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.
gramps
f3fed0a2a8