---
name: investor-data-room
description: Use when a UK-domiciled founder needs to produce a full seed-raise pack from idea to deliverables: graph-structured data room, 16-section business plan, persuasive prospectus + formal term sheet (with FCA self-certification appendices), 13-slide deck blueprint, print-ready HTML+PDF for each. Trigger phrases include "build me a data room", "draft a business plan", "deck from the business plan", "draft an investment prospectus", "generate a term sheet", "from office hours to investor pack", "set up the fundraise repo". The skill never speculates on financial figures or cap-table values: every number traces to a Companies House filing, a financial model worksheet, or a source citation. Public-facing artefacts contain zero internal workings (no "reconciliation pending", no "open Q" markers, no comparison-to-baseline commentary). Design tokens are harmonised across business plan, prospectus, term sheet, and deck via the operator's project design-tokens spec.
allowed-tools:
  - Bash
  - Read
  - Write
  - Edit
  - Glob
  - Grep
  - WebSearch
  - WebFetch
---

# investor-data-room

Build a UK seed-raise pack in five stages. Each stage has an outcome contract; do not advance until the contract is met.

## Outcome contract (whole skill)

Complete when the data room contains:

```
<project-site>/.docs/data-room/
  README.md                                 # data-room index, status snapshot, doctrine
  01-narrative/
    office-hours-design.md                  # ideation working scratchpad
    business-plan.md                        # 16-section business plan
    deck-blueprint.md                       # 13-slide blueprint
    exit-thesis.md                          # named acquirers + recent exit comparables
  02-corporate-legal/
    README.md                               # incorporation filings, articles, board minutes
    incorporation-<co-house-no>-<date>.pdf  # IN01 + statement of capital + cap table
  03-cap-table/
    README.md                               # pre/post-investment cap table with PSC notes
    comparables.md                          # recent comparable rounds (company / pre-money / post-money / multiple / source) cited by the term-sheet valuation
  04-financials/
    README.md
    model_worksheet.md                      # opening cash, capex, burn, MRR ramp, two-round
  05-commercial/
    README.md
    <gtm-partner-1>.md                      # one file per named partner
    <gtm-partner-1>-proposal.pdf
  06-product-ip/
    README.md
    encrypted-document-sharing.md           # if applicable
  07-team/
    README.md
    <founder-1>.pdf                         # CV per foregrounded founder
  08-market/
    README.md
    sources.md                              # every market figure with citation
    competitor-value-claims-rebuttal.md
  09-operations/
    README.md
  10-supporting/
    README.md
  html/
    business-plan/
      index.html                            # A4 portrait, design tokens, premium register
      render-pdf.mjs                        # Playwright + img2pdf + qpdf pipeline
      business-plan.pdf                     # rendered output
      logo-light.png logo-dark.png
    prospectus/
      index.html                            # A4 portrait, 10-15 page persuasive cut
      term_sheet.html                       # A4 portrait, 6-8 page formal term sheet
      render-pdf.mjs
      prospectus.pdf term_sheet.pdf
      logo-light.png logo-dark.png
    deck/
      index.html                            # 16:9 landscape (297mm x 167mm), 12+1 slides
      render-pdf.mjs
      deck.pdf
      logo-light.png logo-dark.png
      team/                                 # cropped headshot WebPs for slide 8 founder grid
        <founder-firstname>-<lastname>.webp
```

Skip stages that are already complete; do not regenerate stale artefacts blindly.

## Stage 1 — Office-hours ideation

Drive a conversational discovery session using the sibling `office-hours` skill. Market sizing and competitor recon during discovery dispatch the `research-assistant` specialist with `deep-research` + `data-research` rather than calling `WebSearch` directly — every market figure that ends up in `08-market/sources.md` must trace to a structured-research citation.

