---
name: naming-studio
description: Coordinate commercial brand, company, product, or service naming and renaming from a brief to a recommendation. Use for a complete naming project or to resume one; routes creative naming and domain follow-ups to focused skills.
---

# Naming Studio

Own the naming brief, route only the work needed, and give a recommendation with reasons and tradeoffs. Do not use for code identifiers or filenames.

Read [the project-file contract](references/project-files.md) when starting or resuming a project. Use an existing explicitly selected naming project; if several could match, ask which. Keep project data in the user's workspace, never in the installed plugin.

## Establish the brief

Use the supplied context and saved brief before asking questions. Ask for missing product, audience, markets/languages, or constraints when the answer could change the result. Do not silently invent them. Distinguish confirmed facts, open questions, and any explicitly accepted assumptions.

Choose the requested scope: new name, evaluate an existing shortlist, rename, or refine from feedback. For renaming, capture the current name's problem, recognition earned, transition cost, and what must improve. A feature may need a descriptor rather than a separate brand; respect descriptive naming requests and explain the distinctiveness tradeoff.

Complete a concise diamond brief:

| Point | Question |
| --- | --- |
| Top | What concrete customer or business outcome means winning? |
| Right | What capability, advantage, relationship, or behavior already helps us win? |
| Bottom | What trust, distribution, capability, talent, or recognition is still needed? |
| Left | What experience and expectations must the name communicate to win? |

Resolve conflicting definitions of success. Translate desired associations into behavior: what using the product feels like, how the business acts, and what customers should expect or do. Record target markets/languages, naming architecture, required/forbidden words or associations, future range, domain requirements, and the requested research depth. Leave unknown constraints open; do not make completing every field a prerequisite when it cannot affect the task.

## Coordinate focused work

- For generation, evaluation, refinement, category naming research, preliminary non-domain screening, or shortlist applications, load and follow [naming-lab](../naming-lab/SKILL.md).
- For domain ideas, availability, or purchase quotes, load and follow [naming-domains](../naming-domains/SKILL.md).

Use the host's skill invocation when available. Otherwise read the linked SKILL.md and follow it in this session. These are instruction handoffs, not an assumption that the host can run nested skills or subagents. Resolve links relative to this file. Preserve this routing contract if the host copies the skills: install all three folders together, retaining their names.

For a complete naming request: establish the brief, run the name lab, check domains for the resulting shortlist, then synthesize the recommendation. Skip domain work for creative-only requests or when explicitly excluded. Domain requirements may influence earlier generation when mandatory; otherwise do not prune creative ideas based on guessed availability.

For existing names: evaluate them first; do not restart ideation unless requested or the choices fail the brief. For domain-only requests: route directly to naming-domains, without requiring a diamond exercise. For feedback: record the reaction, identify which criteria changed, and rerun only the affected work. Stop at the requested task boundary; direct calls to focused skills do not authorize a full naming engagement.

## Deliver and resume

Usually present 5–8 shortlisted names unless the user requests otherwise, with direction, association, specific fit, main weakness, pronunciation when useful, and dated verification status. Recommend one lead and distinct alternatives. For the strongest 2–3, include comparable factual or hypothetical applications from the name lab. Explain whether domain findings change the recommendation.

Separate creative judgment, researched evidence, and customer feedback. End with unresolved checks that could change the choice and a concrete next step. Save outputs and update STATUS.md before handing back. On resume, read STATUS.md and only the relevant supporting files; refresh volatile availability/price evidence before presenting it as current.

This process adapts a David Placek interview on Lenny's Podcast (June 29, 2025). Read [attribution](references/attribution.md) before extending source-specific claims. Naming work does not authorize purchases, registrations, filings, publication, or contacting people.