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 # Client Lifecycle
 
+## Purpose
+
+This document defines how a local business moves through the Digital Operations Partner service from first contact through assessment, proof-of-concept, retainer conversion, ongoing monitoring, renewal, expansion, or offboarding.
+
+The lifecycle exists to connect the business mission, value creation model, evidence model, go-to-market strategy, and operating rules.
+
+The service is designed around a proof-of-concept-first motion: demonstrate concrete value, then offer ongoing monitoring and optimization.
+
+---
+
+## Lifecycle Overview
+
+The standard client lifecycle is:
+
+1. Prospect
+2. Qualification
+3. Initial Assessment
+4. Evidence Classification
+5. Proof-of-Concept Fix
+6. Before/After Report
+7. Retainer Offer
+8. Ongoing Monitoring
+9. Monthly / Periodic Reporting
+10. Renewal / Expansion
+11. Cancellation / Offboarding
+
+---
+
+## 1. Prospect
+
+A prospect is a local service business that may be silently losing customers because of digital visibility, trust, representation, or engagement issues.
+
+Prospects may come from:
+
+- Warm referrals
+- Local business relationships
+- Direct outreach
+- Existing owner networks
+- Case studies
+- Before/after proof from previous clients
+
+The preferred go-to-market motion is geographically concentrated and relationship-driven rather than broad, cold, price-based competition.
+
+The company does not initially compete by being the cheapest provider. It competes by demonstrating specific, local, provable before/after value.
+
+---
+
+## 2. Qualification
+
+Qualification determines whether the prospect is a good fit for Version 1.
+
+A good V1 prospect is typically:
+
+- A local service business
+- Owner-operated or small-team operated
+- Dependent on local discovery, calls, appointments, bookings, visits, or consultations
+- Likely to have meaningful customer lifetime value
+- Likely to suffer from silent customer loss if digital pathways break or degrade
+- Not in a heavily regulated advertising category unless vertical-specific guardrails exist
+
+Version 1 priority categories include:
+
+- Home services
+- Auto repair
+- Salon / spa without medical claims
+- Boutique fitness / gym
+- Other local service businesses with clear customer action pathways
+
+Categories requiring later guardrails include:
+
+- Dental
+- Veterinary
+- Med spa / aesthetics
+
+Attorney / legal services are excluded for the foreseeable future due to materially heavier advertising and testimonial compliance constraints.
+
+---
+
+## 3. Initial Assessment
+
+The Initial Assessment identifies potential Silent Customer Loss across the business's digital presence.
+
+The assessment may examine:
+
+- Google Business Profile
+- Business name, address, and phone consistency
+- Business hours
+- Booking or contact pathways
+- Website discoverability
+- Service clarity
+- Local citations
+- Reviews and reputation signals
+- AI Visibility Integrity / AEO signals
+- Local Competitive Awareness signals
+
+The goal is not to create a long generic audit.
+
+The goal is to identify the most important issues that may prevent customers, search engines, or AI systems from finding, understanding, trusting, accurately representing, or engaging the business.
+
+---
+
+## 4. Evidence Classification
+
+Findings from the Initial Assessment must be classified before they are used in client-facing materials.
+
+The evidence model contains two tiers:
+
+### Tier 1: Verified Evidence
+
+Verified Evidence is concrete, observable, timestamped, current, or instrument-backed.
+
+Verified Evidence may be presented as a confirmed issue.
+
+Examples:
+
+- Wrong phone number
+- Incorrect business hours
+- Broken booking link
+- Failed contact form
+- Incorrect listing data
+- Indexing issue
+- Metadata issue
+- Canonical tag issue
+- Missing or incorrect Google Business Profile information
+
+### Tier 2: Indicative Evidence
+
+Indicative Evidence is sampled, directional, probabilistic, or risk-based.
+
+Indicative Evidence may be presented as directional risk or opportunity, but not as confirmed customer loss.
+
+Examples:
+
+- AI answer absence
+- AI misrepresentation
+- Weak entity clarity
+- Inconsistent service descriptions
+- Thin FAQ coverage
+- Missing structured data
+- Competitors appearing more consistently in AI answer samples
+- Weak local discovery signals
+
+Agents may propose an evidence tier, but humans approve final evidence tiers before client-facing use during Version 1.
+
+Ambiguous findings default to Indicative Evidence unless upgraded by human review.
+
+Rejected Verified Evidence classifications default to Indicative Evidence unless the reviewer discards the finding or requests additional evidence.
+
+---
+
+## 5. Proof-of-Concept Fix
+
+The Proof-of-Concept Fix is the first value demonstration.
+
+It is designed to show the prospect that silent customer loss can be identified, explained, and reduced.
+
+The fix should be:
+
+- Low-risk
+- Clearly scoped
+- Evidence-backed
+- Understandable to the business owner
+- Suitable for before/after comparison
+- Within Version 1 contract boundaries
+
+Examples may include:
+
+- Correcting a wrong Google Business Profile field
+- Fixing a broken booking or contact pathway
+- Correcting inconsistent listing information
+- Improving service clarity
+- Improving metadata or discoverability signals
+- Recommending structured data or entity-clarity improvements
+- Identifying AI representation problems as directional risk
+
+The Proof-of-Concept Fix must not become an open-ended implementation project.
+
+---
+
 ## Proof-of-Concept Fix Approval Gate
 
 During the proof-of-concept stage, agents may detect issues, gather evidence, and draft proposed fixes.
@@ -22,4 +201,188 @@ This includes, but is not limited to:
 The lifecycle must preserve the reconnaissance-versus-execution rule:
 
