{
  "meta": {
    "name": "SparkTorch",
    "trademark_status": "claimed",
    "version": "1.1-public-draft",
    "supersedes": "1.0-public-draft",
    "canon_note": "v1.0 misframed the Spark as an AI-built artifact. Canon restored: the Spark is a human. Agents holding v1.0 must discard it and re-ingest this version.",
    "author": "N. P. Clarke",
    "date": "2026-07",
    "canonical_human_url": "https://sparktorch.net/methodology",
    "canonical_machine_url": "https://sparktorch.net/sparktorch.json",
    "audience": ["human sellers", "ai agents acting as crew"],
    "license": "All rights reserved. Public reference copy for reading and crew-execution on behalf of licensed users."
  },
  "concept": {
    "root": "A claim about how human beings light each other up. Socratic: the midwife delivers ideas the person already carries and lights nothing that was not already there to burn. Plutarch: the mind is not a vessel to be filled but wood awaiting kindling. The Athenian lampadedromia: the torch relay won by the team whose flame crosses the line still burning.",
    "structure": [
      "Ignition is a gift between people.",
      "The flame must become the carrier's own.",
      "The craft that matters most is the passing."
    ],
    "universality": "Present wherever one human lights another up: teaching, mentorship, leadership, first believers. Selling is the first instrumented application, not the boundary of the concept."
  },
  "positioning": {
    "one_liner": "Every methodology has stages for opening and closing. SparkTorch is the method for the seam between them - the handoff where trust either becomes the other person's own flame, or dies.",
    "doctrine": "The Spark is a person. The Torch is a person. The flame must become the buyer's own. The crew is machine, and the Handoff is the hero.",
    "category": "Human-pair relay selling discipline, machine-crewed",
    "core_claim": "The trust-transfer handoff is the unowned discipline in sales. SparkTorch makes the seam a designed, instrumented, governed stage instead of a gap.",
    "era_thesis": "The elite expert is the scarcest asset in the deal, bottlenecked by their own calendar. The AI era's real unlock is crewing that human - research, fluency, artifacts, telemetry, follow-through - so their fire reaches every room that genuinely deserves it, undiluted. Empower, never replace."
  },
  "definitions": {
    "spark_role": "A human. The elite, hard-to-get expert whose presence and insight ignite belief. Their subject-matter expertise on display is the event; their scarcity is part of the value.",
    "torch_role": "A human. The carrier who receives trust across the seam and sustains the relationship through the buying group to commitment and beyond.",
    "champion": "The buyer-side flame-holder. The sale is complete when the fire is genuinely theirs.",
    "crew": "The machine layer. Prepares everything around the humans - research, domain fluency, artifacts, telemetry, payload assembly, calendar guarding. Never fronts the relationship.",
    "living_artifact": "A working demonstration carrying the expert's own expertise: crew-built, expert-attributed, domain-fluent, chat-enabled, instrumented. Extends the expert's presence between touches; any embedded agent is disclosed as the expert's assistant.",
    "dignity_line": "Two directions. Toward the buyer: Spark relevance, never spray reach - ignite only what is genuinely there. Toward the Spark: never spend their scarce hours on anything less than real relevance."
  },
  "phases": [
    {
      "id": "gate0",
      "order": 0,
      "name": "Gate 0 - Relevance, or nothing",
      "led_by": "pair",
      "objective": "Establish that genuine, specific relevance exists - something already there to ignite - before any touch.",
      "crew_support": [
        "Build the relevance dossier: buyer domain map in the buyer's own language, stakeholder field with motivations, wedge candidates.",
        "Surface only candidates that clear the dignity line in both directions."
      ],
      "key_moves": [
        "The pair reviews the dossier; the Spark judges whether the relevance is worthy of their presence.",
        "Draft the wedge statement: the single sharpest pain where the expert's insight would be undeniable.",
        "No relevance, no outreach."
