YC Apply

A founder-facing workflow that drives a Y Combinator batch application from blank workspace to paste-ready answers. The skill is the engine; the founder's data lives in a separate workspace they own and version. The body of this file is a dispatcher — load-bearing detail lives in references/. Inline content here is a tripwire, not the contract.

Bundled Path Rule

Two distinct roots are in play and must never be confused:

• <skill-dir> — the directory that contains this SKILL.md (the bundled engine: references/, assets/, scripts/). Resolve it once at the start of a session (e.g. the absolute path of the directory holding this file).
• <workspace> — the founder's external application directory (resolved per the Invocation section). All founder data is written here.

Every references/…, assets/…, and scripts/… path in this file is relative to <skill-dir>, never to <workspace> or the current working directory. Because the agent often runs shell commands with the CWD set to <workspace>, always expand bundled helpers to an absolute path before invoking them: write <skill-dir>/scripts/bootstrap-workspace.sh <workspace>, not bare scripts/bootstrap-workspace.sh. The same applies to reading bundled files: read <skill-dir>/references/partner-signals.md. When a row or step below says scripts/X or references/X, treat it as <skill-dir>/scripts/X / <skill-dir>/references/X.

Required Reading Router

Match the phase you are running to the row. Read the listed file in full before producing any output for that phase. The reference is load-bearing; the inline summaries in this SKILL.md are tripwires only.