Output a single `office-hours-design.md` capturing:

- Problem statement
- Demand evidence (with numbers and dates)
- Status quo
- Target user and narrowest wedge
- Constraints
- Six to eight numbered premises (founder-confirmed)
- Two to four narrative-shape alternatives with a recommendation
- Financials / use-of-funds placeholders flagged as open questions
- Founder Signal Reflection

This file is the working substrate. It stays internal-only. Every later artefact derives from it.

**Doctrine.** Never speculate on numbers; flag them as open questions until the founder confirms.

## Stage 2 — Data room scaffold

When invoked under the venture-studio agent, scaffolding is done by the deterministic script at `premium-plugins/venture-studio/bin/scaffold.sh` — it creates the Project + eight artefact Tasks and the ten-section directory tree in one atomic invocation. The script is idempotent; re-runs against an existing data room are a no-op. See `venture-studio/PLUGIN.md` § "Scaffolding script".

When invoked outside the venture-studio agent (standalone usage of this skill), build the directory tree manually. Each section gets a `README.md` that doubles as a content checklist (purpose, expected contents, current state, gaps). The graph structure is fixed: ten numbered sections (`01-narrative` through `10-supporting`) plus a top-level README and an `html/` subdirectory for rendered deliverables.

**File-naming conventions:**

- `<co-house-no>` for Companies House filings (e.g. `incorporation-17237239-2026-05-22.pdf`).
- `<founder-firstname>-<lastname>.pdf` for CVs.
- `<gtm-partner>.md` + `<gtm-partner>-proposal.pdf` for each commercial partner.
- All `README.md` files are markdown only.

**Where the published URL lives.** If the project hosts a public prospectus or marketing microsite, keep the published artefacts at a stable path (e.g. `realagent.chat/sites/<slug>/`); the rendered HTML inside `html/<artefact>/index.html` is the source of truth and republishes from there.

References: `references/data-room-structure.md` for the section-by-section purpose statements.

## Stage 3 — Business plan synthesis

**Before drafting any narrative prose**, call `voice-retrieve-conditioning` with `format: "article"`, `length: "long"`, and `topic` set to the venture's domain (e.g. "AI estate-agent operating system"). When the tool returns a non-null `styleCard`, the founder has a voice profile on file — condition every prose section on the style card and exemplars so the business plan reads as the founder's own writing, not generic VC boilerplate. When the tool returns `{styleCard: null, exemplars: []}` (no profile, or `writer-craft` not enabled), draft in the formal-yet-direct register implied by the section purpose statements without further conditioning. Emit narration `[investor-data-room] voice-mirror styleCardBytes=<n> exemplars=<k>` when conditioning was applied.

Generate `01-narrative/business-plan.md` with **16 sections** following the canonical structure:

1. Executive Summary
2. Vision and Mission (Vision / Mission / Doctrine triad)
3. The Company (legal entity table + pre-investment cap table)
4. The Market (TAM/SAM/SOM bottoms-up with geography-tier floor + CAGR with citation + 3-yr market-expansion thesis + market-share trajectory to 3–8% SAM in 5 yrs + structural tailwind + self-employed wedge + domestic adjacency + international upside + pricing)
5. The Product (what it is + wedge product + upsell path + substrate moat + conversation ingestion + network + Anthropic asymmetric capture + human-services layer)
6. The Business Model (revenue streams + unit economics — ACV, CAC, LTV, **LTV:CAC**, gross margin, **burn multiple**, churn — each a named line)
7. Go-to-Market (Wedge → Beachhead → Blitzscale framework + demand evidence + GTM partners + horse-before-cart logic + geography)
8. Competition (three failing categories + RANL differentiation + most-direct-competitor counter)
9. Operations (technology stack + data sovereignty + IP ownership chain + compliance posture summary)
10. Compliance and regulatory positioning (UK consumer protection + UK data/AI regime + EU AI Act + adjacent UK obligations + moat-not-tax close)
11. Team (founders + strategic shareholders + hiring plan)
12. Financial Plan (12.1 opening balance sheet through 12.7 use of funds; valuation per round cites `03-cap-table/comparables.md`)
13. Risks and Mitigations
14. Milestones (the N-month thesis)
14b. Exit thesis (target exit value + 5–8-year horizon + exit routes — strategic / PE / IPO — + 3–5 named acquirers with one-line rationale each)
15. The bottom line (summary table + close)
+ Appendices (titled documents only; no internal-only file pointers)

