One unit of value. Spent wherever it moves your go-to-market furthest.
The hourly retainer was built for a world where an hour was a stable unit of value. AI broke that.
When our work gets more efficient, your Credits go further. Work graduates from hourly Core Time to fixed Derivative Work items that take fewer Credits.
When AI adds new leverage, the catalog grows. New activities and Derivative Work items are added — and through your Rate Protection Period, no cataloged item ever requires more Credits.
The unit stays constant. What it buys keeps growing.
This catalog is what a Credit is, what it buys, and how that works.
One Credit. Three ways to spend it.
A Credit is a unit of service value — not an hour, and not a disguised rate card. One allotment, spent three ways; the mix follows what you’re trying to move.
The conversions are set so a Credit buys equivalent value wherever it goes — what differs across the three views is how that value is measured, not how much there is. Keeping that true is the job: every conversion honest, AI leverage maximized across every kind of work, all of it aimed at one go-to-market goal — the work a startup otherwise spreads across five vendors, or never does at all.
The outcome is the plan — each month is planned around what you’re trying to move, not around filling hours. Production some months, pure strategy others; both are the work.
The ledger is the record — every Credit is logged, with a usage report each month. Credits are allocated monthly, and unused Credits don’t roll over.
The asset compounds — much of the work captures proof into your Proofbase, so Credits tend to go further the longer the engagement runs.
| By time · 4 Credits = 1 hrCore TimeView 01 → | Senior Proofmap time — the strategic core of an engagement, billed in 15-minute increments. Where direction gets set, and where every engagement opens. |
| Per deliverableDerivative WorkView 02 → | Defined outputs produced against a template or asset already established for you — the next case study. Each takes a flat number of Credits. |
| By resourceBench TimeView 03 → | Specialist resources we manage on your behalf, each with its own named conversion rate — the roster that rounds out every skill set. |
The rule of thumb: net-new vs. derivative
There’s no magic number. Work is Derivative when three things are true: an approved template or asset already exists, the source material is approved in your Proofbase, and the scope is bounded to one revision round against that template. Until all three hold, it’s Core Time.
- Step 01 · Core Time
Net-new work builds the asset, and the asset earns a template.
- Step 02 · Graduation
Once the template is right, that output earns a fixed menu item.
- Step 03 · Derivative Work
The menu item takes fewer Credits, and the next version multiplies from it.
Core Time builds; Derivative Work multiplies. Some formats never graduate (an ebook, say), classification is confirmed in-platform, and reclassification only ever moves in your favor — more on that where the catalog evolves.
The Core Time activity catalog
Core Time is senior Proofmap time — the strategic core of an engagement, where senior judgment sets direction, and where every engagement opens.
The quarter hour is the smallest unit of Core Time — measured that fine on purpose. Much of the industry rounds up to the half hour or the full hour; we go as low as 15 minutes because some work genuinely gets done that quickly.
Two kinds of value live in every hour, and understanding them is how you read this catalog:
- Strategic work — positioning, go-to-market, competitive intelligence, the decisions that set direction. The right comparison is a senior fractional resource: someone who brings the judgment to make those decisions well. That’s what this time is.
- Leveraged work — executional output where the platform and AI compress what would otherwise take a specialist far longer. The comparison isn’t the rate; it’s the total hours. A content agency might take 10–15 hours on a case study; we take 2–3, because your Proofbase has already done the research and the strategy is already set. The work is better, it’s faster, and most of the time it takes less in total.
Most activities are both — senior judgment setting direction, leverage compressing execution. Core Time is tagged with a work type in your ledger, so you can see the shape of your engagement, not just the count. When work falls outside those categories, we flag it too: that’s the signal for a conversation about whether your Credits are going where they’ll move the most.
