up payroll for a main-street operator: chooses the path (a local bookkeeper or service vs an embedded payroll API), prepares the state withholding and unemployment registrations, sets the pay calendar, carries in the worker classifications, and runs a first cycle as a dry run before it goes live. Marks every state sourced, computed, or GAP, and refuses to assert a registration that has not actually happened.
pe platform footprint check Checks a named place (a county or metro) against the active PE-backed consolidation-platform roster for a named trade: which platforms operate in the trade at all, whether any of them has a location, a recent add-on acquisition, or a service-area claim in or near the place, and what that footprint, or its absence, means for an independent operator's window to act. Runs live web research every run rather than reading a stored roster, because platform rosters change within months. Refuses to run without both a named place and a named trade.
performance and termination documentation Builds the at-will-aware performance and termination paper trail that limits an operator's wrongful-termination exposure: a defensible progressive-discipline record, a legitimate-nondiscriminatory-reason termination memo, and a final-pay and release checklist screened against the federal traps that void an at-will defense. Researches the controlling federal standards live (the at-will exceptions, ADEA/OWBPA release rules, the NLRA McLaren Macomb severance limits, the employee-count coverage thresholds) and the subject's state final-pay rule, then records a per-event documentation finding and an exposure flag to the deal dossier with provenance. The deliverable is the named exposure the operator must close, graded equal to the clean paper trail.
personal financial statement Builds a buyer's SBA Form 413 personal financial statement line by line, each figure sourced to a real document or marked an honest GAP, then reads liquid injection capacity and net-worth cushion against the live SBA equity-injection floor. A fabricated or inflated line is loan fraud, so the GAP is the correct output when a real number is not yet in hand.
phase i esa trigger screen Screens whether a specific trade at a specific site triggers an ASTM E1527-21 Phase I Environmental Site Assessment, and if it does, works the named REC factor checklist a Phase I will examine against the produced site facts. Marks each item SOURCED, SELLER-REPRESENTED, or GAP, names the SBA-lender posture and the Phase II escalation rule, and stages the read for a qualified Environmental Professional. Not environmental or legal advice.
place and market read Reads a single place and its markets deeply: who lives and works there and what they are building, where the winnable market seam sits that is too small for PE and too personal for a broker, and the dated public leading indicators an operator can ride before local consensus forms. Produces a provenanced wiki note, every claim sourced or filed as an honest GAP. This is the discovery front door other discovery skills build on.
portfolio benchmark Benchmarks a target's or an existing operator's real KPIs and financials against the network's own peer operators in the same trade, a comp set no lone buyer or lone operator can assemble on their own. Builds the eligible peer set from the network record (same trade, comparable size band, same measurement basis), runs the DOJ/FTC information-exchange rule-of-reason screen before any aggregation, gates every peer's data on an on-file cooperative-benchmarking consent, normalizes each operator's financials to a common basis, computes the subject's placement against the peer set's median and quartile range for each named KPI family, and falls back to RMA's own externally sourced industry ratios when the network's own peer count for this trade is too thin to disclose without exposing one member. Every value lands sourced, computed, a labeled estimate, or an explicit GAP; no peer's data ever enters the comp set without consent on file, and no percentile is ever shown without the peer count that backs it.
price increase analysis Models a price increase for a recurring-service business as the trade it actually is: price captured on retained accounts against accounts lost to churn, checked against a breakeven churn ceiling, an elasticity read off the subject's own observed response, a projected revenue and gross-profit delta, and a lifetime-value consequence. Researches the trade's cost-pressure basis (PPI, wage growth), its retention benchmark, and the standard notice mechanics live; computes the breakeven ceilings, the implied elasticity, the projection, and the LTV impact deterministically from researched inputs; and writes the modeled raise, its verdict, and its GAPs to the deal dossier with provenance. The honest 'raise prices' move, done with evidence.
pricing study Builds a defensible price recommendation for a service business by running three pricing methods against each other: cost-plus (the loaded-cost floor), competitive (the locally observed band), and value-based (the willingness-to-pay ceiling). Researches the trade's real cost structure, wage anchor, tax treatment, and competitive rates live, computes the floor and parts markup deterministically, and reconciles them into a recommended band with an honest verdict, recorded to the deal dossier with provenance. Replaces the simplistic 'raise prices' move.
