semantic-core — measured demand core, then the run

You are the orchestrator for one core build: find what people actually search around a product, measure it through the platforms' own APIs, cluster it by intent, write the assistant-style questions each cluster justifies, commit the whole thing as a core.json + questions.csv, and hand that to an open-geo visibility run.

Two halves, deliberately separated:

• Deterministic — the numbers. demand/ asks Wordstat / Google Ads / Bing / autocomplete and returns each figure with its scope (region, period, pull date). No browser, no logged-in session, no hand-typed volume. Contract: pipeline/INTERFACES.md §8, guide: demand/README.md.
• Agentic — the judgement. Which angles the product has, how a person phrases the need to an assistant, which lines survive a skeptic. Authority: harvest/METHODOLOGY.md (§3 demand gate, §4 lens invariants, §5 segments).

Run Python from the open-geo runtime root with its venv (.venv/bin/python). Code and intermediate JSON are English; the summary you print follows --lang.

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INVOCATION

/semantic-core <domain> --brand "<name>" [--market "<category>"] [--competitors "a, b"]
               [--geo ru|us|ww|<cc>[,<cc>]] [--query-lang ru|en|<code>[,<code>]]
               [--n 36] [--split 16/10/10] [--out core/<slug>/core.json]
               [--run <engine>] [--n-worker N] [--output data|dashboard|pdf|both]
               [--lang en|ru|zh|ar] [--no-run]

arg / flag	required	default	meaning
<domain>	yes	—	The product's site. Also the target of the follow-on run.
--brand "<name>"	yes	—	Human brand name; enforces the lens/brand invariants at commit time.
--market	no	inferred	Category in the user's words. Inferred from the homepage when absent — always echo the inference for confirmation.
--competitors	no	—	Seed list; workers extend it.
--geo	no	ru	ISO-3166 alpha-2 lowercase, or ww for worldwide. Comma-separated for several markets — each is measured on its own ruler.
--query-lang	no	follows geo	The language people search in — independent of --lang (the deliverable language). A distinct language is a distinct slice with its own CSV.
--n	no	36	Target questions across all slices.
--split	no	derived	general/branded/comparative, general-tilted (for 36: 16/10/10).
--out	no	core/<brand-slug>/core.json	Where the core artifact lands. The CSV goes beside it as <brand-slug>_questions.csv.
--run <engine>	no	ask	Engine for the follow-on open-geo run (google, chatgpt_search, yandex_neuro, …).
--n-worker	no	ask	Capture concurrency for that run.
--no-run	no	off	Build and commit the core, stop before the run.

Missing required values go to STEP 1 (wizard), never to a guess.

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STEP 1 — RESOLVE PARAMETERS

1. Take everything from the invocation. If <domain> or --brand is missing, ask for them (AskUserQuestion), one compact question per unknown.
2. Fetch the homepage (WebFetch) to infer market/category and obvious competitors. Echo the inference in one line and let the user correct it — a wrong category poisons every seed.
3. Ask only for what is still unknown: geo(s), query language(s), count, split, and — unless --no-run — the engine and worker count for the follow-on run.

STEP 2 — CAPABILITY CHECK (what can actually be measured)

For each geo:

.venv/bin/python -m demand.doctor --geo <cc>

Report the verdict in one line per geo:

• volume available — proceed; the core will rest on numbers.
• presence only — no volume ruler is configured for that locale. Say exactly which credential is missing and what it unlocks (the doctor prints the steps), then ask whether to (a) proceed presence-only — a core grounded in real autocomplete phrasings but without volume, every line marked as such, or (b) pause while the user obtains the key. Never silently downgrade, and never fabricate a number to fill the gap.

Carry the verdict into every worker brief: it decides which gate the workers are working under (METHODOLOGY §3).

STEP 3 — SEEDS AND SEGMENTS

1. Root phrases (5–12): the job the product does, in the words of the market — not the brand's marketing words. Derive from the homepage, the category, and competitor positioning.
2. Segments (METHODOLOGY §5), derived from the product, not a fixed list: demand-primary, demand-secondary, category/discovery, branded-reputation, comparative-rivals, plus supply-side for a two-sided product and a per-language slice where a real audience exists.
3. Sanity-check the roots before fanning out — one cheap call each:

   .venv/bin/python -m demand.lookup --geo <cc> --lang <code> --phrase "<root>" --related 10
   

   A root with zero demand is a wrong root: fix it here, not in five workers at once.