**Critical rules** (all enforced; recurrence is a P0 violation):

- **No internal workings** in body text. No "reconciliation pending", no "open Q", no comparison-to-baseline ("loss has grown from X to Y because…"), no cross-references to `office-hours-design.md` or any working file.
- **Cap table is authoritative from the IN01.** Reconcile the share-capital line (`500,000 ordinary @ £0.001 nominal` vs `@ £0.01`) before writing the opening balance sheet. Inception premium (e.g. one founder paying £4,500 above nominal) reconciles £5k inception cash against £500 nominal.
- **Every market figure cites a source.** Maintain `08-market/sources.md` with every figure used in the business plan; the body references "Appendix B" by title, never an internal file path.
- **Financial figures derive from the model worksheet.** Cite "Appendix A" by title.
- **No em-dashes between alphabetic words** in user-facing prose (recurring style violation in this project's history; see `references/internal-workings-scrub.md`).

**Research routing across Stage 3.** Every figure sourced from the wider world routes through the `research-assistant` specialist — never raw `WebSearch` / `WebFetch` from this skill:

- **Section 4 (Market)** — TAM/SAM/SOM citations, CAGR sourcing, market-share trajectory baselines, competitor rebuttal facts: dispatch `research-assistant` with `data-research`.
- **Section 10 (Compliance)** — DMCC Act (UK consumer protection for estate-agency), ICO ADM framework (Articles 22A–22D under UK GDPR + ICO 2025 strategy), EU AI Act (force date, high-risk classification for property-financing decisions): dispatch `research-assistant` with `academic-verify` to retrieve the primary regulatory texts. Cite each in the body.
- **Section 12 (Financial — valuation comparables)** — recent comparable rounds that feed `03-cap-table/comparables.md`: dispatch `research-assistant` with `data-research`.
- **Section 14b (Exit thesis)** — 3–5 named acquirers (strategic / PE / IPO) with one-line rationale each, plus recent comparable exits (company / acquirer / multiple / year / source) that feed the exit section of `03-cap-table/comparables.md`: dispatch `research-assistant` with `data-research`.

The specialist returns structured findings; the skill quotes those findings verbatim into the relevant section and into `08-market/sources.md` / `03-cap-table/comparables.md`.

References: `references/business-plan-template.md` for the section-by-section template; `references/compliance-research-checklist.md` for the UK + EU regulatory regimes to verify.

## Stage 3b — Term sheet synthesis

Generate `html/prospectus/term_sheet.html` as an **A4 portrait, 10-page formal term sheet** sectioned as:

1. Cover + preamble + parties (Issuer / Founders / Investors / round size / minimum cheque / target close)
2. Share economics & use of proceeds (instrument, valuation, dilution, issue price, share count, use of funds)
3. Cap table on closing (post-money, fully diluted, total = 100%)
4. Governance & shareholder protections (board, info rights, pre-emption, drag/tag, SEIS/EIS posture)
5. Closing terms (governing law, IP assignment, conditions to closing, long-form docs timeline)
6. Signatures (Company + Investor blocks)
7. **Appendix A — High Net Worth Individual Investor Statement** (FSMA 2000 / FCA COBS 4 Annex 2 verbatim)
8. **Appendix B — Self-Certified Sophisticated Investor Statement** (FSMA 2000 / FCA COBS 4 Annex 4 verbatim)
9. Backpage (contact)

