Product Positioning & ICP Strategic Framework

What it does

/positioning is a Cursor slash command. Type it in chat to run a saved workflow: Product Positioning & ICP Strategic Framework.

Applies April Dunford's positioning methodology to define target market segments, competitor alternatives, unique differentiators, and core value propositions.

April Dunford positioning, competitor alternatives, and value props. Unlike a skill, a command is something you invoke on purpose. The agent does not decide to run /positioning for you.

Why it exists

Founders retype the same multi-step prompt until it rots. /positioning exists so the pipeline, all 4 steps of it, is a file in .cursor/commands, versioned with the repo.

It ships in the Marketing Kit. It is wired to the Product Positioning Expert (positioning-strategist) and Direct Response Copywriter (copywriter) agents. Required skills: April Dunford Product Positioning Framework; Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) Customer Research; Competitor Analysis & Feature Differentiation Matrix.

When to use it

• Use when defining product messaging, refining value props, or pivoting market focus.
• Use /positioning when you want that pipeline, not a freeform chat. If you only need one step, use a narrower command or a single agent.
• Start a new chat. Do not run this command in a thread that just touched production SQL.

When not to use it

• Do not run /positioning as a substitute for reading the diff. The command produces files; you still gate them.
• Do not chain it into a 40-turn chat. Fresh context is part of the design.
• Do not run it if you have not filled CURSOR.md. The pipeline will invent a stack.

Example workflow

1. List real competitive alternatives and current customer workarounds
2. Isolate unique technical capabilities and defensible advantages
3. Map technical features to quantifiable customer outcomes
4. Define target Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and category positioning statement

Example usage

Type this in Cursor chat: /positioning Generate positioning framework for solo founder AI coding tools

The command file tells the session which agents to adopt and which skills to read. You should see phase headers, not a single dump of code.

If a phase fails its gate, stop. Do not add 'just continue'.

Example output

• Expected artifact: docs/marketing/positioning.md

Best practices

• Keep the prompt specific. /positioning Generate positioning framework for solo founder AI coding tools is the shape: object, constraint, and outcome.
• Let the listed agents work in order: positioning-strategist → copywriter.
• Save outputs in the repo. Chat-only answers evaporate.
• Marketing commands write to docs/marketing/ so the next command can read positioning before it writes a landing page.

Common mistakes

• Typing /positioning with no object ('do the thing'). The pipeline will guess.
• Re-running the command in the same chat after a failed gate instead of fixing the failing file.
• Editing the command file to skip review so it 'goes faster'.
• Skipping the April Dunford Product Positioning Framework skill that the command depends on.