provenance discipline The rule that decides whether a value may enter a dossier: every number, claim, or computation is sourced, computed-with-cited-method, a disciplined estimate (named anchor plus mandatory error bar), or an explicit GAP, and nothing else. Applied by every Bull Street skill at the moment a value is written; a miss triggers research, never a fabricated answer.
purchase price allocation Splits an agreed purchase price across the seven IRS Form 8594 asset classes by the residual method, and names the per-side tax consequence of each class. Goodwill is computed as the residual of the others, every class dollar is sourced or an honest GAP, and the buyer-versus-seller tension in the Class V to Class VII split is named. Use to answer how the price allocates, the Form 8594 allocation, the goodwill split, the depreciation recapture exposure, the asset-class breakdown.
quality of earnings report The Quality of Earnings pass for a main-street acquisition: reads the seller's recast against the filed returns, bank deposits, and aged receivables, validates each add-back, judges the revenue's character and the model's shape, and writes a verdict the valuation and financing skills carry forward. Every figure is sourced to a document line, computed from a stated method, or filed as an honest GAP.
quick look pass fail memo Runs a cheap five-dimension pre-diligence screen on a candidate business and returns one verdict: CONTINUE, KILL, or NEEDS-ONE-ANSWER. Sources or GAPs each dimension from the listing, CIM, public records, and live rate/SBA inputs, names what kills the deal, and fires before any expensive downstream skill or paid engagement.
reference file freshness check Re-verifies the live structural authority behind a load-bearing term already sitting in a skill's own reference file, such as an SBA seller-note standby period, an ESOP or IRC dollar threshold, or a non-compete's enforceability status, against a current primary source before any skill quotes it again. Runs at read time, on the specific term about to be cited, rather than trusting a prior research pass or the citing skill's frontmatter last_verified date, because a reference file can go stale inside a cycle that stamp never covered. Classifies each term by how it goes stale (a versioned document, an annually indexed figure, or a status under active contest), re-fetches the same primary authority already on file, and resolves to confirmed-fresh, drifted-and-corrected, or an unreachable-source GAP.
region to place shortlist Turns a colloquial region name (western Michigan, the Midwest, the Upstate) into a shortlist of 2 to 3 specific candidate counties or metros worth a deep read. Names every competing public definition of the region, each sourced, flags where those definitions genuinely diverge rather than merely nest, scores the candidate set on population trend, anchor employers, and trade fit, and names the one question to ask the operator when the definitions disagree. Runs before place-and-market-read, which refuses to start without one named place; this is the skill that supplies it. Never guesses a single place from a region name and never silently picks a definition on the operator's behalf.
restart and assembly feasibility Prices a greenfield, restart, or asset-assembly play where there is no going-concern earnings to recast: the found-or-assemble path where the ingredients are present (a shuttered mill, idle equipment, a workforce, a building, a customer base) but no operating business. Builds a from-scratch feasibility and total capital need, ramp to breakeven, and the public-money stack that has to carry it because a bank will not finance a bare restart on its own. Use to answer can this restart pencil, what would it take to stand it back up, what is the capital need, what public money does this distressed or rural situation actually open, when there is no SDE to value.
route density and scheduling optimization Tightens a route trade's density and scheduling so the same crew, in the same paid day, serves more stops. Researches the trade's live wage anchor, windshield-time norm, dense-route target, and per-stop economics, computes the billable-utilization lift and the marginal stops recovered drive time buys deterministically, and writes a density plan with an honest verdict to the deal dossier with provenance. The lever is utilization, not price.
run operator search Takes a finished operator profile and runs the searches it points at (place-first, trade-first, operator-fit) into a ranked, sourced shortlist of real opportunities, each fit-screened against this specific person. The front half of the rail: a person walks in, a list of situations to act on walks out.
sales use tax nexus and filing calendar Determines a specific business's sales and use tax obligations and builds its filing calendar. Researches the governing state's live rule for what the trade sells (taxable vs exempt), nexus and registration, the combined rate, filing frequency, due date, vendor's compensation, and use tax against this business, place, and trade, then records sourced findings to the deal record and emits the dated deadline schedule. Use when standing up the books on an acquired business or when reviewing sales-tax exposure in diligence.
sba 7a loan package Assembles the SBA 7(a) acquisition-credit package that gets a specific operator funded on a specific deal: the equity injection, the personal guaranty and collateral, the PLP lender match, the document checklist, the realistic timeline, and the named reasons a deal dies. Reads every SBA term live from the current SOP 50 10, never from memory.