**Doctrine for the term sheet:**

- **Entity name is the IN01-filed name**, not a marketing entity. Issuer must read as the actual filed company (e.g. the name on the IN01 statement of capital, not the trading or marketing brand).
- **Cap table matches the IN01 + Round 1 dilution model exactly.** Pre-investment shares + new investor Round Shares = post-investment total. No fractional shares; no rounding to the % column that breaks share totals.
- **Founder list reads exactly as the cap table.** No phantom founders. Strategic shareholders (e.g. an investing LLP) ride in the cap table by entity name, not via their individuals.
- **Sole director on IN01 is the director-designate.** A term sheet that names two directors when IN01 names one is a defect.
- **SEIS/EIS posture is post-funding obligation, not closing contingency.** Never assured prior to distribution; no representation as to qualifying status. Forms no part of consideration.
- **Confidentiality and exclusivity provisions are the only binding clauses.** Everything else non-binding until long-form docs.
- **FCA self-certification statements are appendices to the term sheet, not separate documents.** The High Net Worth Individual Investor Statement (FSMA 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 / FCA COBS 4 Annex 2) and the Self-Certified Sophisticated Investor Statement (COBS 4 Annex 4) ship as Appendix A and Appendix B. **Use verbatim wording**; never paraphrase regulatory text. Current source: UKBAA's templated PDFs (Feb 2024 versions reflect the post-31 Jan 2024 reverted thresholds: HNW £170k income or £430k net assets; sophisticated director threshold £1.6m turnover). When the regulatory wording changes, the templates change first at UKBAA / FCA COBS Annexes; re-fetch before issue.

References: `references/termsheet-template.md`.

## Stage 4 — Deck blueprint synthesis

Generate `01-narrative/deck-blueprint.md` as a **13-slide brief** the deck designer can execute. Each slide has Purpose, Headline (one-line message), Body (bullets + figures pulled from the business plan), Visual suggestion, and Source reference. The 13 slides:

1. Cover (raise headline + founders)
2. Vision (Vision / Mission / Doctrine)
3. The Market (TAM + tailwind + wedge + **CAGR with citation**)
4. Business Model (subscription + service layer + unit economics)
5. Go-to-Market (Wedge → Beachhead → Blitzscale + named partners)
6. The Product (substrate + wedge + network + asymmetric capture + services layer)
7. Competition (three failing categories + most-direct counter)
8. The Team (founders + strategic shareholders)
9. Economics (P&L summary + cash flow + break-even + **LTV:CAC and burn multiple**)
10. The Raise (size, valuation, dilution, instrument, use of funds, IP transfer, follow-on round)
11. Exit (target exit value + 5–8-year horizon + routes — strategic / PE / IPO — + 3–5 named acquirers with one-line rationale)
12. Milestones (M0 to M-final timeline)
13. Other Information (compliance + platform dependency + contact)

Production notes attached: format (16:9 landscape, PDF + source deck), design tokens reference (the operator's project design-tokens spec, path supplied at Stage 5 invocation), chart-source consistency with the financial model, speaker-note attribution.

References: `references/deck-blueprint-template.md`.

## Stage 4b — Prospectus synthesis

Generate `html/prospectus/index.html` as an **A4 portrait, 7-page persuasive prospectus** alongside the formal term sheet from Stage 3b. The prospectus is the narrative companion to the term sheet: cover + executive summary + architecture + go-to-market + platform asset + operating plan + use of funds / founders / team.

The templates live under `templates/prospectus/`:

```
templates/prospectus/
  index.html          # 7-page prospectus with {{ placeholders }}
  term_sheet.html     # 8-page term sheet with {{ placeholders }} (shared with Stage 3b)
  render-pdf.mjs      # image-only PDF renderer (shared with Stage 5)
```

**Intake — ask these before substituting any placeholder.** Group by section; wait for answers before drafting.

*Company identity:*

1. Legal name of the company (use "to be incorporated" if pre-IN01).
2. Trading / brand name (topbar + body copy + signatures).
3. Tagline / one-paragraph deck — what does the company do, who is it for, why is it different. ≤ 80 words.
4. Brand icon — 22×22 px PNG/SVG mark. Save as `<brand>-icon.png` alongside the HTML.
5. Cover hero image — landscape photograph, ≥ 2800 px on the long edge. Save as `hero.png` alongside the HTML.
6. Document month / year (topbar meta, e.g. "May 2026").
7. Document IDs — short refs for footers: prospectus (e.g. "ACME / FIN-001 / V1.0") and term sheet (e.g. "ACME / TS-001 / V1.0").