| Activity | What it covers |
|---|---|
| StrategyOnboarding & Initial DiscoveryStrategic / Leveraged | Core Time sized to the engagement — not a fixed package. A smaller, customer-stories focused engagement typically starts with an hour to understand the business, the customers, and what proof to begin capturing. A mid-tier engagement adds a go-to-market session with key team members to map the landscape and develop a working ICP hypothesis. A product-marketing-led engagement opens with a full positioning workshop grounded in a structured methodology — competitive analysis, differentiated value, and ICP and persona definition. Onboarding typically happens at the start of an engagement, sometimes before your first full month. |
| ResearchInterviewsCustomer success · product feedback · internal expert · win/lossStrategic | Structured conversations that capture customer proof, product feedback, internal expertise, or competitive insight — conducted by a professional interviewer and fed directly into your Proofbase. Prep gets faster over time, because your account context and Proofbase gaps are already known. |
| ResearchCompetitive Intel & Persona ResearchStrategic / Leveraged | Competitive landscape analysis and persona development drawn from interview synthesis and ongoing Proofbase capture. Refreshing a persona means re-running synthesis on your latest on-record interviews — not commissioning new research from scratch. |
| StrategyProduct PositioningStrategic | Positioning and messaging work, upfront or ongoing — direction, pricing posture, launch sequencing, competitive response, and content priorities. Interview insight is pre-synthesized from your Proofbase before sessions, so time goes to decisions, not discovery. |
| StrategyGTM ConsultingStrategic | Discovery-oriented engagements to assess what's working, find gaps, and build a plan — ICP analysis, funnel assessment, pipeline review, competitive context, and go-to-market planning. The output is typically a prioritized recommendation or roadmap. |
| StrategyMarketing Content StrategyStrategic | Assessment and planning before content gets created — SEO analysis, ICP review, content-gap assessment, and channel strategy. The output is a prioritized brief or directional plan that determines what gets created and why. |
| PlanningContent Plan / Editorial CalendarStrategic / Leveraged | A prioritized content plan built from your Proofbase coverage gaps, business priorities, and campaign cadence. AI maps your existing proof to channel and format; a strategist approves the themes. Delivered as a working plan or built directly in your systems. |
| CreationMarketing Content CreationLeveraged | First-version creation of marketing assets — case studies, articles, landing pages, email sequences, ebooks, guest posts, video. This is net-new work, billed as time. Repeatable formats move to the Derivative Work menu once a template is established; some, like ebooks, stay here because each is strategically distinct. |
| EnablementSales Enablement & ConsultingStrategic / Leveraged | Consultative support across strategy, pitch refinement, platform assessment, and RevOps advisory — including coordination of Bench resources for custom builds. Repeatable outputs like battle cards and deck variants graduate to the Derivative Work menu once a template exists. |
| BuildCustom Development & AI-Assisted BuildsLeveraged | Custom development pairing AI coding tools with direct business-context expertise — React components, dynamic pages, custom workflows, internal tools, database builds, and hosted deployments. Because we already understand your requirements, the spec-and-handoff layer shrinks: work that traditionally takes days to weeks can often be scoped, built, and shipped in hours to days. Builds needing deeper engineering judgment draw on Bench development below. |
| + New activities are added here as we build leverage for more kinds of work. | |
Some work gains little from either the strategic skill or the leverage — routine site maintenance, CMS updates, data entry and list cleanup, scheduling and coordination, formatting passes. If you want us to handle it, we will, at the same Credit conversion as everything else; we’ll just tell you plainly when it isn’t the highest-return use of a Credit. Items here are candidates — when we build leverage for one, it graduates into the catalog above, and the change is recorded in the changelog.
The Derivative Work menu
Each item is produced against a template or asset already established for you, populated from approved material in your Proofbase, and includes one revision round against that template. Changing the underlying template itself — new structure, new design pattern, new voice profile — is net-new work, and is Core Time.