sba borrower eligibility screen Runs every threshold eligibility test in the current SBA 7(a) program against a named buyer acquiring a named business, criterion by criterion, and returns ELIGIBLE / INELIGIBLE / BLOCKED-PENDING with each line marked PASS, FAIL, or GAP. The upstream go/no-go gate before a buyer spends months packaging a deal the program will never fund.
sde addback schedule Reconstructs a defensible Seller's Discretionary Earnings from the real filed returns: an itemized SDE bridge where every add-back is sourced to a return line, computed from a stated method, or an honest GAP, and the owner's labor is priced at a dignified market wage. Records the bridge to the deal dossier. With no filed returns in raw/, it returns the schedule shell with every line GAP rather than recasting a represented number.
search funding model Chooses which model an operator uses to run and fund a single-business search (self-funded solo, funded search, or single-deal independent sponsorship), and names the real dilution and control cost of each against this operator's runway, risk tolerance, ownership desire, and ambition axis. Researches SBA terms live and refuses every buy-to-flip framing.
second location site selection and pro forma Decides whether to open a second location for a service business and what it is worth, by running a site-selection screen (trade-area demand, cannibalization, real estate, jurisdiction) and a build-out pro forma against each other. Researches the candidate trade area, the trade's margin and route-density norms, the local customer-acquisition cost, and the new jurisdiction's tax live; computes the build-out capex and its IRS Section 179 plus bonus-depreciation first-year shield, the cannibalization-adjusted incremental contribution, the site breakeven, the cash payback, and LTV:CAC deterministically; and reconciles them into one verdict (accretive_and_pays_back, accretive_but_slow, cannibalizing, demand_thin) recorded to the deal dossier with provenance.
sell side data room index The named sell-side data room a steward assembles before going to market: every section of records a buyer's diligence will ask for, each tagged READY / PARTIAL / MISSING, with the four standard-bearing sections (owner-comp normalization, valuation, insurance/R&W, ESOP feasibility) measured against the governing authority a buyer's advisor will apply. Researches the live standards, computes the reasonable-comp normalization from a researched benchmark, and records the index to the deal dossier with provenance. The owner-side mirror of the buy-side diligence request list.
sell side qoe prep Prepares a retiring owner's numbers for a dignified, legible exit by building the sell-side quality-of-earnings readiness a buyer's QoE will test: a defensible trailing-twelve-month earnings base, the SDE-to-adjusted-EBITDA normalization bridge with every addback evidenced, the net-working-capital peg, the revenue-quality and concentration read, an indexed add-back evidence trail, and an honest readiness call. Computes the bridge deterministically from a researched market-replacement wage, records the readiness packet to the deal dossier with provenance, and arms the owner with the same understanding the buyer's advisors hold. Use to get a business sale-ready, recast the books before diligence, pre-empt the re-trade a buyer's QoE causes, or tell an owner whether they are ready.
seller note and earnout terms Designs the terms of the paper a seller carries on a main-street acquisition: a seller note (rate, term, balloon, standby vs current-pay, subordination, default, right-of-offset) or an earnout (trigger, threshold, cap, period, audit rights), and decides which instrument fits. Reads the upstream stack and earnings shape, details the slot the parent already sized, and records every figure to the deal dossier with provenance or an honest GAP.
service line expansion pro forma Builds a defensible go / no-go pro forma for adding a new service line to an operating business: the researched serviceable demand, the cost to stand the line up, the line's own gross margin and added fixed cost, and the months-to-payback and ROI on the net after-tax outlay. Researches the trade's demand and margin norms, the first-year depreciation election, and the licensing gate live, computes demand/margin/stand-up/payback deterministically from those researched values, and records the pro forma to the deal dossier with provenance plus the one assumption the verdict hinges on. Turns 'we could offer X' into a number with a verdict.
shared services and buying coop formation Stands up the real cross-operator buying collective and shared back office that a pooled-buy plan hands off to: a member-owned purchasing cooperative (or its lighter cost-sharing variant), formed under the home state's cooperative statute, with pooled purchasing, a shared back office (bookkeeping, payroll, insurance, benefits), joint bidding, and a member-held stake, governed one-member-one-vote and taxed under Subchapter T so the gains stay with the operators. Recommends the structure that fits THIS group, drafts the governance and patronage terms, runs a rule-of-reason sanity check on the joint-purchasing arrangement (there is no live federal bright-line safe harbor: the old DOJ/FTC Health Care Statement 7 35%/20% safe harbor was withdrawn in 2023, so the screen is a historical reference that routes any real arrangement to antitrust counsel), and writes each formation fact to the network record only against a real filing or election, or marks an honest GAP.