*The round:*

8. Round size, gross, £.
9. Post-money valuation cap, £.
10. Issue price per share, £. Confirm split between nominal value (typically £0.01) and share premium.
11. Number of new Round Shares (= round size ÷ issue price).
12. Founder shares retained at close — total and percentage (typically 80%).
13. Total shares post-closing.
14. Minimum cheque per investor, £.
15. Minimum aggregate raise, £, below which the round does not proceed.
16. Round close date and funds expected date (DD Month YYYY).
17. Use-of-proceeds split — typically four buckets (product, GTM, infrastructure, working capital + legal) totalling 100%.

*Founders and team:*

18. Founders — for each: full name, role, share count, percentage. Mark full-time vs advisors.
19. Director-designates at closing (at least one executive director).
20. NED nomination right — confirm threshold (e.g. any investor ≥ 10% may nominate one NED, subject to founder approval not unreasonably withheld).
21. Observer threshold (typically ≥ 5%).
22. First product hires planned in Y1 — trigger conditions for each.

*The thesis (narrative):*

23. The market — size, growth rate, target customer cohort. Cite sources (ONS, industry reports, named studies).
24. The opportunity / problem — what is currently broken or unmet.
25. Value proposition — pricing, what the customer gets, why it beats alternatives.
26. Architecture and differentiation — the structural moat. What does the company do that nobody else does? "AI" is not a moat; the moat is in *how* AI is applied.
27. Wedge → beachhead → blitzscale — staged GTM. Wedge = narrow entry product. Beachhead = one decisively winnable segment funded by Round 1. Blitzscale = market expansion funded by Round 2.
28. Distribution funnel — specific channels producing customers in months 1–6. Concrete: integrations, channels, named partners.
29. Pilots / paying customers at close — name them, who runs them, what they're paying.

*Financial model:*

30. Opening cash post-close — founder subscription + this round proceeds, less any capex at M0.
31. Capex at M0 — one-off hardware / set-up costs.
32. Monthly burn by phase — M1–M2 (founders only), M3–M9 (with first hire), M10–M12 (with second hire). Per-line breakdown.
33. MRR ramp — month-by-month MRR for M1–M12. Distinguish customer segments.
34. Customer count and device count by month if hardware is part of the offering.
35. Cash trajectory — month-by-month closing cash balance derived from (33) − burn. Identify cash low point and break-even month.
36. Round 2 plan — size range, timing (which month), gating milestones, what it funds.

*Operational / legal:*

37. Founder IP assignment — who is assigning IP to the company at closing? Outright? Any licence-back?
38. Conditions to closing — incorporation, IP assignment, DD, shareholders' agreement, cleared funds.
39. Governing law — confirm "English law, Exclusive jurisdiction of England & Wales courts" or substitute.
40. Long-form documentation timeline — within how many days of mutual signature will the subscription & shareholders' agreement and articles be circulated?

If the operator cannot answer (28), (33–35), or (36), flag explicitly that the prospectus will be incomplete and ask for sensible base-case assumptions. The financial chart on the cover and the operating-plan section both depend on these numbers.

