INSTIG8.

Chart 4, 15 October 2026PreviousNextAll charts

Say what showing up in AI is worth

For whoever builds it.

Everything below is the parts: the folders, the tools by role, the steps and what it costs to run.

Build order
Nothing goes out unsignedNothing is posted, published or sent to a client without the head of search's yes.
What you need from the owner
Which questions countBefore you start, the head of search writes the method and, for each client, the buyer questions and what the agency will claim.
Monthly cost
From about $695 a month for 10 clients
What breaks first
TrackIt breaks first when one run is read as the client's standing. Answers change between checks; report trends from repeated runs, never a screenshot.

1Build it

One prompt. Paste it into your AI and it draws your business on this chart and makes the nine folders the system runs from, with your rules written in. About 15 minutes. Nothing sends to anyone.

What to do

  1. 1Hit the button. It copies the instructions.
  2. 2Open Claude Code in the folder where this system should live. Paste, and send.
  3. 3Answer its questions, one at a time. When it shows your chart, say go and it builds the first square.

Written from this chart's research. Nothing to edit.

Pro adds the finished folders for this chart in Claude Code: every step, every prompt, an example setup. See the plans.

2The nine folders

Every square on the chart is a real folder. The middle, AI visibility, is the head of search's folder: the agency's method, what it will and won't claim, who approves what, and for each client a folder of its own with its buyer questions, competitors and decisions. It runs nothing itself. The eight around it each do one kind of work, with their steps, their prompts, what runs on a schedule and the tools they connect to. The tracker's stored answers and the client-facing reports sit beside these folders as data. Build these nine folders and an agency can run this for every client, each one a separate tenant.

ai-visibility/

The judgment no tracker supplies: which answers matter for each client, what moves an assistant to name them, and what being named is worth when clicks no longer show it. Written down once as the agency's method, its claims ladder and who approves what, with a folder per client for its questions, competitors and decisions. It does none of the work.

You can see what this folder is for. What's inside comes with Pro: the instructions your AI (such as Claude or ChatGPT) reads before it works here, the steps the work moves through in order, anything set to run on its own and how to stop it, and the software it connects to.

3What it runs on

Tools are shown by what each one does. INSTIG8's own stack, by name, comes with Pro: one way to build it, not the only one.

AI coding workspace serves 9 of 9Where the thinking happens (sessions that sort, research, draft and check), and where the automations are built
CRM serves 2 of 9Holds the customer records, the sequences and the reports
AI visibility tracker serves 4 of 9Asks the AI assistants a fixed set of buyer questions on a schedule and stores who each answer names and which pages it cites
Search reports serves 5 of 9Google's own count of how often a site appears in its AI answers and web results, its index checks, and the setting that keeps a site out of its AI answers
Search index reports serves 3 of 9Shows whether a site's pages are in Bing's index, which some AI assistants draw on, and asks for new pages to be read
Web analytics serves 1 of 9Counts the visits that arrive from AI assistants and what those visitors do on the site
Report builder serves 2 of 9Puts a client's monthly numbers on one page they can open, connected to the search and analytics reports

4Build order

Start here
Pick one client. Draft their buyer questions, edit each into the buyer's own words, and sign the first audit yourself before anything goes to them.
Then
Set up the eight part folders around that folder, so that the AI session for each part reads the method and that client's file before it works.
Monthly cost
From public prices: a tracker sold for 3 to 10 clients at $495 a month. A reporting platform at $20 a client a month billed annually, or $200 for 10 clients. Google's count and analytics are free. That is about $695 a month before the AI model's usage cost, which is not priced here. Itemize it each month: the tracker, the reporting platform, the model. The public prices are under What it costs to run.

5The five rules

Where the work lives

The rules live in one shared folder of documents that the head of search keeps. It holds the agency's method and its read of the market. For each client it holds the buyer questions, the competitors, what the client may claim, and every decision. Each of the eight parts reads from it, so next month's report carries what this month's taught.

Nine folders handle outreach. A whole business needs them to work together.

Your AI does better work when it reads the right instructions before it acts. These are real folders on a computer. Each holds plain text files of instructions for one kind of work, which your AI reads before it starts.

These nine handle outreach. A business has many areas: sales, delivery, finance, content, the owner's own week. Each needs its own folders, and they have to work together. When they don't, your AI reads the wrong instructions, two folders say different things about the same fact, and every new conversation with your AI starts from zero.

Five rules keep them working together:

  • One file read first. A single file tells your AI which folder handles which kind of request.
  • One home for each fact. A rule lives in one folder. Every other folder reads it there, and only that folder changes it.
  • Hand work over, don't reach in. Work meant for another folder is dropped into a folder inside it called inbox, and the work is done there, by that folder's rules.
  • Write down where things stand. Each folder keeps a file of its decisions and progress, which your AI updates as it works, so the next conversation starts where the last one stopped.
  • Nothing runs unseen. Anything set to run on its own, like a scheduled email or a nightly update, is listed with when it runs and how to stop it.

Large companies already run this way: one home for each fact, written rules read before the work starts, a record of every change. AI can read those rules and work from them.

When Expert opens, it teaches you to build this for your business: a full course on setting up the folders and rules, from your first folder to all of them working together, Nick's group coaching while you build, and a community of people building theirs. It includes everything in Pro.

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