| Deliverable | Credits | Graduates from | Scope & inclusions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Case Study — Written Draft | 1Credit | Marketing Content Creation | Written draft on your established case study template, populated from a pre-approved Proofbase interview — hero quote, problem / solution / results structure, your brand voice. One revision round. You publish in your own CMS. |
| One-Pager / Battle Card | 1Credit | Sales Enablement & Consulting | Refresh or new variant of a one-pager or battle card in your established format. Pulls from your competitive intel, positioning, and verified Proofbase quotes. One revision round. |
| Case Study — Designed HTML / PDF | 2Credits | Marketing Content Creation | Fully designed case study in your established design pattern and brand styling, from a pre-approved Proofbase interview. Delivered as embeddable HTML; PDF on request. One revision round. |
| Sales Deck — Tailored Variant | 2Credits | Sales Enablement & Consulting | Tailored version of your primary deck for a specific prospect, use case, or vertical. Pulls the relevant Proofbase proof and adjusts narrative emphasis. One revision round. |
| Thought Piece — Variant | 2Credits | Marketing Content Creation | Additional thought piece using an executive's established voice profile and a pre-approved Proofbase interview. One revision round. |
| Social Cut (30–60 sec) | 3Credits | Bench · Video Editing | Short-form social cut from a longer source video. Captions, platform-spec aspect ratios, your brand intro / outro. One revision round. |
| Landing Page — Update / Variant | 4Credits | Marketing Content Creation | Update or audience-specific variant of an existing landing page. Copy drawn from your Proofbase via MCP Connections. One revision round. |
| Testimonial Video (1–2 min) | 4Credits | Bench · Video Editing | Edited testimonial from raw footage in your established brand template — captions, title cards, color and audio cleanup. One revision round. |
| + New deliverables are added here as repeatable formats earn a template. | |||
The Credits shown are confirmed in-platform at the time of work — and during your Rate Protection Period, no catalog change increases what any cataloged output requires.
The Bench Time roster
The Bench is specialist capacity we contract and manage on your behalf — Proofmap owns the quality, the scheduling, and the accountability. It’s how an engagement stays whole: when a project needs a skill set beyond senior generalist time, the resource is already on the roster, so you don’t hit a gap or have to go source a vendor mid-stream. Each resource carries its own named conversion rate that honestly reflects the capacity behind it.
| Resource | Conversion & scope |
|---|---|
| Development1 Credit = 30 min | Engineering capacity for three cases: custom development beyond AI-assisted builds — complex integrations, bespoke architecture, API work, tracking, and embedded tools where real engineering judgment is required; non-template work that can't be reliably produced with AI coding tools alone; and review and QA of AI-assisted code — validating, hardening, and refining builds before they ship. |
| Video Editing1 Credit = 1 hour | One-off video editing beyond the Derivative Work menu — long-form (3+ minutes), complex multi-source edits, motion graphics, sizzle reels, and event recaps, with professional-grade animation, transitions, captions, and b-roll. Editing time only; strategy and direction are Core Time. For testimonials and social cuts, the menu is the better use of Credits. |
| + New resources are added here with their own conversion as the roster grows. | |
Every skill set in one place — and a plan for the ones that aren’t.
Between strategic and leveraged Core Time, the standardized Derivative Work menu, and the specialist Bench, the catalog is built to cover what an engagement needs without snags. When something genuinely falls outside it, that’s still a conversation, not a dead end — we’ll consult on the best approach so you’re never left with a gap. For example:
- Sometimes simply doing it ourselves, one-off — when it’s only a couple of hours, an immediate fix beats a hand-off, so nothing stalls and you’re not sent elsewhere, even if it isn’t the highest-leverage use of us.
- Helping you train up a new team member to own the work in-house.
- Scoping the requirements, and helping you evaluate other vendors against them.
- Vetting offshore resources before you commit.
The point of the catalog is that the skill sets you need are already here — and when the right answer sits outside it, helping you get there is part of the partnership.
The Credit stays constant. What it buys keeps growing.
As AI makes our work more productive, the gains pass through to you: work graduates from Core Time to the Derivative Work menu — from hours to a fixed item that takes fewer Credits. Two rules keep that one-directional.
Reclassification never requires more Credits
Moving an item from Core Time to the Derivative Work menu only ever lowers the Credits it takes, or holds them equal.
Cataloged Credits are protected
During your Rate Protection Period, no catalog change will increase the Credits any cataloged output requires.
And your real protection isn’t fine print. Every Credit sits in a ledger you can audit, and the engagement is month-to-month — we earn each month on merit. That’s exactly why the model passes automation gains through instead of holding them back.
Every change, on the record.
Every change to this catalog is recorded here. Reclassifying work from Core Time to Derivative Work never requires more Credits.