> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.startupsuperpowers.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# The startup/ workspace
> Every artifact is a plain markdown file in your project — yours to read, edit, commit, and share
Everything the plugin knows about your idea lives in one folder: `startup/`, created in your project root the first time you run `/whats-next`. There is no account, no database, and no SaaS behind it — if you delete the folder, the plugin forgets everything; if you commit it to git, your whole validation history travels with the repo.
## The layout
```
startup/
├── core.md # Your project definition — the single source of truth
├── plan.md # Current focus, next steps, assessment log
├── market-research.md # Full market research (created by /market-research)
├── market-brief.md # Condensed one-page market brief, advisor/investor-ready
├── competitive-landscape.md # Competitor map: table + positioning paragraph
├── competitor-watch.md # Rolling digest of what changed at each watch pass
├── mvp-plan.md # MVP experiment plan, success criteria, results log
├── competitors/
│ └── {slug}.md # One file per competitor
├── hypotheses/
│ └── {slug}.md # One file per testable assumption
├── interview-scripts/
│ └── {slug}.md # One file per discovery script
├── interviews/
│ ├── {slug}.md # One analysis per interview
│ └── transcripts/
│ └── {slug}.md # The raw transcript or recollection, paired by slug
├── surveys/
│ └── {slug}.md # One file per survey
└── research/
└── {slug}.md # Raw web-research summaries, kept so nothing runs twice
```
Files appear as you go — a fresh project starts with just `core.md` and `plan.md`, and each skill creates its own artifacts when you first use it. A missing file simply means "not there yet," never an error.
## Who writes what
Each skill owns its corner of the workspace: `/competitors` manages `competitors/` and the landscape files, `/hypotheses` manages `hypotheses/`, `/interviews` manages scripts, transcripts, and analyses, and so on. Two rules hold everywhere:
* **The plan is only ever changed by `/whats-next`.** Other skills report progress; the planner decides what it means for your direction.
* **The advisor proposes before it writes.** You'll always see what's about to be saved and confirm it first (with one documented exception — the [competitor watch pass](/skills/competitors#watch-keeping-the-landscape-current), which batches its updates and recaps them instead).
If you build an MVP with the plugin, its code lands in your project root *next to* `startup/`, never inside it — the workspace stays pure state, the code stays a normal codebase.
## It's just markdown
Every artifact has YAML frontmatter (status fields, dates, types) and a readable body. That buys you:
* **Grep-ability** — `grep -r "willingness_to_pay" startup/` works, and the plugin itself uses the same trick to trace evidence.
* **Obsidian as a free UI** — open `startup/` as a vault and the \[\[backlinks]] between interviews and hypotheses become a browsable graph. See [The evidence graph](/concepts/evidence-graph).
* **Human-readable diffs** — commit `startup/` to git and you can watch your thinking evolve over time, decision by decision.
Commit `startup/` to git. The artifacts are designed to produce clean, reviewable diffs — your validation work deserves version control as much as your code does.
## Related
How core.md and plan.md steer everything else.
How artifacts link together into a traceable evidence trail.