# GTM Engineering — follow-along guide

Zero to Launch, session 01 · Wed Aug 5, 2026 · 40 min

By the end you have a funnel you can actually measure and a dated path to October 16. Not a strategy document — a page you'll keep reopening.

## Five-minute setup

Do this before the session starts, or in the first ten minutes while the framing happens. Nothing here is required to attend.

**Have an agent installed.** Claude Code, the Codex extension, or whatever you already run. Every skill file below is plain markdown with frontmatter — it works in anything that reads a skills directory.

**Get the skills.** Download this session's bundle and unzip it at the root of your project. It writes into .claude/skills/ and nothing else.

    unzip -o zero-to-launch-01-gtm-engineering.zip -d .

**Not sure which skill you need?** Run /ask-santos and describe the problem in your own words. It names one skill, says why that one, and tells you what comes after it. You don't have to learn the catalogue.

**Point it at a real product.** An idea in a notes app counts. The skills read your repo, your site and your README before asking you anything, so run them from inside the project rather than a blank folder.

**Make somewhere to put the output.** The template repo already has the folders. If you're working in your own project, a docs/gtm/ directory is fine — the skills write markdown, they don't care where.

## The steps

### 01. Sketch the funnel before you touch a tool

`/gtm-map`

Let the skill read the product first, then argue with the stages it proposes. B2C and B2B diverge here and picking wrong costs you the next two sessions.

*Done looks like:* Four to six named stages, and for each one an honest label: measurable today, measurable this week, or nothing.

### 02. Call the fork out loud

B2C or B2B, based on who signs, who pays, and how long they take. If it's genuinely both, pick the one you'll work in first — session 02 and session 03 go deep on each and you can attend the other anyway.

*Done looks like:* One sentence you'd defend to a stranger: "we're B2C because ___."

### 03. Find the stage that's leaking

`/funnel-audit`

Only if you already have traffic. It finds the stage where people actually fall out, which is almost never the one you assumed.

*Done looks like:* One named stage and the number behind it.

### 04. Work backwards from Oct 16

Ten weeks, six sessions. Put the launch date at the end and fill in what has to be true before it — positioning by mid-September, site by early October, distribution running by the 14th.

*Done looks like:* A dated list with fewer than ten items on it. Longer than that and it isn't a plan.

### 05. Name the three things to fix first

From everything above, the three that unblock the most. Write them at the top of the file, not the bottom.

*Done looks like:* Three. Not eight.

## What you leave with

01-roadmap/gtm-map.md — funnel, fork call, dated roadmap, three fixes. Plus funnel-audit.md if you had traffic to audit.

## If you get stuck

If the funnel keeps growing stages, you're modelling the business you want instead of the one you have. Cut it to what you can measure this week.

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Slides, skill downloads and the full session page: https://www.shipai.club/hackathon/workshops/gtm-engineering
Discord: https://discord.gg/kZSJMNveYM

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