**How to apply answers.**

1. Copy `templates/prospectus/{index.html, term_sheet.html, render-pdf.mjs}` into `html/prospectus/`.
2. Save the operator-supplied hero image as `hero.png` and brand icon as `<brand>-icon.png`.
3. Replace **global atomic placeholders** in both HTML files (the templates already carry these): `{{ BRAND_NAME }}`, `{{ COMPANY_LEGAL_NAME }}`, `{{ BRAND_ICON }}`, `{{ HERO_IMAGE }}`, `{{ TERM_SHEET_HTML }}`, `{{ TERM_SHEET_PDF }}`, `{{ PROSPECTUS_PDF }}`, `{{ TERM_SHEET_DOC_ID }}`, `{{ PROSPECTUS_DOC_ID }}`, `{{ DOC_MONTH_YEAR }}`, `{{ ROUND_SIZE }}`, `{{ POST_MONEY_CAP }}`, `{{ ISSUE_PRICE }}`, `{{ NOMINAL_VALUE }}`, `{{ SHARE_PREMIUM }}`, `{{ ROUND_SHARES }}`, `{{ FOUNDER_SHARES }}`, `{{ TOTAL_SHARES_POST }}`, `{{ MIN_CHEQUE }}`, `{{ MIN_AGGREGATE }}`, `{{ ROUND_CLOSE_DATE }}`, `{{ FUNDS_EXPECTED_DATE }}`, `{{ NEW_INVESTOR_PCT }}`, `{{ FOUNDERS_PCT }}`.
4. Replace **narrative blocks** in `index.html` paragraph-by-paragraph using the answers from sections (23)–(29) and (32)–(36). The placeholder narrative blocks are structural references, not content to keep.
5. Replace **cap table rows** in `term_sheet.html` (`<tr>` inside `<div class="captable">`) with the operator's actual founder names, roles, share counts, percentages.
6. Replace **signature block** in `term_sheet.html` with the director-designates.
7. Replace **financial chart data** in `index.html`. The cover chart is hand-coded SVG — find the `<polyline points="...">` for the cash line, the `<rect>` MRR bars, and the burn step-lines, and recompute coordinates from the new financial model (each MRR bar's `y` = `290 - (mrr_k / 60) * 120`, height = `120 - y_offset`). If recomputation is non-trivial, ask the operator for the 12 monthly cash and MRR values directly.
8. Update `<title>` and `<meta>` tags to reflect the new company.

**Doctrine for the prospectus.**

- **UK seed round only.** The templates encode UK FCA self-certification under FSMA 2000 (FPO) articles 48 (HNWI) and 50A (Self-certified Sophisticated Investor). Do not adapt for US, EU, or non-UK regimes without explicit operator instruction — the legal exemption text is jurisdiction-specific.
- **SEIS/EIS is post-funding, not a closing contingency.** The templates state that SEIS/EIS advance assurance will be pursued *after* the round closes and is not a condition of subscription. Do not promote SEIS/EIS as assured before distribution — it is misleading and breaks the FCA exemption.
- **Image-only PDF via Stage 5's `render-pdf.mjs`.** Same pipeline; the prospectus shares one renderer with the business plan and deck.
- **A4 fit is enforced.** Every `<section class="page">` must have `scrollHeight ≤ 1123 px + 2 px slack`. The remedy on overflow is to split the section into two `<section class="page">` blocks — never to shrink fonts or pad less.
- **Render to the same folder as the HTML.** The renderer reads relative asset paths (icon, hero image).

**Verify before shipping.**

1. Read every PNG in `.tmp-*/`. `pdfinfo` reporting "7 pages, A4" is not verification. Confirm: content fills the page, no whitespace gaps > 25 mm at the bottom, the cover hero looks right, the chart values match the model, founder names are spelled correctly, the cap table totals to 100%.
2. Hero image resolution floor: 2800 px on the long edge. Below that the cover prints soft.
3. The two FCA self-cert pages render cleanly — HNWI (FPO art. 48) and Sophisticated (FPO art. 50A). These are legally prescribed text; do not edit their wording without lawyer sign-off.

