DEC-0023 — Market to every organization; agencies are the channel, not the gate

Reversibility: two-way door — the emphasis between direct/self-serve and agency-led is tunable; the durable commitment is that we do NOT gate the product or its marketing behind agencies (any organization can adopt directly).

Context

A founder-direction call this session (2026-06-16). The North Star (Dossier — Mission & North Star, Nadella) and the mission opener were always universal — "every organization can own the learning loop that encodes its institutional knowledge." But two surfaces had narrowed that to agencies: the mission's delivery clause ("deliver it through the agencies that already serve them") and the "The Wedge" framing read as if agencies were the only way in. The public landing (Ship the landing publicly behind a docs-gate flag, capture demand through two honest doors, into a list we own) and the build-arc decision records (Plugin + marketplace packaging — distribution as the agency wedge, built from the canonical .claude/ primitives, Subscription-backed extraction is a first-class transport — ClaudeCodeClient (no API keys)) carried the same agency-exclusive framing.

The founder's words (Dakota): "I dont want to market to just agencies. They might get the most use out of it but its great if any company want to use it just for themselves."

This decision resolves the tension between the universal mission and the agency-exclusive GTM surfaces, in favor of the mission.

Options considered

• (a) Keep marketing agency-exclusive — lead and gate on the agency wedge; direct adoption only as a downstream side-effect. Rejected: needlessly shrinks the addressable market and contradicts the "every organization on earth" dream (Dossier — Mission & North Star); the mission opener and North Star were never agency-scoped.
• (b) Drop the agency framing entirely — market purely direct/self-serve. Rejected: throws away a real, earned advantage. A DXA already has the clients, trust, and system access, so cold-start/distribution is largely solved there (user-role-dxa, Digital Experience Agency vertical as the first reference implementation) — that is a reason to lead with agencies.
• (c) Both — direct/self-serve as a first-class path alongside the agency wedge (chosen). Market to every organization; keep agencies as the highest-leverage channel (the wedge), but not a gate.

Decision

Dossier is for every organization, not only agencies. Any company can adopt Dossier directly for itself, and we market to everyone — direct/self-serve adoption is a first-class GTM path alongside the agency wedge. Agencies remain the highest-leverage distribution channel (a reason to lead with them), but they are a channel, not a gate: we do not gate the product or its marketing behind agencies.

This layers on top of the agency-wedge history — Ship the landing publicly behind a docs-gate flag, capture demand through two honest doors, into a list we own, Subscription-backed extraction is a first-class transport — ClaudeCodeClient (no API keys), and Plugin + marketplace packaging — distribution as the agency wedge, built from the canonical .claude/ primitives keep their original agency-wedge wording as history; DEC-0023 realigns the GTM-facing surfaces with the always-universal mission, it does not rewrite those records.

Rationale

• It realigns the surfaces with the mission, it does not contradict it. "Every organization can own the learning loop" was always the North Star and the mission opener; agency-exclusivity lived only in the delivery clause and the "The Wedge" framing. Opening that clause makes the surfaces honest to the mission.
• Agencies are the highest-leverage channel — a reason to lead, not to restrict. A DXA already has the clients, trust, and system access, so cold-start/distribution is largely solved there (user-role-dxa, Digital Experience Agency vertical as the first reference implementation). That advantage argues for leading with agencies, not for gating the market behind them.
• The product stands on its own without an intermediary. A sovereign OKF learning loop, installable as one Claude Code plugin (Plugin + marketplace packaging — distribution as the agency wedge, built from the canonical .claude/ primitives), works for a company running it directly — nothing about the architecture requires an agency.
• Restricting marketing to agencies would needlessly shrink the addressable market and contradict the "every organization on earth" dream (Dossier — Mission & North Star).
• asserted, not verified. This is a strategic/positioning direction from the founder, faithful to the founder's words and the edits made this session — not a mechanism-verified claim. (Provenance: founder, Dakota Smith, this session.)

Consequences

The realization of this decision was the surface realignment made this session. (References to where it landed — DEC-0023 layers on top; it does not rewrite the historical agency-wedge records.)

• knowledge/mission.md (Dossier — Mission & North Star) — mission statement now reads "— adopted directly, or delivered through the agencies that already serve them."; description line updated; the "The Wedge" section retitled "The Wedge — not the gate" and rewritten to state any organization can adopt directly and agencies are the highest-leverage channel, not a gate; the dream line now says "adopted directly and delivered through agencies."
• CLAUDE.md — mission one-liner aligned to the same "adopted directly, or delivered through the agencies that already serve them."
• README.md — mission quote aligned; the "What Dossier is" paragraph now leads with "Any organization can adopt it directly for itself"; the plugin section heading changed from "Delivered through agencies — the plugin" to "Run it directly, or through an agency — the plugin", intro broadened to "an agency onboarding a client, or a company standing up its own loop."
• packages/site/src/pages/index.astro (the public landing, Ship the landing publicly behind a docs-gate flag, capture demand through two honest doors, into a list we own) — feature card #5 changed from "The wedge / Delivered through agencies" to "Two ways in / Run it yourself, or through your agency"; meta description updated to "Run it yourself, or through your agency."; the get-started section comment now notes agencies are the highest-leverage channel, not the only way in. The two capture doors are structurally unchanged: a broad early-access door for any org + a distinct design-partner door for agencies.
• Memory — project-dossier-positioning.md (new implication (d)) and user-role-dxa.md (scope note) updated.
• Two-way vs. durable. The emphasis between direct/self-serve and agency-led is tunable (two-way door). The durable commitment is that we do not gate the product or its marketing behind agencies — any organization can adopt directly.

Review

The landing's two-door capture (Ship the landing publicly behind a docs-gate flag, capture demand through two honest doors, into a list we own) still frames the design-partner door "For agencies" — intentional, because agencies are a distinct higher-intent segment. Revisit whether a direct/self-serve high-intent path also deserves its own door once real demand data arrives. More broadly, revisit the direct-vs-agency emphasis (two-way door) as conversion data from the live landing accumulates.