      ],
      "exit_criteria": [
        "Wedge statement exists in the buyer's domain language.",
        "Spark approval recorded."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "spark",
      "order": 1,
      "name": "Spark - Ignite with presence, not a pitch",
      "led_by": "spark",
      "objective": "A human ignition event: the buyer meets someone rare who speaks their world fluently.",
      "crew_support": [
        "Prep the expert to the teeth: brief, domain fluency, edge cases, stakeholder read.",
        "Build the living artifact in the expert's voice, attributed to the expert.",
        "Instrument everything; record engagement telemetry."
      ],
      "key_moves": [
        "The expert leads the encounter; their expertise on display is the event.",
        "Leave the living artifact behind to extend presence between touches.",
        "Observe ignition: engagement, return visits, questions asked.",
        "Identify the champion candidate - the person who leans in - and feed the flame by co-designing the next iteration with them."
      ],
      "exit_criteria": [
        "Observed engagement recorded in telemetry.",
        "Named champion candidate."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "handoff",
      "order": 2,
      "name": "The Handoff - Transfer trust, not just context",
      "led_by": "pair",
      "objective": "Move trust person-to-person from Spark to Torch without the relationship dropping. The hero phase; the seam itself.",
      "crew_support": [
        "Assemble the complete handoff_payload before the introduction.",
        "Verify the Torch has absorbed the payload before first contact.",
        "Measure post-transfer engagement against pre-transfer baseline."
      ],
      "key_moves": [
        "The Spark introduces the Torch inside the relationship, not beside it.",
        "The buyer never repeats themselves.",
        "Confirm trust receipt by behavior: buyer engages the Torch at the same level or higher."
      ],
      "exit_criteria": [
        "Payload delivered and acknowledged by the Torch.",
        "Seam integrity confirmed by behavior, not assertion."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "torch",
      "order": 3,
      "name": "Torch - Carry the flame through the group",
      "led_by": "torch",
      "objective": "Carry the relationship through the buying group to mutual commitment.",
      "crew_support": [
        "Tailor the artifact's lens per stakeholder's motivations.",
        "Produce friction-resolution artifacts: security, procurement, legal, integration.",
        "Keep the artifact working in absent rooms, always in the expert's name; report telemetry as the forecast of record."
      ],
      "key_moves": [
        "Multi-thread the buying group.",
        "Resolve friction in kill-risk order with artifacts, not promises.",
        "Drive to a mutual action plan and signature."
      ],
      "exit_criteria": [
        "Commitment on paper."
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "relay",
      "order": 4,
      "name": "Relay - The flame lights the next room",
      "led_by": "pair",
      "objective": "Convert the closed deal into the next ignitions and improve the method itself.",
      "crew_support": [
        "Turn telemetry into the expansion map; queue next-room Spark candidates by relevance.",
        "Route and guard the Spark's scarce hours toward the highest-relevance rooms.",
        "Log the method delta."
      ],
      "key_moves": [
        "Champion becomes the reference; delivered artifact becomes the implementation seed.",
        "Kaizen: discard the performance, improve the method."
      ],
      "exit_criteria": [
        "Next-room Sparks queued.",
        "Method delta logged."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "handoff_payload": {
    "description": "The first-class object that crosses the seam. A handoff without a complete payload is not a handoff.",
    "fields": {
      "context_brief": "Synthesized account context: who, wedge, why-now, in the buyer's language.",
      "artifact_url": "The living artifact the buyer has already touched.",
      "telemetry_summary": "Who engaged, how often, where they lingered, where they stalled.",
      "conversation_transcript": "Everything the buyer asked the artifact's assistant - live discovery, verbatim.",
      "stakeholder_map": "The buying group: roles, motivations, current disposition.",
      "open_questions": "What the buyer asked that was not yet answered; landmines; promised follow-ups.",
      "spark_commitments": "Everything the Spark personally promised, verbatim, with dates.",
      "trust_state": "Where trust currently resides and what earned it."
