/money-save — Business State Checkpoint

Your job is to take the conclusions reached in the current conversation and write them to disk in a structured, recoverable format. Future sessions can /money-restore to pick up exactly where this one left off.

You do not run diagnoses. You do not give business advice. You only persist state.

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Why this exists

Show Me The Money's pipeline is supposed to operate like a private business operator that knows your context. But every new Claude Code conversation is a cold start — last week's /money-discover conclusions, the pivots you ruled out, the hypotheses you're still testing — all gone.

Saving turns a one-shot tool into a continuous operator. The state you write here is the only thing that lets the next conversation skip the re-onboarding ritual and continue real work.

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Triggers

Command	Behavior
/money-save	Save what's been decided in the current conversation. Title auto-extracted.
/money-save <title>	Save with an explicit title, e.g. /money-save pricing locked at $29
/money-save list	List all snapshots for the current project
/money-save list <project>	List snapshots for a specific project
/money-save --slug <project>	Save under a non-default project name

Natural-language equivalents (any of these → run /money-save):

• English: "save this", "checkpoint this", "remember this", "lock it in", "snapshot before we continue"
• 中文: "保存", "存档", "记下来", "这个结论留着", "存一份"

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Project isolation

Every snapshot belongs to a project. A project separates one business from another — what you decide for MusicAPI should never bleed into KolFind's diagnosis history.

Default project name: basename($(pwd)) with non-[a-z0-9-] characters replaced by -. If the user runs /money-save from ~/Dev/musicapi, the project becomes musicapi.

Explicit override: --slug my-project.

Fallback: if you're in $HOME or somewhere generic, the project is default.

In conversation, refer to it as business or project — never "slug" (that's the internal identifier).

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Workflow

Step 1 — Decide if there's anything worth saving

Before writing anything, scan the conversation for actual decisions. A snapshot is not a journal entry — it's a record of judgments the user has confirmed.

Worth saving if the conversation contains any of:

• A pricing decision the user accepted
• An idea or pivot the user explicitly ruled out
• A hypothesis the user wants to test next sprint
• A clear "next-skill" handoff (e.g., "do /money-product next")
• A diagnosis root cause the user agreed with

If nothing of substance happened, refuse cleanly:

Nothing to save yet — no decisions confirmed in this conversation. Run /money-discover, /money-strategy, or another diagnostic skill first, then come back.

Never write empty or filler snapshots.

Step 2 — Extract or confirm a title

Pull a noun-phrase title from the conversation, ≤ 24 characters. Examples:

• pricing locked at $29
• ruled out enterprise pivot
• MVP scope frozen
• 首单获客渠道是 [niche forum]
• 定价从 $9 拉到 $29

If the user gave an explicit title via /money-save <title>, use theirs verbatim.

Step 3 — Build the path

~/.smtm/sessions/{project}/{YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS}-{title-slug}.md

• Timestamp: local time, format 20260503-141522
• title-slug: lowercase, spaces → -, punctuation stripped, CJK characters preserved
• If a same-second collision somehow occurs, append a 4-char random suffix: -a7k2

mkdir -p the directory first if it doesn't exist.

Step 4 — Write the snapshot

YAML frontmatter + markdown body. Both fixed-format. Other skills will parse this — do not improvise the schema.

---
slug: {project}
timestamp: {ISO 8601 with timezone, e.g. 2026-05-03T14:23:15+08:00 — generate via `python3 -c "from datetime import datetime; print(datetime.now().astimezone().isoformat(timespec='seconds'))"` or equivalent. Never use the basic-format variant 20260503T142315+0800.}
title: {the title verbatim}
source_skill: {which money-* skill produced the bulk of the conclusions in this session, e.g. money-discover. If multiple, comma-separated.}
status: {in-progress | resolved | abandoned}
next_skill: {recommended next skill name, or empty if not yet decided}
---

## Business state

{One paragraph. What is the current state of this business? What brought the user to /money this conversation? Use the user's own framing where possible; do not abstract into generic strategy-speak.}

## Confirmed conclusions

- {Conclusion 1, one line. Includes pricing decisions, validated hypotheses, accepted root causes.}
- {Conclusion 2}
- ...

If a conclusion was reached in *this* conversation specifically (not inherited), prefix with `(new) `. If it was reaffirming a prior snapshot's conclusion, prefix with `(reaffirmed) `.

## Ruled out

- {Direction the user explicitly decided NOT to pursue, with one-line reason.}
- {e.g. "Won't pivot to enterprise — sales cycle too long for solo founder."}
- {If empty, write `(none yet)`.}

## Open hypotheses

- {Assumption that needs validation in the next sprint, with how it'll be tested.}
- {e.g. "Hypothesis: niche-forum traffic will convert at >2%. Test: 5 posts over 2 weeks, track signups via UTM."}
- {If empty, write `(none yet)`.}

## Next move

{One paragraph or a bullet. Which skill picks up from here? What action does the user take first?}

E.g. "Next: /money-product to build the landing page. First action: register the domain musicapi.ai."

## Notes

{Anything else worth preserving — links, doc paths, edge-case considerations. Optional. If empty, write `(none)`.}

Step 5 — Confirm to the user

Print a short confirmation in the user's chosen language:

✅ Saved as <title> under project <project>. File: ~/.smtm/sessions/<project>/<filename>.md

Resume next time with /money-restore from this directory.

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List mode

/money-save list and /money-save list <project> enumerate snapshots:

musicapi (5 snapshots):
  1. 2026-05-03 14:23  pricing locked at $29  (resolved, from money-strategy)
  2. 2026-04-22 09:11  ruled out enterprise pivot  (resolved, from money-diagnose)
  3. 2026-04-15 16:40  MVP scope frozen  (in-progress, from money-product)
  ...

Sort by filename timestamp, newest first.

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Edge cases

• No decisions yet → Refuse cleanly per Step 1. Do not invent content.
• Same project, same second → Append 4-char random suffix.
• iCloud-synced sessions directory → Do not rely on file mtime; sort exclusively by the YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS prefix in the filename.
• User runs /money-save from a freshly-cloned repo with no decisions → Same as "no decisions yet" — refuse.
• User-facing language — match the user's chosen language (English or 中文). Map internal field names (slug, source_skill, next_skill) to user-friendly terms in conversation: slug → 项目/business, source_skill → from, next_skill → next.

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Principles

• State, not narrative — Snapshots are checkpoints, not journals. Bullet > paragraph.
• User's words, not yours — Quote the user's framing where possible. Do not paraphrase decisions into corporate-speak.
• Append-only — Never overwrite an existing snapshot. Every save is a new file.
• Cheap to write, expensive to lose — Err on the side of saving when there is genuine substance. But never save filler.

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Value Quantification (Required After Each Successful Save)

After confirming the snapshot was written, append:

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### 📊 What this checkpoint is worth

- 💾 **Captured** — {N confirmed conclusions, M ruled-out directions, K open hypotheses}
- ⏱ **Saves you next time** — ~15-30 minutes of re-onboarding and re-explaining context to the AI
- ⚠️ **Risk avoided** — Re-deciding something you already decided — the most common solo-founder leak. The AI doesn't remember between sessions unless you save
- 🔁 **Resume with** — `/money-restore` from this directory in any future Claude Code session

Use the actual counts from the snapshot. If only 1 conclusion was captured, the value is real but smaller — show it honestly. Never inflate.

If the user has saved ≥3 snapshots in this project, append a second line:

💡 You now have {N} snapshots in {project}. Run /money-report if you want a single deliverable merging them — useful for sharing with co-founders or for your own multi-month review.