Reclaim your Sundays.

How the 7-phase engagement system works

The pack is shaped to the actual lifecycle of a client engagement. Seven phases, each handing off cleanly to the next, each driven by a specialist skill. The orchestration agent holds the whole shape in one chat.

1. Phase 1

   Pricing

   A defensible four-tier rate card from your desired take-home, working weeks, billable utilisation, and overhead. Refuses 'as much as possible'. Pushes back on 90%+ utilisation.

   Driven by /rate-card-calculator

2. Phase 2

   Proposal

   A 3 to 5 page proposal with one number, one named risk, and one dated next-step CTA. Refuses to invent qualifications or deliverables you didn't supply.

   Driven by /proposal-writer

3. Phase 3

   SoW

   The accepted proposal becomes a 4 to 6 page Statement of Work with explicit acceptance criteria for every deliverable. Asks only for the contractual gaps the proposal omits.

   Driven by /sow-templater

4. Phase 4

   Mid-engagement

   Check-in emails that reference a specific moment from the prior interaction, stay under 100 words, and end with one clear action.

   Driven by /follow-up-sequencer

5. Phase 5

   Invoicing

   Tier-correct chase emails for overdue invoices: T+0 courtesy, T+7 firm, T+14 formal demand, T+30 final notice. Refuses to skip tiers or bluff consequences you wouldn't execute.

   Driven by /invoice-chaser

6. Phase 6

   Testimonial

   A specific, attributable testimonial ask after delivery: references a moment, names an outcome, leaves room for the client's voice.

   Driven by /follow-up-sequencer

7. Phase 7

   Nurture

   Periodic relationship-recovery touches that don't litigate the past or pitch the next thing. Walk-away rules baked in: no chase email 4.

   Driven by /follow-up-sequencer

The @engagement-coordinator agent is the conductor. It names the current phase, routes to the right specialist, refuses phase-skipping, and demands artefact evidence before declaring progression. One chat carries the whole engagement.

The components

The system is delivered by five specialist skills, one orchestration agent, and four templates. Each skill has a single opinionated job and refuses to do anything else; each is mapped to the phase it drives.

• /rate-card-calculator

  Phase 1: Pricing

  Derives a defensible four-tier rate card (hourly, day, weekly retainer, fixed-scope) from your desired take-home, working weeks, billable utilisation, and overhead. Refuses to compute on "as much as possible". Pushes back on 90%+ utilisation. Flags rates that sit out-of-band against published market anchors.

• /proposal-writer

  Phase 2: Proposal

  Interviews you about a prospective client, pushes back on vague answers, and produces a tight 3–5 page proposal with one number, one named risk, and a dated next-step CTA. Refuses to invent qualifications or deliverables you didn't supply.

• /sow-templater

  Phase 3: SoW

  Converts an accepted proposal into a Statement of Work in 4–6 pages, not enterprise boilerplate. Asks only for the contractual gaps the proposal omits (entities, governing law, IP ownership, termination, liability cap) and writes explicit acceptance criteria for every deliverable.

• /follow-up-sequencer

  Phases 4, 6, 7: Mid-engagement, Testimonial, Nurture

  Generates 1–3 differentiated follow-up emails for stalled prospects, mid-engagement check-ins, or testimonial asks. Each one references a specific moment from the prior interaction, stays under 100 words, and ends with one clear action. Walk-away rules baked in: no chase email 4.

• /invoice-chaser

  Phase 5: Invoicing

  Picks the right escalation tier for an overdue invoice: T+0 courtesy, T+7 firm, T+14 formal demand, T+30 final notice. Refuses to skip tiers (skipping weakens the next move) and refuses to bluff consequences you wouldn't actually execute.

See the system run end-to-end

Three end-to-end runs included with the pack. Copy any INPUT.md, run it through the relevant phases, and have a usable artefact in under 10 minutes. Proof the system delivers, not a demo of features.

