# Personas The eight personas used consistently across every Productivity Playbook and Skills Catalog. Do not change the set, order, or naming — month-over-month diffs depend on stability. --- ## 1. PhD / research student **Who**: Grad students, independent researchers, postdocs, anyone doing literature-heavy knowledge work. **Their job-to-be-done**: - Find + triage research papers (arXiv, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Google Scholar) - Summarize + cluster long PDFs - Draft literature reviews - Build + maintain reference libraries (Zotero, BibTeX) - Run notebooks for experiments (Jupyter, Colab) - Write papers (LaTeX) - Present findings (slides, posters) **What good coverage looks like**: - At least one link to a real PhD/academic using the tool on X - Specific skills/extensions for arXiv, Zotero, PDF-RAG, or LaTeX - Any academic partnerships / edu discounts **Common skills to look for**: arxiv-search, academic-research, latex-paper, zotero-mcp, pdf-extraction, citation-formatter, jupyter-notebook. --- ## 2. Solopreneur / startup founder **Who**: Technical and non-technical founders running a 1–20-person business. Primary constraint is their own time. **Their job-to-be-done**: - Email triage + drafts - CRM / pipeline ops - Financial reporting (Stripe, QBO, Xero) - Customer support triage - Product / ops reporting (GA4, GSC, Notion) - Daily planning / GTD / ADHD-friendly structure - Contract / doc generation **What good coverage looks like**: - Actual ROI numbers (hours / $/wk) when available - Chat-first workflows (the OpenClaw "32 hours/week" case study is the gold standard) - Composio Rube or similar "one install → N SaaS apps" mention **Common skills to look for**: executive-assistant, biz-reporter, lead-qual, notion-mcp, stripe-mcp, composio-rube, adhd-planner. --- ## 3. Marketer / growth / agency **Who**: Content marketers, SEO specialists, growth engineers, digital agency operators. **Their job-to-be-done**: - SEO + AEO (Answer Engine Optimization — getting cited by ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity) - Content pipelines (blog → social → newsletter → email) - Ad campaign management (Google Ads, Meta) - Analytics + dashboards (GA4, GSC, Amplitude) - Lead generation from Reddit / X / LinkedIn - Social scheduling (X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram) - Competitive intelligence **What good coverage looks like**: - AEO skills (this is the new SEO) - Specific examples of viral posts generated with the tool - Campaign-level ROI stories **Common skills to look for**: aeo-analytics, aeo-content, seo-optimizer, lead-magnet, brand-skill, adwhiz, ai-hunter-pro, composio-hubspot. --- ## 4. Designer (app / web / brand) **Who**: Product designers, UX/UI designers, brand designers, illustrators. **Their job-to-be-done**: - Figma design-to-code - Rapid UI iteration - Design system maintenance - Illustration / image generation - 3D / motion assets - App Store / screenshot generation - Brand consistency (voice DNA, color systems) **What good coverage looks like**: - Figma MCP integration - Design-to-code workflows with 1:1 fidelity claims - Real designer case studies (on X or Dribbble) **Common skills to look for**: figma-mcp, frontend-design, canvas-design, web-artifacts-builder, app-store-screenshots, adobe-automator, image-generation. --- ## 5. Video / podcast / creator **Who**: YouTubers, podcasters, TikTokers, documentary filmmakers, live streamers. **Their job-to-be-done**: - Video scripting + editing - Transcription + captions - Thumbnail generation - Audio post-production (noise reduction, leveling) - AI voiceover (ElevenLabs-style) - TTS / dubbing - Meeting / podcast recording summarization - Repurposing long-form into shorts **What good coverage looks like**: - Descript / ElevenLabs / CapCut integration - Whisper-based transcription workflows - Real creator stories (views, subscriber gains) **Common skills to look for**: podcastifier, meeting-intelligence, video-gen, music-maker, age-transformation, headshot-generator. --- ## 6. Software developer **Who**: Full-stack engineers, backend/frontend specialists, SREs, DevOps, platform engineers. By far the largest audience. **Their job-to-be-done**: - Code generation + inline completion - PR review (automated + human-assisted) - Bug triage + fix (Sentry → fix branch → PR) - Multi-agent orchestration (parallel agents, subagents) - Linear / Jira / GitHub ops from chat - Testing (TDD, fuzz, integration) - Deployment (Vercel, Netlify, Fly, AWS) - Security auditing - Docs + comments **What good coverage looks like**: - obra/superpowers or equivalent "whole SDLC" skill - Multi-agent patterns (Cursor Composer 2, Codex subagents, OpenClaw coding-agent) - Specific performance numbers (6,600 commits/mo, PR-review minutes saved) **Common skills to look for**: obra/superpowers, gh-mcp, linear-mcp, sentry-mcp, pr-reviewer, auto-pr-merger, multi-agent-blueprint, chrome-devtools-mcp. --- ## 7. Personal productivity / PKM / student **Who**: People building a second brain, GTD practitioners, undergraduates, lifelong learners, knowledge-worker generalists. **Their job-to-be-done**: - Notion / Obsidian / Logseq / Roam integration - Calendar + email triage - Daily / weekly reviews - Spaced repetition (Anki) - Reading pipeline (Instapaper → highlights → notes) - Goal tracking (Beeminder) - Smart home + life logging - Reading/writing in a foreign language **What good coverage looks like**: - Notion + Obsidian + Logseq skills - PARA / GTD / Zettelkasten patterns - Real student / knowledge-worker case studies **Common skills to look for**: notion-mcp, obsidian-mcp, anki, beeminder, apple-reminders, 2nd-brain, daily-planner. --- ## 8. Sales / finance / ops / back-office **Who**: AEs, SDRs, CS reps, accountants, operations managers, executive assistants. **Their job-to-be-done**: - CRM ops (HubSpot, Salesforce, ActiveCampaign, Pipedrive) - Invoice + expense management (Xero, QBO) - Payroll + HR - Contract generation + review - Procurement - Customer support triage - SLA monitoring - Enterprise doc workflows (docx, pdf, xlsx, pptx) **What good coverage looks like**: - HubSpot / Salesforce MCP - Xero / QBO integration - docx / pdf / pptx / xlsx foundation skills - Specific hours-saved metrics from agency case studies **Common skills to look for**: hubspot-mcp, activecampaign, stripe-mcp, xero-mcp, docx, pptx, xlsx, pdf, composio-rube. --- ## Coverage floor Each playbook persona section must include **at least one of**: - A real person / handle / company using this pattern (with link) - A named skill or extension (with rating) - A concrete workflow / recipe (not generic "you could use it for…") If a persona genuinely has zero activity for this tool in the research window, write one honest paragraph stating that and move on. **Do not skip the heading.**