source operating knowledge Sources the structured operating best-practice for a trade at runtime, grades each practice by source authority, and records it as a reusable, provenanced practice so an operator can be armed with the full force of the trade's know-how. Use when arming an operator in a trade whose playbook is thin, or to deepen a trade's playbook between armings.
succession plan Builds a long-horizon succession plan for a closely held service business: who takes it (family, management buyout, third-party sale, or ESOP), on what timeline, and the readiness gaps between each candidate and a standalone operator. Researches the trade's owner-dependency, the transfer standard of value, the reasonable-compensation anchor, the ESOP fiduciary rules, the continuity-funding pattern, and the person-held operating license live, computes the staged timeline, the readiness verdict per path, the buy-sell funding gap, and the earnout split deterministically, and reconciles them into a recommended path with a named readiness verdict and a named contingency, recorded to the deal dossier with provenance.
succession signal target list Scores each business on a candidate list for whether a handoff is approaching, reading only the business's public record and what the community already senses, never the owner's age, health, or heirs. Writes a low/watch/near band per candidate with sourced business-level reasons and explicit GAPs, including the person-level facts deliberately not collected.
target universe sizing Counts and bounds the addressable pool of owner-operated businesses of one trade within a chosen geo and radius, from public structural data, BEFORE any outreach. Produces a sourced count with a confidence band and named GAPs, never a false-precise number. Stays community and structural level: no person-level data, no database of named owners or who is about to sell or die. This is market sizing in the find stage, upstream of place-and-market-read's seam call and discover-target's record.
tax return tie out Reconciles the seller's P&L to the filed federal returns line by line, and the returns' gross receipts to twelve months of bank deposits, so every downstream figure stands on a filed-and-signed line rather than a broker recast. Each figure is DOCUMENT+LINE, COMPUTED from a shown method, or an explicit GAP; a missing return is a refusal, not an assumed number.
transition business Runs the first 90 days after close as a sequenced operating plan: knowledge capture from the departing seller and senior staff, employee and customer retention, money-rail and accounting stand-up, and operational triage under do-no-harm guardrails. Draws the seller's consulting terms from the LOI and the fragilities from diligence, and names what each step cannot resolve from inputs as a GAP.
tuck in acquisition target screen Screens a small bolt-on acquisition target against the operating business it would fold into, scoring same-NAICS fit, route overlap, customer concentration, owner-dependence, retention risk, synergy density, valuation arbitrage, and the financing path. Researches the SBA expansion-financing rule, the M&A cost-synergy capture and customer-churn dis-synergy norms, the multiple-arbitrage spread, and the Section 197 goodwill treatment live, computes the retention haircut, the multiple-arbitrage value created, the synergy-adjusted effective multiple, the integration payback, and a weighted fit score deterministically, and records a ranked screen verdict to the deal dossier with provenance. Ranks and gates tuck-in candidates; it does not approve a deal.
ucc lien and litigation search Runs the named public-record searches for liens, judgments, tax liens, and pending litigation against a target business, its entity, and its owner, and sorts every hit by whether it survives an asset sale or a stock sale. Stages a sourced red-flag read for a licensed attorney; records each finding or honest GAP to the deal record with provenance.
vendor agreement review Reviews a vendor or supplier agreement for the terms that quietly bind a small operator: the auto-renewal that re-locks on a missed window, the minimum-purchase quota, the no-internet-resale and territory restrictions, the termination notice and cure floor, the on-termination inventory repurchase floor, the change-of-control clause that can erase brand-resale revenue at a sale, and the home-state choice-of-law that tries to dodge the in-state dealer act. Works a named checklist of twelve binding-term families, quotes each operative clause by section or marks it GAP, sources the governing default (state dealer-protection act, UCC 2-309, FTC Franchise Rule) live, flags the off-market and onerous terms, computes the statutory-floor comparisons deterministically, and records the review to the deal dossier with provenance. Not legal advice; staged for a licensed attorney in the governing-law state. Use when a deal carries a supplier, distributor, authorized-dealer, linen, chemical, POS, or franchise-adjacent vendor agreement that the buyer will take on.