## Stage 5 — HTML + PDF render pipeline

For each artefact that ships as a print-ready PDF (business plan, prospectus, deck), produce three files under `html/<artefact>/`:

```
index.html        # A4 portrait single HTML file, premium design tokens, sectioned by <section class="page">
render-pdf.mjs    # Playwright + img2pdf + qpdf pipeline (image-only PDF, linearized)
<artefact>.pdf    # rendered output (regenerate after every HTML edit)
```

**Hard constraints (A4 portrait, image-only PDF):**

- A4 portrait: `@page { size: A4 portrait; margin: 18mm 16mm 20mm; }`
- One `<section class="page">` per A4 page; renderer aborts if `scrollHeight` exceeds 1123px + 2px slack.
- Page numbers via CSS counter in `.page::after { content: counter(pagenum); }`. The renderer screenshots each section, so `@page @bottom-center` rules do NOT propagate.
- Image-only PDF: Playwright captures one PNG per section at deviceScaleFactor 3.125 (300 dpi); `img2pdf --pagesize 210mmx297mm` binds them; `qpdf --linearize --object-streams=disable` linearises.
- Even page count for booklet binding (multiple of 4 ideal). Add or remove a supporting page if parity breaks.
- Cover and backpage are full-bleed `--surface-deep` with `@page :first { margin: 0 }` and named `@page backpage-full`.
- Screen-only chrome (e.g. a Download PDF pill button) uses `@media print { display: none !important; }` per the skill.
- `execFileSync` for img2pdf and qpdf (never `execSync` with template strings: shell-injection class).
- Verify: `qpdf --check`, `pdfinfo | grep -E "Pages|Optimized"`, **and read every page visually**. `pdfinfo` reporting "25 pages, A4" is not verification.

**Design tokens.** Reference the project's `design-tokens.md` Tier 1 (raw) + Tier 2 (semantic aliases) + Tier 3 (component) layers. Premium register defaults: `--paper-25` near-white page surface, `--teal-900` ink, `--gold-500` accent, `--paper-100` cool mist (`#ECF1F2`) tinted-band surface. Update token values in one place; CSS `:root` mirrors the spec.

**Logo placement.** Copy the light and dark icon variants from the project's public assets (`logo-light.png` for dark cover/backpage, `logo-dark.png` reserved for light content pages if needed) into the artefact directory. Cover top-left pairs the icon with the wordmark; backpage top-left does the same.

References: `references/html-pdf-pipeline.md` for the canonical `render-pdf.mjs` source and CSS scaffold.

## Doctrine (enforced across all stages)

- **No internal workings in public artefacts.** Comparison-to-baseline, reconciliation-pending, open-Q markers, internal cross-references all stay in working files (`01-narrative/office-hours-design.md`, section READMEs). Public artefacts (business plan, deck, prospectus, PDFs) state the current position as a fact.
- **Every claim cites a source.** Companies House for the cap table. The model worksheet for every financial figure. A named publication for every market figure. A specific vendor page for every competitor claim.
- **Design tokens are the visual contract.** Update once in the tokens spec; the business plan CSS, the prospectus CSS, and the deck CSS all consume the same tokens. Never hardcode hex values inside component CSS.
- **Even page count for booklet binding.** Multiple of 4 ideally; minimum even. Add or remove a supporting page to maintain parity if a section change breaks it.
- **Verify by reading every rendered page.** `pdfinfo` page count is not verification. The bottom 30% of every page must reach the content margin without significant whitespace.

