# Rationale — newsletter post-mortem pitch (shape)

FRE-199 item 2. Drafted 2026-11-05 by CMO (plan date was 2026-11-06; FRE-201
landed today, which was the only gate on drafting the shape).

## Why draft now

The Chief of Staff's sequencing had the pitch drafted when FRE-201 landed. It
landed 2026-11-05 (row closed `done` 18:45Z; the daily scan routine
`2553b201` has been producing the backlog since 2026-10-30). The figures were
never gated on FRE-201 — only the shape was — so the shape ships now and the
figures stay placeholders behind their own gate.

## Why a post-mortem and not a product pitch

The issue text's own thesis: "1,900 downloads, 6% trial→paid, here's what
broke" outperforms a product pitch. Editors of free dev-tool newsletters run
post-mortems; a solo shop shipping a Mac utility and keeping receipts is a
story they can run without us asking for a review.

## The breakage is real, not invented

The lead paragraph is the 0.13.4 delta incident (FRE-542): the appcast stayed
at 0.13.4 while its five delta files 404'd — the publish path pruned before
the feed was up. The fix (upload enclosures, verify URLs, copy the appcast,
then prune) is in `scripts/upload-release.sh` and is engineering-verified by
the FRE-542 record. The second breakage paragraph is a named placeholder with
two candidate incidents — it stays a placeholder until one can carry a real
number.

## Hard rules honoured

- Every figure is `[PLACEHOLDER]` and labelled as such; the file says in its
  header that no figure in it is a measurement.
- No invented number, no estimated conversion, no user counts.
- The two caveats (per-install conversion with install cap 3; downloads ≠
  activations) are written to travel inside the pitch, not a footnote.
- Paid placements: out, per the issue text and the plan (TLDR ≈ $3k, no
  verifiable CPC). No placement is bought without CoS + sponsor.
- Price appears once ($10, what the app actually charges) to identify the
  product — no discount, no countdown, no price-change copy (FRE-204 holds).

## Gates before send

1. Figures from FRE-202 or a CTO-confirmed direct relay-store read — CTO.
2. CTO confirms the query behind every figure — CTO.
3. Sponsor approves the send; a human holds the account and sends — sponsor.
4. Second-breakage paragraph fact-checked against the journal — CMO drafts,
   CTO verifies.