Define the first paid customer and first-value promise

[nick-neely]

Question

Which initial customer and concrete job should the first paid release serve, and what observable outcome counts as first value? Choose a focused promise from existing Tendnote capabilities, clarify individual versus Household expectations, and define what an observed newcomer must accomplish without author explanation. Learning is a valid build rationale; do not invent demand evidence.

[nick-neely]

Resolution

The first paid hosted release is written for the Launch Customer: an individual adult with a full personal and professional life who wants to keep what people tell them and reach out at the right time, buying Tendnote for themselves, with strangers assumed. Technical readers from the case study are expected early arrivals but not the addressee. Tendnote's category is the Personal OS; the first-value promise leans on its founding domain, relationship memory and follow-up, with General Actions, Assets, and Household included but not measured against. Household stays available and unpromised; invitation billing is left to Decide subscription ownership and paid-access lifecycle.

First Value is reached in one unaided sitting when the newcomer has a real person saved, a Memory they confirmed, a Follow-Up they scheduled and seen where it will resurface, and a grounded Eve answer about that person. A life-admin first capture does not count but must be accepted gracefully. Manual capture only; no provider connection required. Design targets: under fifteen minutes from payment confirmation, on the newcomer's own device, with at least one phone run. The Newcomer Walkthrough passes with zero author explanation from the landing page through checkout, admission, and first use; one intervention fails the run and logs a defect; two clean passes by different people is the target, one the floor. Capabilities are frozen for the first paid release; the newcomer experience is open and must be launch quality, not beta grade. The promise is recorded as a hypothesis with observable disconfirmation signals and no numeric targets.

Activation Milestones are content-free, product-owned, operator-facing timestamps and remain the record of First Value regardless of vendor (ADR 0242). A third-party analytics or error-tracking provider is permitted in principle, with PostHog named as a candidate; its selection and data boundary are Decide the hosted telemetry provider and its data boundary, blocked by the hosted privacy ticket.

Artifacts, committed as e010a63f on docs/phase-9b-wayfinder in the persistent planning draft PR:

• Decision artifact: first paid customer and first-value promise, including hand-offs to the ownership, evidence, prototype, privacy, and marketing tickets.
• ADR 0242: Activation Milestones are content-free and product-owned, indexed in the ADR catalog.
• CONTEXT.md gains Personal OS, Launch Customer, First Value, Newcomer Walkthrough, and Activation Milestone.
• The Phase 9b workspace README now indexes both artifacts.

Biome lint and the docs-scanning script tests passed; relative links were verified. No PRD change was made; reconciling the roadmap's demand-gate wording stays with the final specification. Not decided here: billing ownership, payment methods, price, walkthrough protocol and payment mode, the telemetry provider, the exact first-run path, and marketing copy.