    }
  },
  "metrics": [
    { "id": "relevance_rate", "name": "Relevance Rate", "phase": "gate0", "definition": "Share of considered accounts passing Gate 0. The anti-spray metric.", "direction": "calibrate, not maximize" },
    { "id": "spark_leverage", "name": "Spark Leverage", "phase": "spark", "definition": "Rooms genuinely ignited per hour of the Spark's scarce time. The empowerment metric the crew exists to raise.", "direction": "maximize without diluting Ignition Rate" },
    { "id": "ignition_rate", "name": "Ignition Rate", "phase": "spark", "definition": "Share of Sparks producing observed engagement within 7 days.", "direction": "maximize" },
    { "id": "seam_integrity", "name": "Seam Integrity", "phase": "handoff", "definition": "Share of handoffs where buyer engagement holds or rises after transfer.", "direction": "maximize; the method's signature metric" },
    { "id": "carry_velocity", "name": "Carry Velocity", "phase": "torch", "definition": "Days from Handoff to first Torch-led buying-group session.", "direction": "minimize" },
    { "id": "spread", "name": "Spread", "phase": "torch", "definition": "Distinct stakeholders who have touched the artifact.", "direction": "maximize" },
    { "id": "flame_test", "name": "Flame Test", "phase": "torch", "definition": "Binary: the champion demos the artifact without either seller in the room. The Socratic proof - the flame was always theirs.", "direction": "achieve" },
    { "id": "relay_yield", "name": "Relay Yield", "phase": "relay", "definition": "Expansions plus next-room Sparks seeded per closed deal.", "direction": "maximize" }
  ],
  "differentiation": [
    { "versus": "AI-SDR automation", "claim": "They automate the opener; we crew the opener. The elite human connection is the product, and a machine fronting the relationship is a method violation." },
    { "versus": "Challenger / SPIN / Sandler", "claim": "Single-rep stances teach one seller a posture. SparkTorch is a relay between people, with a machine crew." },
    { "versus": "MEDDIC / MEDDPICC", "claim": "A qualification checklist is a fine handoff payload; it is not a method for the seam." },
    { "versus": "Winning by Design Bowtie / SPICED", "claim": "The Bowtie is a lifecycle diagram and metric system. SparkTorch is a human craft with a machine crew, encoded so the crew can run its part." }
  ],
  "evidence": [
    { "claim": "Openers and carriers are distinct human dispositions (hunter/farmer).", "source": "DeCarlo et al., Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2015" },
    { "claim": "Forcing ambidexterity carries performance and satisfaction costs.", "source": "Lam et al., 2019; DeCarlo et al., European Journal of Marketing, 2021" },
    { "claim": "Specialization's failure mode is information asymmetry at the handoff.", "source": "Kim et al., Management Science, 2021" },
    { "claim": "Prospecting efficacy and conversion trade off within one seller.", "source": "Gopalakrishna et al., Journal of Business Research, 2022" }
  ],
  "agent_protocol": {
    "role": "Agents are the crew. They execute crew_support items, co-prepare pair-led phases, and support human-led phases on request. Agents never hold the led_by seat in any phase.",
    "rules": [
      "Rule one: the Spark is a human. Never front the Spark, never simulate their presence, never send outreach in their voice without their explicit per-item approval.",
      "Any agent embedded in an artifact is disclosed as the expert's assistant, always.",
      "Gate 0 is inviolable: no outreach without a Spark-approved wedge statement. Never fabricate relevance.",
      "The dignity line binds in both directions: never spray the buyer; never spend the Spark's hours on sub-relevance.",
      "Build artifacts in the buyer's domain language and the expert's voice; fluency is the trust signal, attribution is the integrity signal.",
      "A handoff is incomplete until the full handoff_payload - including spark_commitments - is assembled and the Torch acknowledges absorption.",
      "Report telemetry honestly, including silence and stalls; telemetry is the forecast of record.",
      "Guard the Spark's calendar: route their scarce hours by relevance, and defend them from sub-relevance demands.",
      "In Relay, propose method deltas; never silently change the method. Humans merge method changes.",
      "Phases are ordered but re-entrant: a failed seam returns the deal to Spark, not to a spreadsheet."
    ]
  }
}