Client onboarding

Client Onboarding

Creates the account record and the first-90-days plan for a client the firm just won.

This skill exists because of one number: nearly half of B2B client departures happen in the first 90 days, and the decision is frequently made around day 14 — before any work could have produced a result. What the client evaluates in that window is not output. It is whether they understand what is happening and whether it matches what they bought.

Read First

1. workspace/firm/profile.md — firm context.
2. The won opportunity, if there is one: workspace/sales/opportunities/{opportunity}/ — proposal.md and outcome.md. The proposal is the promise. Onboarding either honors it or the client experiences a bait-and-switch in week one.
3. workspace/firm/services/{service}.md — what was actually sold.
4. workspace/clients/{slug}/ — an account may already exist.

When to Use

• sales-outcome-log recorded result: won.
• A new client starts without a formal proposal (referral, existing relationship).
• An existing account has no written success definition. This is the common case on a repo that was just set up, and it is worth backfilling for active clients before anything else in this folder.

The Success Definition

The one output that matters most. Everything else here is scheduling.

Write the sentence the client would use to say this engagement worked, in their words, with a number or an observable state in it.

Not a success definition	A success definition
"Improve the release process"	"We ship on a weekday without anyone working a weekend"
"Better reporting"	"I can answer the board's cost-per-lead question without asking the agency"
"Migrate the platform"	"Dispatch stays up through the migration weekend and no invoice is wrong"

Rules:

1. It comes from the client, not from the firm. If the words are the firm's, that is a hypothesis to confirm on the kickoff call, and it must be marked as one.
2. If the proposal has an ## Outcomes section, start there — those were the terms of the sale. Do not quietly write a different, easier definition.
3. Different stakeholders judge success differently. Record each one's criteria separately rather than averaging them into a sentence nobody said.
4. If the client cannot state one, that is the finding, and it goes in the risk list. An engagement with no agreed definition of success cannot be renewed on evidence.

Never invent it. An assumed success definition is worse than a missing one, because the firm will confidently deliver against it.

Workflow

1. Resolve the source

From a won opportunity, carry over: account slug, service, engagement type, the buyer's stated situation, the promised outcomes, and scope boundaries. Without one, ask for the same fields — do not proceed on a service the repo cannot name.

2. Write !_account.md

Schema: docs/WORKSPACE.md, section "Account record". At minimum a real engagement model and one named contact with a role. That is the Client Context Gate in AGENTS.md; the other skills in this folder will refuse to run without it.

mrr_band is a band, never an exact figure. Do not record contract value, margin, utilization, or hours — that is a PSA tool, not this repo.

3. Map the stakeholders

For each person: name, role, whether they are economic buyer / champion / user / blocker, and what they personally judge success by. The champion who bought the work and the user who lives with it usually do not agree, and the firm finds out at renewal if it did not ask now.

Flag anyone named in the proposal that the firm has not actually met.

4. Write onboarding.md

---
client: northwind-logistics
service: platform-migration
source_opportunity: northwind--platform-migration--2026-07
started: 2026-08-17
success_definition: "We ship on a weekday without anyone working a weekend."
success_definition_source: client   # client | firm_hypothesis
day_14: 2026-08-31
day_30: 2026-09-16
day_90: 2026-11-15
status: active                      # active | complete
---

Body sections, in this order:

1. Success definition — the sentence, plus who said it and when.
2. Stakeholders — table: name, role, type, what they judge success by, met yet.
3. What we promised — pulled from the proposal's ## Outcomes and ## Scope, with the out-of-scope boundaries restated. The client's team has usually not read the proposal, so this is where scope creep is prevented cheaply.
4. Kickoff agenda — confirm the success definition out loud, confirm access and dependencies, name the escalation path, agree the checkpoint dates.
5. Checkpoints — day 14, 30, 90, each with what must be true by then. Day 14 is the important one and it is almost never about output; it is "does the client know what is happening and does it match what they bought".
6. Risks — including any assumption from the proposal that has not held.

5. Say what is not yet known

List the open questions the kickoff must answer. A confident onboarding plan built on guesses is the failure this skill is supposed to prevent.

Rules

1. Never invent the success definition, a stakeholder, or a criterion. Mark firm guesses as firm_hypothesis and confirm them on the call.
2. Do not restate the proposal's promises more favorably than the proposal did.
3. Day 14 gets a checkpoint even on a long engagement. On a 12-month retainer it is still where churn is decided.
4. Do not create qbr/ or account-plan.md here. They come later, from their own skills, when there is something real to put in them.
5. Contract values, hours, and margin do not belong in this folder.

Testing Requirements

1. Run from a won opportunity; confirm success_definition traces to the proposal's ## Outcomes and that scope boundaries carry over.
2. Run with no proposal; confirm the skill asks rather than assuming a service.
3. Give a vague goal ("improve marketing"); confirm the skill pushes for an observable definition instead of accepting it.
4. Confirm scripts/validate-account.sh workspace/clients/{slug} passes.
5. Confirm no exact contract value appears anywhere in the output.

Related Skills

Skill	When
sales-outcome-log	Recorded the win this skill starts from
client-account-plan	After onboarding lands, to plan expansion
client-qbr	First quarterly review, scored against the success definition here
client-health-review	Flags active accounts with no success definition