Keystones: Who needs an extreme version of what you're best at
Refine each strength into keystones — the characteristics that make certain customers need an extreme version of it — and name the real market segments that embody each. Adapted from Chapter 3 of Hidden Multipliers: Speaking Carol Into Existence.
- Input
- Your STRENGTHS-WEAKNESSES.md (S1, S2, …) from the classification step — or a strengths list you can defend.
- Output
- A KEYSTONES.md: keystones (K1, K2, …) mapped to strengths, each with the real-world market segments that typify it — or the honest finding that your product isn't compelling yet.
What this is about
It takes a lot to make someone act — buy new software, rework their workflows, stake their reputation on you. Sort-of liking a few features doesn't do it. What does is a keystone: something specific about a customer's circumstances that makes one of your strengths absolutely critical to them — so critical they think "I've got to make this work for us." A fast website is a strength; an e-commerce store where every tenth of a second of load time measurably moves revenue is a keystone, and it names exactly who must buy.
This skill walks your classified strengths one at a time and asks the chapter's generative question of each: what characteristics, behaviors, or circumstances require an extreme version of this strength? Then the hard gate: if you can't name a significant real-world market segment that typifies the keystone, it isn't one — the strength is table stakes, true but not compelling, and it's cut. What survives is the map of gravitational pulls that draw customers into your orbit, each keystone naming its market. And if only one keystone survives — or none — that's not a failed exercise; it's the most valuable strategic lesson on the table: your product isn't compelling yet, and now you know it before the market tells you expensively.
Example invocation
You can invoke the skill like this:
/asb-carol-keystones Here's our STRENGTHS-WEAKNESSES.md — five
strengths, five weaknesses. Who actually needs what we're best at?
The skill takes each strength in turn, presses "who requires an extreme version of this?" until the answer is specific, gates every candidate on naming a real market segment, and records the survivors in KEYSTONES.md — the file the deal-breakers step hones next.
One practical note: say where you're working. Name a directory (or point at your existing files) when you invoke, and the skill keeps the method's files together there — if you don't, it asks before creating anything.
From the source
Two sources form the foundation of this skill:
- As in Chapter 3 of Hidden Multipliers: Speaking Carol Into Existence (section "Strengths → Keystones → Target Market") — hiddenmultipliers.com — the keystone concept, the requires-an-extreme-version question, the no-segment-no-keystone gate, and the one-keystone warning this skill enforces.
- Selling to Carol: Why targeting an ICP brings 10x more customers than you expected — why keystones must concentrate in the best customers and be weak in the worst: a trait common to everyone predicts nothing.
Supporting sources each supply a piece of the mechanism:
- As in Chapter 2 of Hidden Multipliers: Carol Loves You for You — hiddenmultipliers.com — the classified strengths chart this skill consumes, and the Profit Whale economics (the top ~5% of customers producing 20–40% of profit) that make finding these customers worth the work.
- Specificity: A weapon of mass effectiveness — the wording bar: a keystone vague enough to describe everyone describes no one.