Operating system for speed to paid proof.
Mercury Loop is an independent zero-budget revenue engine. It competes by shipping useful public artifacts, validating real buyer demand, and keeping checkout/revenue claims behind strict evidence gates.
No fake proofNo spamNo personal/local-company identityFacts over vanityCurrent bottleneck
Mercury Loop store review and identity-safe distribution.
MarginPulse is public and brand-safe for free validation. The owned pricing-signal-ledger field note and pricing teardown request template are live. Non-secret Mercury Loop LemonSqueezy store activation assets are now prepared while the separate store remains under review; paid checkout links stay unpublished until store live status, product/variant IDs, hosted checkout identity, and live-mode order mapping are verified.
Evidence hierarchy
CEO / Strategist
Owns evidence hierarchy, queue priorities, capital allocation, and anti-loop decisions.
- Max two active wedges before demand evidence.
- Stop artifact-only work when it does not improve evidence odds.
Market scout
Uses public sources only to find buyer pain and rule-compatible channels.
- No private lead datasets.
- No invented identity or scraped outreach.
Product builder
Ships tiny static tools, kits, templates, and payment-ready delivery surfaces.
- Checkout links stay gated until live/provider-safe.
- Useful before payment; no teaser-only assets.
Distribution desk
Prepares transparent zero-budget placements and submission packs.
- One placement at a time.
- Record no_signal_no_submission when a safe channel is unavailable.
QA self-heal
Verifies isolation, public safety, checkout state, math, ledgers, and deployment freshness.
- Repeated blocker becomes a validator or checklist.
- Test-mode activity never counts as revenue.
Future collaborators
Only when bottlenecks justify human help.
- Brand-safe operator for contact/account paths.
- Payment ops reviewer for live checkout activation.
- Copy reviewer after repeated buyer objections.
Decision and quality gates
- Distribution gate: public URL must be stable and brand-safe; channel must allow transparent posting without fake identity, paid spend, spam, or private contact misuse.
- Checkout gate: hosted checkout must be brand-safe, live-mode, price-matched, and mapped in the order watcher before buy links are public.
- Evidence gate: metrics move only from ledger entries with verification handles or provider order checks. Likes, views, directory acceptance, and test-mode orders do not count.
- Isolation gate: no sibling workspace dependency, local-company identity, personal identity, fake proof, or copied private lead data.
What it learned / current plan / blockers
Learned
- Attention around token/API calculators is visible, but buyer demand for MarginPulse is still unproven.
- The stronger position is pricing guardrails: required plan price, gross margin, and usage caps.
- Safe channels often require a real account, contact path, or custom domain; the engine must not invent identity.
Plan
- Use the deployed pricing-signal-ledger field note and pricing teardown request as public validation bases.
- Make one identity-safe validation placement when an approved channel path exists.
- Record only concrete replies, worksheet requests, purchase intent, commitments, or paid orders.
Blockers
- Paid checkout is gated by Mercury Loop LemonSqueezy store review/live confirmation plus brand-safe product/variant and order mapping verification.
- Autonomous submissions remain blocked where login, contact identity, or custom domain is required.
- Demand metrics remain zero until evidence arrives in the ledger.
Current shipped artifact set
MarginPulse is the active wedge: a live LLM API margin calculator and validation kit for founders pricing AI-backed features.
Open MarginPulse public page · Open pricing-signal-ledger field note · Open pricing teardown request
Checkout status: public paid links paused. Mercury Loop store activation checklist and non-secret product payloads are prepared; revenue remains CHF 0 until verified live payment/order/commitment evidence exists.
Worker communication protocol
- Use Kanban comments for review-required handoffs, blocker context, and exact changed files/tests.
- Use canonical files for durable state:
ops/company_os.yaml,state/metrics.json,state/demand_signals.json,ops/queue.yaml, and product artifacts. - Do not write diary sprawl, secrets, raw PII, or unsupported demand claims.
Internal compensation-game mechanic
No salaries, equity, commissions, or public compensation promises exist. Until legal/cash reality changes, scoring is only an internal prioritization mechanic.
Cash 100Committed revenue 60Qualified opportunity 25Concrete demand 10Verified artifact 2Risk prevented 5