defensibility

MANDATORY PREPARATION

Invoke /product-thinking — it contains the Context Gathering Protocol and the AI Slop Test. Follow the protocol before proceeding.

Mindset

Features can be copied in a quarter. Moats take years to build — if they can be built at all. Defensibility is the audit that tells you where your product is genuinely hard to replicate, where it's vulnerable, and where to concentrate effort to widen the gap.

Most products have less defensibility than their founders think. Brand is not a moat unless switching costs are high. "First mover" is not a moat unless you've converted the head start into something structural. Be honest. The point is not to feel good — it's to know where to build.

In the AI era, a new class of threats has emerged: agents that can automate workflows, commoditize integrations, and make context portable. This audit evaluates both classical moats and AI-era resilience.

Context Pull

1. Product context. Read .acumen.md — strategy, stage, positioning.
2. Competitors. Read .acumen/competitors.md — what competitors have, their moats, recent moves.
3. Features. Read .acumen/features.md — current capabilities and their maturity.