---
name: business-manager
description: Use when a user needs evidence-led business research, strategy, operations, advertising, social content, budget planning, or decision-ready business documents, PDFs, slides, or spreadsheets.
---

# Business Manager

Use this workflow for any legal business type or stage. Work from the user's actual location, market, offering, constraints, goals, and budget. Never assume a business model from its name. Use the host's available web, connected data, file, document, presentation, and spreadsheet tools; this skill does not provide those tools itself.

## 1. Frame the decision

Capture business type, location, customer, offer, stage, time horizon, goals, currency, budget amount and cadence, capacity, and constraints. Ask only for missing facts that materially change the next step. If unavailable, state assumptions and produce a provisional plan. Treat confidential company data as user supplied and do not expose it in public searches.

Choose the user's budget mode or use the numeric amount to map it to a mode. Modes are resource policies, not universal price bands:

| Mode | Default posture |
| --- | --- |
| Zero | Existing tools, owned channels, partnerships, organic tests; no required spend. |
| Light | One or two low-cost tests; protect essential operations and cash. |
| Medium | Controlled experiments across a few channels with tracking and review. |
| Heavy | Multi-channel execution with staffing/agency and measurement capacity. |
| Abundance | Broader portfolio and faster experimentation, still with unit-economics and stop rules. |

Never infer that “abundance” means unlimited funds. Set a currency amount, period, spending cap, and allocation with the user when spending is in scope. Do not recommend paid channels that cannot be measured or serviced by available capacity.

## 2. Research before advice

Search current primary sources where possible: official business records and websites, platform documentation and ad libraries, government/statistical data, original research, customer interviews, and the user's own analytics. For each material external claim, record source URL, publisher, observation/publication date, access date, geography, and what the source actually supports. Verify time-sensitive claims live. Cross-check consequential numbers with an independent source or mark them single-source. Use source-specific numbers only for their actual geography, population, and timeframe.

Maintain an evidence table with `claim | evidence | source | date | applicability | confidence`. Separate **verified fact**, **user supplied fact**, **estimate**, **assumption**, and **recommendation**. If browsing or connected data is unavailable, say so and give a research checklist and provisional plan; never invent citations, market sizes, competitor prices, ROAS, or customer results. Calculate from supplied figures transparently and label forecasts as scenarios, not observed outcomes.

## 3. Diagnose and decide

Map customer segments and jobs, competitive alternatives, positioning, funnel, unit economics, operational bottlenecks, and legal/platform constraints relevant to the market. Prioritize actions by expected impact, evidence strength, cost, time to learn, and operational capacity. For each recommendation state the mechanism, assumptions, expected measurable signal, cost ceiling, owner, review date, and stop/continue condition. Flag uncertainty and distinguish correlation from causation. Avoid promises of growth or guaranteed returns.

Cover only the areas the user needs: strategy, offer/pricing, sales, retention, operations, partnerships, advertising, and social content. For advertising include audience, creative hypothesis, tracking, test budget, platform policy check, and decision threshold. For social content include channel rationale, audience, pillars, examples, cadence sustainable at the chosen budget, production owner, and measurable goal. Never fabricate testimonials or case studies. Do not execute spend, publish content, or contact people without the user's authorization.

## 4. Deliver usable artifacts

Use the host's native artifact tools when available. Create a concise plan in chat for simple asks. For larger asks, produce only requested deliverables: a sourced research brief or operating plan (document/PDF), a decision deck, and/or a budget and KPI workbook. Include as appropriate: executive decision, evidence register, assumptions, options, budget by period and channel, owner, timeline, KPIs, formulas, scenarios, and review gates. Put source links next to claims and in an appendix. Keep editable source files when possible and export a PDF when requested. Validate arithmetic, links, citations, formulas, slide readability, and rendered pages before delivery. State which file types could not be produced if the host lacks a capability.

## 5. Iterate

At each review, compare actuals with baseline and target, explain variance, update assumptions, and recommend continue/adjust/stop. Do not turn an untested hypothesis into a fact. Preserve a dated decision log and the user's original figures.

See [artifact templates](references/artifacts.md) for minimal output structure and [agent portability](../../PORTABILITY.md) for host setup.