 Agents may detect and draft.
-Humans approve before publish.
\ No newline at end of file
+Humans approve before publish.
+
+---
+
+## 6. Before/After Report
+
+The Before/After Report is the receipt for the proof-of-concept engagement.
+
+The report should show:
+
+- What was reviewed
+- What was found
+- Whether each finding was Verified Evidence or Indicative Evidence
+- What was fixed or recommended
+- What changed after the fix
+- What risk remains
+- What should be monitored going forward
+
+The report must distinguish between confirmed issues and directional risks.
+
+Verified Evidence may support stronger before/after proof.
+
+Indicative Evidence may support directional comparison, but must be labeled as sampled, directional, or probabilistic when appropriate.
+
+The report is not the product.
+The product is continuous digital oversight and approved low-risk optimization.
+
+The report exists to document value, support trust, and create the bridge to ongoing service.
+
+---
+
+## 7. Retainer Offer
+
+After the proof-of-concept engagement, the client may be offered an ongoing retainer.
+
+The retainer should be positioned as ongoing protection against silent customer loss.
+
+The sales argument is:
+
+- Problems can exist without the business owner noticing.
+- Search engines and AI systems can misrepresent or fail to surface the business.
+- Competitors and platforms change over time.
+- Digital pathways break silently.
+- The business owner should not have to monitor all of this manually.
+
+The retainer should not be positioned as generic marketing.
+
+It should be positioned as ongoing digital operations oversight.
+
+The client should understand that ongoing service includes monitoring, diagnosis, prioritization, reporting, and approved low-risk optimization within the contract scope.
+
+---
+
+## 8. Ongoing Monitoring
+
+Ongoing Monitoring is the recurring service layer.
+
+It may include:
+
+- Customer Path Integrity checks
+- AI Visibility Integrity / AEO checks
+- Local Competitive Awareness checks
+- Reputation signal monitoring
+- Listing and citation monitoring
+- Booking or contact pathway checks
+- Website discoverability checks
+- Service clarity checks
+- Detection of new risks or changes
+
+Monitoring depth may vary by tier.
+
+Local Competitive Awareness is a built-in capability for every client, but the depth and frequency may scale by package.
+
+AI Visibility Integrity is core to the service, but the company does not guarantee placement, ranking, citation, or recommendation by any AI system.
+
+### Ongoing Monitoring Approval Gate
+
+During ongoing monitoring, agents may detect issues, gather evidence, compare changes, draft recommendations, and draft proposed low-risk optimizations.
+
+Any action that publishes to a client-facing surface requires human approval before it goes live.
+
+This includes the same client-facing surfaces listed in the Proof-of-Concept Fix Approval Gate, including Google Business Profile, review responses, Q&A answers, business descriptions, service descriptions, hours, phone numbers, booking links, website changes, and directory or citation updates.
+
+The ongoing monitoring phase must preserve the same reconnaissance-versus-execution rule:
+
+Agents may detect and draft.
+Humans approve before publish.
+
+### Approval Gate Graduation Threshold
+
+During Version 1, the approval gate remains in place by default.
+
+A specific task type may only bypass the human approval gate after a documented reliability run of at least 100 completed tasks with zero errors for that exact task type.
+
+The threshold applies to the exact task type only.
+
+Reliability for one task type does not transfer to another task type.
+
+Until the threshold is met and documented, human approval remains required before publishing to any client-facing surface.
+
+---
+
+## 9. Monthly / Periodic Reporting
+
+Ongoing clients receive periodic reports.
+
+Reports should be concise and decision-oriented.
+
+Reports should answer:
+
+- What did we watch?
+- What changed?
+- What did we find?
+- What did we fix or recommend?
+- What remains at risk?
+- What should happen next?
+
+Reports must preserve evidence-tier discipline.
+
+Verified Evidence and Indicative Evidence must not be blended.
+
+The client should not be forced to interpret raw findings or prioritize work alone.
+
+The service reduces decision burden.
+
+---
+
+## 10. Renewal / Expansion
+
+Renewal occurs when the client continues the ongoing service.
+
+Expansion may occur when the client asks for additional coverage, faster monitoring, more locations, deeper AI visibility checks, deeper competitive analysis, or additional approved optimization work.
+
+Expansion must not erase contract boundaries.
+
+Work outside the defined recurring service areas should be quoted separately unless explicitly included in the package.
+
+Examples of separate project work may include:
+
+- Website redesign
+- Branding projects
+- Social media production
+- Paid advertising
+- Full SEO campaigns
+- CRM or email marketing
+- Large-scale content production
+
+---
+
+## 11. Cancellation / Offboarding
+
+If a client cancels, offboarding should be clean and documented.
+
+Offboarding may include:
+
+- Final status summary
+- List of completed fixes
+- List of known remaining risks
+- Export or handoff of relevant documentation
+- Removal of user access where appropriate
+- Revocation of any agent credential tied to the client's accounts
+- Revocation of delegate access
+- Revocation of API tokens where applicable
+- Removal from ongoing monitoring systems
+- Confirmation that no further monitoring will occur
+
+The company should not retain unnecessary access to client accounts after cancellation.
+
+---
+
+## 12. Lifecycle Principles
+
+The lifecycle is governed by the following principles:
+
+1. Proof before retainer.
+2. Broad mission, narrow contract scope.
+3. Agents may detect and draft; humans approve before publish.
+4. Verified Evidence and Indicative Evidence must be separated.
+5. Ambiguous findings default to Indicative Evidence.
+6. Reports are receipts, not the product.
+7. The company improves digital pathways, not every marketing function.
+8. AI Visibility is core, but AI placement is not guaranteed.
+9. The client should receive clarity, not more homework.
+10. Scope expansion must be earned, explicit, and separately priced when outside the package.
+11. Approval-gate relaxation requires task-type-specific reliability evidence.
\ No newline at end of file