arthai-marketplace

/consulting

Run a full AI consulting engagement.

Synopsis

/consulting [client-name] [--phase discovery|assess|propose|design|deliver|track] [-- brief]

Prerequisites

Each phase delegates to a specialist skill — the phase will fail if its skill isn’t installed:

Phase	Delegated skill
discovery	/client-discovery
assess	/opportunity-map
propose	/pitch-generator, /roi-calculator
design	/solution-architect
deliver	/deliverable-builder
track	/engagement-tracker

Run /skills to confirm all six are installed before starting a full engagement — a missing sub-skill surfaces as a phase failure, not a clear “skill not found” message.

When to use it

• Starting a new client engagement — it creates the client workspace and walks the full lifecycle
• Resuming an engagement mid-stream — it reads the saved state and picks up at the current phase
• Getting a status report or a dashboard of all active engagements
• Not for: running a single activity in isolation — call the phase skill directly, e.g. /client-discovery or /roi-calculator

Quickstart

/consulting acme-corp -- AI readiness assessment for a mid-market logistics firm

What you’ll see: a new client workspace at consulting-toolkit/clients/acme-corp/ with engagement.json and a profile.md stub, then the discovery phase kicks off via /client-discovery.

Examples

/consulting acme-corp                          # resumes if engagement.json exists, else initializes at discovery
/consulting acme-corp --phase propose          # jump straight to the proposal phase
/consulting acme-corp -- brief context here    # new engagement with a free-text brief
/consulting                                    # no client name — dashboard of all active engagements

Note: /consulting <client-name> with no --phase flag doesn’t always “resume” — it resumes only if consulting-toolkit/clients/<client-name>/engagement.json already exists. On a brand-new client name it initializes a fresh engagement at the discovery phase instead.

Arguments & flags

Flag	Values	Default	What it does
[client-name]	—	(omit for dashboard)	Client identifier used for directory naming and file lookups
--phase	discovery assess propose design deliver track	resume from saved state	Jump to a specific engagement phase
-- <brief>	free text	none	Engagement context or specific request

What it does

1. Loads or initializes engagement state — reads consulting-toolkit/clients/<client-name>/engagement.json if it exists and resumes from the current phase; otherwise creates the client directory, engagement.json (phase statuses, decisions, risks, value tracking), and a profile.md stub.
2. Routes to the active phase — each phase delegates to a specialist skill:
   • discovery → /client-discovery — interviews, tech assessment, stakeholder mapping
   • assess → /opportunity-map — maturity scoring, priority matrix
   • propose → /pitch-generator + /roi-calculator — proposal and ROI models
   • design → /solution-architect — architecture, build-vs-buy, sprint plan
   • deliver → /deliverable-builder — final deliverables package, handoff docs
   • track → /engagement-tracker — status reports, value tracking
3. Phase transition protocol — when a phase completes, it verifies completion criteria (deliverables produced, decisions logged, risks captured), updates engagement.json, and generates a phase transition summary. User-confirmation checkpoint: it always confirms with you before advancing to the next phase — it never auto-advances.
4. Status report on demand — at any point you can ask for an engagement status report (phase progress table, value summary, open risks, recent decisions, next actions) generated from engagement.json.
5. Multi-engagement dashboard — invoked with no client name, it lists all active engagements with phase, status, and projected value.

After each phase it prints a context-hygiene tip: start a fresh session per phase (/clear, then /consulting <client> --phase <next>) — engagement state lives in engagement.json, so nothing is lost.

Cost and time: a full 6-phase engagement runs ~200-300 units of model spend and spawns 7+ sub-skill invocations sequentially (one or more per phase), each of which may spawn its own agents. Expect this to be a multi-session effort — budget a session per phase rather than expecting one pass to finish everything.

Output & artifacts

• consulting-toolkit/clients/<client-name>/engagement.json — engagement state: phases, deliverables, decisions, risks, value captured (written by /consulting itself)
• consulting-toolkit/clients/<client-name>/profile.md — client profile (filled in across phases, written by /consulting itself)
• Per-phase deliverables written by the delegated skills (discovery notes, opportunity matrix, ROI models, proposals, architecture docs, tracking dashboards) under clients/<client-name>/ — note this is a different root than the consulting-toolkit/clients/ path above, since each delegated skill (/client-discovery, /opportunity-map, /pitch-generator, /solution-architect, /deliverable-builder, /engagement-tracker) manages its own output location. Always pass the exact same <client-name> to every phase skill, or later phases won’t find earlier phases’ files.
• Phase transition summaries and status reports in the conversation

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
Engagement resumes at the wrong phase	The saved current_phase in engagement.json drives routing — pass --phase <name> to override
Phase skill reports missing discovery/assessment data	Phases build on each other — run the earlier phase first (e.g. /consulting <client> --phase discovery)
Analysis feels muddied after several phases in one session	Start a fresh session per phase: /clear, then /consulting <client> --phase <next> — state reloads from engagement.json
Two clients’ context bleeding together	Always /clear between clients — client context must never cross engagements

Related

• /client-discovery — discovery phase: intake interview and AI readiness assessment
• /market-research — industry, competitor, and trend research
• /opportunity-map — assess phase: score and prioritize AI initiatives
• /roi-calculator — propose phase: financial models with sensitivity analysis
• /pitch-generator — propose phase: proposals, exec summaries, deck outlines
• /solution-architect — design phase: architecture and implementation plans
• /deliverable-builder — deliver phase: client-ready deliverables
• /engagement-tracker — track phase: progress, milestones, RAG status
• /magazine-generator — polished HTML magazine for product storytelling
• /templates — generic structured deliverables outside an engagement