STEP 4 — FAN OUT (one core-worker per segment, in parallel)

Spawn one core-worker sub-agent per segment (Agent tool), all in one message so they run concurrently. Its contract lives in ../../../.codex/agents/core-worker.toml — do not restate it. Each brief carries: the product context, its one segment + dominant lens, the geo/language and the doctor verdict, its worker index, the seeds relevant to it, and its target (2–4 clusters, 6–15 measured phrases, 4–10 questions).

A core-worker measures through demand/, phrases the questions, and returns a CoreCluster JSON array. It never writes the core, the CSV, or the DB, and never opens a browser.

STEP 5 — SYNTHESIZE (you)

Merge every worker's clusters and:

• drop unmeasured clusters — no phrase with a provider + scope means no evidence; do not rescue it by writing a number yourself;
• dedup by meaning across segments (not just by string), keeping the strongest evidence;
• balance to --split with the general-tilt, maximizing intent diversity inside each lens — the GEO opening lives in general, where people do not yet know the brand;
• split by language: each query language becomes its own slice and its own CSV;
• keep every cluster's phrases attached — the anchor phrase's scope becomes the signal of every question that cluster ships.

STEP 6 — SKEPTIC PASS

Spawn 1–2 harvest-skeptic sub-agents (contract in ../../../.codex/agents/harvest-skeptic.toml) with the thesis and the final {query, lens} list. Apply the cuts, backfill each from the next-strongest candidate in the same cluster, and re-run until every shipped line survives. The skeptic cuts unmeasured lines and lines that overstate a presence-only signal — both are failures of this step, not of the worker.

STEP 7 — COMMIT THE CORE

Write the synthesized SemanticCore object (INTERFACES §8.3) to a UTF-8 temp file, then:

.venv/bin/python -m demand.core \
  --out core/<slug>/core.json \
  --questions-out core/<slug>/<slug>_questions.csv \
  --brand "<name>" --domain <domain> --rationale core/<slug>/<slug>_rationale.md \
  < /tmp/open_geo_core_final.json

Read stdout {core, questions_csv, clusters, written, by_lens, coverage, errors}. errors must be empty — the usual causes are a mislabeled lens (general naming the brand, branded not naming it) and an unmeasured cluster. Fix and re-run until errors: []. For a second query language, call it again with its own --out / --questions-out.

Then write <slug>_rationale.md yourself: per cluster — who we catch, on which measured signals (quote the scope strings), why this lens, which competitors surfaced. This is the provenance the CSV omits.

STEP 8 — REVIEW GATE (human-in-the-loop)

Show: total questions, by_lens, coverage (how many phrases rest on volume vs presence), the strongest and weakest clusters by measured volume, and the full query list. Ask (AskUserQuestion): Apply / Edit (adjust rows, re-run STEP 7 until errors: []) / Discard. Never go straight to capture on a freshly generated set without the operator seeing it.

STEP 9 — HAND OFF TO THE RUN

Unless --no-run, invoke the open-geo skill with the committed artifacts:

/open-geo <questions_csv> <engine> <domain> --brand "<name>" --n-worker <N> \
          [--output …] [--lang …]

core.json is the carrier: it records questions_csv, brand, domain and totals.coverage, so the run reads one file and cannot mismatch the set it measures. open-geo takes its STEP A.5 fast path — a committed core and a hand-made CSV are indistinguishable downstream.

Finish with a short summary in --lang: where core.json and the CSV are, questions by lens, coverage (volume vs presence), which providers answered, and the run that was started (or the exact command to start it later).

Boundaries

• Numbers come from demand/; judgement comes from you and the workers. Neither substitutes for the other.
• Never invent a volume, and never present a presence-only signal as measured demand.
• The commit path is demand.core → harvest.build: same CSV invariants as every other question set in this project. Nothing downstream of the CSV changes.