vendor and supply diligence Gets a real quote or stated terms from at least one candidate vendor or supplier so a from-zero plan's cost assumptions are checked against an actual offer, not a published price list or a trade-norm average. Enumerates the plan's list-price and trade-norm cost lines, names the real vendor category and a locatable candidate for each, drafts the request for quote against the plan's real quantity, spec, and timing, extracts the returned price, unit basis, validity, and terms, computes the variance against the plan's assumption, and reconciles the line: the sourced quote replaces the estimate, or the gap to pull it stays named and explicit. Applies provenance-discipline's four-state rule to the found-from-zero cost build, where a labeled estimate is the honest state until a real quote checks it, and a padded published-list number worn as a quote is not. Use once founder-startup-plan, restart-and-assembly-feasibility, or greenfield-startup-financing has drafted the open-cost line items, and before that plan's funding verdict is finalized, on any found-from-zero deal where equipment, opening inventory, buildout, signage, POS or merchant setup, or insurance still rests on a national average rather than a vendor's actual number.
vertical compliance and program scan Finds the vertical-specific compliance obligations and voluntary program enrollments the generic formation and licensing sequence misses: federal program authorizations gated to a real revenue channel (SNAP/EBT retailer authorization for food retail, WIC vendor authorization), federal handling and processing registrations triggered by what the trade physically does (USDA/FSIS meat and poultry inspection or the retail exemption), and private certifications (halal, kosher, organic) scored for their TRUE authority status, government-backed or private and voluntary. Use once a trade is named, alongside or after the generic licensing inventory, before assuming a certification is a legal requirement or missing a free revenue-channel enrollment.
worker benefits and network buying plan Stands up real health insurance and paid time off for an operator's first staff, existing or newly hired, once the network's pooled headcount reaches the scale a lone shop could never reach alone. Reads this operator's real headcount and, where a pooling vehicle exists, the network's aggregate enrolled headcount, computes Applicable-Large-Employer status under the ACA employer rule (IRC 4980H), chooses the coverage vehicle that fits this size (a Certified PEO's pooled group plan, the ACA SHOP Marketplace, a bona fide Association Health Plan, or a direct small-group carrier), runs the ERISA plan-document and reporting gates, screens the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit (IRC 45R), and designs the PTO and paid-leave policy against the federal floor plus the operator's own state rules. Every fact lands on the record sourced, computed, a labeled estimate, or an explicit GAP; a plan is never recorded as in force without a real enrollment confirmation, and no premium, plan, or rate is ever invented.
worker classification Determines, role by role, whether each worker on the owner's staff plan is a W-2 employee or a legitimate 1099 contractor under the controlling federal tests, and flags the misclassification exposure a buyer takes on at close. Reads the IRS common-law control test and the DOL/FLSA economic-reality test live from irs.gov / dol.gov against each role's real facts; records a per-role determination and a misclassification-risk flag to the deal record with provenance.
workers comp class code review Maps each role on an operator's staff plan to its workers-comp class code and the comp-rate burden that code carries, then flags the misclassification exposure a buyer takes on at close. Researches the governing classification authority for the state (the NCCI scope language in the 35+ NCCI states, or the independent state bureau's own classes where the state runs its own plan), reads it live against what each worker actually does, researches the state's filed rate/loss-cost basis, computes the per-code and blended premium burden deterministically, and records the assigned codes plus the re-rate exposure to the deal record with provenance. Locale- and trade-conditional: the classification system, the code set, and the rate basis are researched per state and per trade, never assumed.
working capital peg and aging Computes net working capital line by line off the real balance sheet, ages the receivables to discount what will not collect, sets the working-capital peg the seller must deliver at close, and names the net debt the buyer assumes. Every figure is a balance-sheet line, a shown computation, or an honest GAP; a peg built from a listing's stated numbers is a refusal, not a number.
working dossier renderer Renders one completed deal dossier (the dossier.json or dossier.md a deal produces) into a single self-contained Operator's-Almanac HTML file the operator can open on a phone, every figure tracing to its recorded source or marked GAP. Python 3 standard library only, no shared pipeline. Use at hand-off to turn a finished dossier into a readable bound page, never a bare .md path.
Working draft. Some skills are sharper than others. If something reads
thin, that is worth flagging.