## Slide-design patterns (collected from the deck build)

- **Cap-table over labelled pie chart.** A labelled donut with seven slices puts the percentages on the chart but adds visual clutter at small slice counts. A clean post-investment cap table (Shareholder / Shares / % with a gold-rule Total row) reads faster on the slide and matches the term-sheet treatment. Default to the table; reserve the pie for slides with three to four large slices.
- **Circular founder avatars on the team slide.** Square photos at full card width over-allocate vertical real-estate and crowd the bio + advisor band. Fixed-diameter circular avatars (e.g. 42mm × 42mm, `border-radius: 50%`, centred `margin: 0 auto`) leave room for the eyebrow + name + 3-line bio + advisor band on a 16:9 slide.
- **Headshot crops are face-centred, not full-environment.** Crop each source PNG/JPG to a tight head + shoulders square at 1200×1200 (`magick <src> -crop WxH+X+Y +repage -resize 1200x1200 -strip <crop>.png`), then encode with `cwebp -q 88 -m 6 -mt`. Resize-then-encode never loses face fidelity at the 42mm display size. Track per-founder face position from the source dimensions and centre the crop window on it.
- **Bio line budget on slide 8 is ~3 lines at 8.5pt.** A 4th line crashes into the advisor band's `border-top`. Trim aggressively: lead with the headline number ("33 years residential estate agency"), then 2-3 firms and 1-2 awards.
- **Linter strips trailing text in long edits.** When editing a multi-line founder bio (or any cell where you append clauses past a verbatim sentence), the auto-formatter has rewritten the trailing fragment on this project. Always re-grep the file after the edit; if "Sole IN01 director." or "2× Capper" went missing, the edit needs a second pass with a smaller anchor.

## Pitfalls to avoid (collected from the reference project)

- **Renaming a directory after the URL is published.** Keep `<project-site>/.docs/data-room/html/<artefact>/index.html` stable; if the URL changes, downstream investor links break.
- **Letting Round-2 hires inflate the Year-1 P&L.** Only Round-1 hires belong in the Year-1 income statement. Customer-success and product-engineer hires that trigger in Round 1 are in; senior platform engineer, head of growth, and CS team scale that Round 2 funds are not.
- **Mixing "Year 1" (12-month) and "Round 1 runway" (9-month).** If the £350k buys 9 months, present a 9-month forecast; do not present a 12-month forecast that implicitly assumes Round 2 closes mid-period without modelling the Round-2 cash injection.
- **Generic AI-bolted-onto-cloud-CRM competitors.** Treat the competitive set as three failing categories: incumbents (cloud CRM + bolted AI), Anthropic horizontal AI (inaccessible to non-tech-wizard users), and new-build cloud-SaaS AI-OS replacements (migration-required, same lock-in pattern as incumbents). Name each vendor, cite each claim from the vendor's own page, rebut with the substrate-AI inversion.
- **Forgetting Priestley / equivalent founder-thesis anchor.** Any founder who built the same thesis years before AI made it structurally apparent should reference it: book title, first-publication date, founder's costly-signal action (e.g. "bought 200 copies and distributed them to operators in his network"). This dates the conviction and lifts the deck's signal weight.
- **Letting the page background go light brown.** Premium register page surface (`--paper-25`) is near-white (`#FBFAF6`), not ivory. The screen-preview body background stays plain white (`#FFFFFF`).

## References

- `references/data-room-structure.md` — section-by-section README templates
- `references/business-plan-template.md` — 15-section business plan template
- `references/deck-blueprint-template.md` — 12-slide deck brief template
- `references/html-pdf-pipeline.md` — render-pdf.mjs canonical source + CSS scaffold
- `references/compliance-research-checklist.md` — UK + EU regulatory regimes to verify
- `references/internal-workings-scrub.md` — the public-vs-internal doctrine, patterns to scrub, recurrence list
- `references/design-tokens-application.md` — how to consume the operator's project design-tokens spec from an artefact's `:root` block
- `references/termsheet-template.md` — A4-portrait term-sheet structure, cap-table reconciliation, common defects
- `templates/prospectus/` — A4-portrait prospectus + term-sheet HTML templates and the shared `render-pdf.mjs` (consumed by Stages 3b, 4b, 5)

## Reference example

When this skill has previously rendered a data room for the current operator, that directory is the canonical example — read it before drafting. When no prior data room exists for the operator, the fallback reference is `references/data-room-structure.md` (section-by-section purpose statements) plus the per-stage references listed above.