• Phases 2 → 3: Fractional CTO proposal to SoW

  A Series A scale-up wants a fractional CTO for 6 months. Demonstrates the full proposal-writer → sow-templater chain: six interview turns, a 4-page proposal, and a signable SoW with explicit acceptance criteria for every deliverable.

• Phases 5 + 7: 28-day overdue invoice, nurture recovery

  A retainer client has gone 28 days past due. Demonstrates invoice-chaser picking the T+30 tier with the SoW's late-payment clause cited, plus follow-up-sequencer generating a relationship-recovery sequence after payment lands, without litigating the lateness.

• Phase 1: Defensible rate card for a UK fractional CTO

  A solo consultant targeting £150k take-home, 47 working weeks, 60% billable utilisation, £25k overhead. Demonstrates rate-card-calculator rejecting "as much as possible", the input round-trip, the gross-up + billable-hours derivation, and the editorial flagging the derived day rate against the UK fractional-CTO market band.

Who it's for

• → Independent consultants and fractional executives running their own practice
• → Operators billing £400 to £1,500 per day who want every engagement to feel less like admin
• → Anyone who's written the same proposal six times and wants to stop
• → You're code-comfortable enough to install a CLI tool and edit a markdown template

Who it's not for

Five buyer profiles the pack will refund. Better to know now than 14 days in.

• × Salaried consultants at a firm (the rate-card and proposal logic assume you set your own price)
• × Anyone billing under £200/day, or anyone looking for a course (this is operations for working consultants, not training)
• × Teams that already have a salesperson, an ops manager, or a finance function (you've already solved this)
• × Anyone looking for a SaaS to log into (this is files on your machine, not a service to subscribe to)
• × Anyone wanting Claude to draft proposals from one-line briefs without pushback (the skills refuse vague inputs by design)

What it costs vs what it saves

How it gets installed

# macOS / Linux
./install.sh

# Windows: easiest path is to double-click install.cmd from File Explorer.
# Or from PowerShell:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1

# Non-interactive (CI / scripted setup)
KNACK_LICENCE="KNACK-SCO-..." ./install.sh

Re-run any time; you'll get a clean overwrite with no duplicate entries. Skills, commands and agents land in your Claude Code config directory (~/.claude/ by default; override with CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR). The licence key is stored as plain text. No DRM, no licence server, no phone-home telemetry. The -ExecutionPolicy Bypass flag on Windows is needed because we don't pay for a code-signing certificate yet; it tells PowerShell to run this one unsigned script just this once, and changes nothing permanent on your machine.

FAQ

How long to install?

Under 5 minutes from a clean Claude Code setup. Run ./install.sh, paste the licence key from your purchase email, done. Skills and commands appear in Claude Code immediately; no restart.

What's Claude Code?

Anthropic's official CLI for Claude. Open-source, free to use; you bring your own API key. Knack packs are bundles of skills, slash commands and agents that drop into the Claude Code config directory. If you don't have it yet, claude.com/claude-code.

Mac, Windows, Linux?

All three. ./install.sh covers macOS and Linux. On Windows, double-click install.cmd from File Explorer for the easiest path, or run `powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1` from PowerShell directly. Re-run any time; you'll get a clean overwrite with no duplicate entries.

Are updates included?

Yes, for the lifetime of the pack. New version drops, you get an email at the address you bought with, drop the new zip in place of the old one, re-run the install script. Your licence key carries forward.

Refunds?

14 days, no questions. Email support@knack.run. We'll refund and remove your licence from the registry the same day.

Further reading

• How a fractional COO uses Claude Code on Sunday afternoons

  A real Sunday-afternoon prep cadence for a multi-client fractional operator: three clients, a follow-up queue, an invoice chase, a fresh SoW to draft.

  Read the post →

• Stop writing the same proposal six times a year

  Most solo consultants rewrite the same proposal six times a year and let the quality drift on every pass. Here's the failure mode, and the fix.

  Read the post →

• Claude Code skills for consultants: the real list

  An opinionated list of the Claude Code skills a solo consultant should actually run. What we ship, what's coming, and what you'll need to build yourself.

  Read the post →