The pricing ruling landed twice (2026-09-21 one-time, then 2026-09-27 Store IAP
$10/mo + $400 lifetime) and the map never caught up. Six tracked files still told
a future session that billing was Polar and the price was $29/$49. A stale memory
map is worse than a stale comment: it is the file every session trusts, and this
one was actively steering work toward a deleted provider.
MONETIZATION.md (gitignored, so not in this commit) was rebuilt first:
- "Revenue projections" now carries a modelled Year 1 forecast —
pessimistic $4.0K / base $15.4K / optimistic $53.3K net, ~$22K weighted.
Funnel is installs -> 35-45% activate -> 1.5-3% of active users pay.
- Three findings recorded: Year 1 is ~97% lifetime transactions (subs net $392
of $15.4K, so MRR is not a Year-1 planning input); conversion dominates price
(~1pp of conversion = ~$7K net, and ADA 6(h) locks $10 anyway); subscriber
churn moves Year 1 by under $200 and is a Year-2 problem.
- Break-even restated for $400: $25K net = 74 lifetime buyers, not 862.
The price cut the volume requirement ~10x and raised the skill requirement
to match.
- Market sizing willingness-to-pay row rewritten. The 100K-400K TAM was
price-bound to $29-49 and is wrong at $400; revised ~20K-60K, flagged as an
estimate rather than a sourced number.
- Flagged a real contradiction: $500K ARR needs ~4,900 concurrent subscribers,
so the Exit section's ARR multiples do not describe what Years 1-3 produce.
The defensible asset there is lifetime cash flow, not ARR.
Tracked files corrected to match:
- ai.md: paid-delta, pricing and billing bullets rewritten; Polar product id,
org id, LCYT- key prefix and LLAMAFOUNDER/LLAMA50 marked as deleted;
15% share + net-after-tax recorded with the ADA 6(b)(i) citation.
- TASKS.md: catalog row retitled as a teardown; the "still to verify — the
price is not decided" note closed (it contradicted the ruling 20 lines
below it); the OverlayHost "Polar unlocks alerts" open question marked
resolved; Polar file-hosting deliverable removed from the release build.
- task-10: reframed as a teardown. Steps 4-5 marked as surviving, 1-2-3-6-7 as
deleting, 8 as a compliance action (Velopack downloads AND executes, which
Store policy 10.2.2 does not permit).
- task-36 item 5 (license-expiry reminders) struck — no key, no expiry, no
lapse under Store IAP, so there is nothing to remind anyone about.
- Distribution.md 4.2 / 4.4 / 4.5 marked obsolete; 4.5's "already implemented"
corrected, since PolarLicenseService is being deleted rather than shipped.
- README: "one-time license" -> "paid tier".
Historical Polar sections are retained deliberately — the reasoning is reusable
(merchant-of-record, fee comparison), only the conclusions are dead. Each is now
labelled so it cannot be mistaken for the plan.
No code touched.
TASKS.md is now the index (status table, open items, research pointer).
33 files: 32 task files + 1 research facts file. The full take-saga
narrative and all design decisions are preserved verbatim; the catalog
makes the queue readable without opening every task body. Schema and
AGENTS.md updated to reflect the new layout.
gramps