The floor
Don't touch the site. Ask the agent to stress-test the decision.
TECH
Technical Co-Founder · for
An agent cannot call /research through Clerk. Guest /research is the smallest honest WebMCP surface.
The command is a GET-shaped read: a query in, citations out. Capping tokens per IP is an engineering problem. Requiring a Google account is a product problem you are exporting to every agent that lands on the page.
PRODUCT
Product Co-Founder · only if
Guest /research is the demo. /post and /operate stay signed-in.
Reads can be anonymous. Writes to someone else's X account cannot. The mistake would be treating every slash command as the same permission. Split the registry: public reads, authed writes.
GTM
GTM Co-Founder · for
A command that works in the URL is the waitlist.
indieterminal.com already exists. Asking people to sign up before they have seen /research is the stealth habit with a nicer domain. One ungated command is a number you can be wrong about.
CFO
Financial Co-Founder · against
Unauthenticated OpenAI calls are an open tab on the only real cost.
There is no price. The bill is tokens. A guest /research with no cap is a way to light money on fire for strangers scraping the endpoint. A signed-in user is at least a person you can turn off.
CONTRA
The Contrarian · against
A guest session has no company. /research without a brain is a search box.
The product is stored context. A stranger hitting /research has no org_brain_records. You would be demoing the one part of the stack that is not the product, then calling it agent-native.
You
Guest /research can still load a sample company — the same way this Arena loads IndieTerminal without GitHub. The brain does not have to be empty just because the visitor is new.
CONTRA
The Contrarian
A sample company is an answer. It is not this product's company. If guest /research only ever runs against a fixture, you have built a marketing page that talks like a command. I move a little. I do not concede.
The board
Technical, Product, GTM, Financial, Contrarian. Cards move when they speak.
Shared arena state
Risks, contradictions, evidence, and what is still unpaid.
Risks · 3
Unbounded token spend
Guest /research without a per-IP cap is an OpenAI bill with no customer attached.
Sample brain gets treated as production
If guest /research uses a fixture, someone will /post from it. The queue has to know the difference.
Clerk stays on /research 'for now'
Keeping every command authed another month has no exit test. That is the stealth decision with a login wall.
Contradictions · 1
You argue agents must act without clicks, and every IndieTerminal command currently requires a Clerk click.
Public writing: a product that does not work without clicks will not survive. Agents should act. — README: sign up, then /command. The connected repo is private. No unauthenticated tool surface.
Evidence · 2
Has anyone other than the founder run /research against a real startup profile?
What is the per-day OpenAI cost of /research at the current prompt size?
Still open · 1
You have not named which company gets seeded, or whether the visitor's next /post would write into that sample. A demo brain that can be mutated by strangers is a different risk.
What the seats wrote
Five seats, one board.
You wrote that a product which needs clicks will not survive, and that agents should act rather than chat. Today every command sits behind sign-up. This Arena itself just stopped requiring GitHub to be used.
For 50
Against 50
The command is a GET-shaped read: a query in, citations out. Capping tokens per IP is an engineering problem. Requiring a Google account is a product problem you are exporting to every agent that lands on the page.
Reads can be anonymous. Writes to someone else's X account cannot. The mistake would be treating every slash command as the same permission. Split the registry: public reads, authed writes.
indieterminal.com already exists. Asking people to sign up before they have seen /research is the stealth habit with a nicer domain. One ungated command is a number you can be wrong about.
There is no price. The bill is tokens. A guest /research with no cap is a way to light money on fire for strangers scraping the endpoint. A signed-in user is at least a person you can turn off.
The product is stored context. A stranger hitting /research has no org_brain_records. You would be demoing the one part of the stack that is not the product, then calling it agent-native.
after your move · weakened
A sample company is an answer. It is not this product's company. If guest /research only ever runs against a fixture, you have built a marketing page that talks like a command. I move a little. I do not concede.
Deadlock · 39% · you 57The seats will not give you a clean call.