Partner Program & Tools Registry — Rules & Boundaries

The single source of truth for how tools and partners work in this repository. If anything elsewhere is ambiguous, this document governs.

• Public pitch & pricing: marketing-skills.com/sponsorship
• Content rules for mentioning any tool: CONTRIBUTING.md → Mentioning Tools
• The tool index itself: REGISTRY.md
• The legal terms: the Partner Agreement, provided to each partner (accepted at checkout)

The one principle

Sponsorship funds the work, never the recommendations. Money buys a disclosed presence, never a bias. Every rule below follows from this. The library is free and MIT-licensed; sponsors and partners fund maintenance and new skills so the core stays free, open, and editorially independent — whoever is paying.

Three kinds of tool entries

Every tool in REGISTRY.md is exactly one of these:

A partner integration is the same neutral integration guide as any other tool, plus disclosure and placement. It is not a different kind of content — it earns no softer editorial treatment.

What sponsorship buys — and never buys

Buys:

• A dedicated, disclosed integration guide for the tool (◆).
• Featured placement — logo, link, blurb — on the README and the site.
• A launch announcement (tweet + LinkedIn + Swipe Files newsletter mention).
• For Category Partners: a category slot exclusivity + an "Official [Category] Partner" title/badge.

Never buys:

• A recommendation. No skill is edited to prefer a partner.
• Bias in any existing skill. Skills recommend the right tool for the job, partner or not.
• Exclusivity over what agents recommend. Category exclusivity is a sponsorship-slot exclusivity, never a recommendation exclusivity — a skill may still name a competitor when it's the right answer.
• Removal or demotion of any other tool. Partner entries are additive.
• A claim of "best in category." The badge means "paid, disclosed, vetted for fit."

Tiers (summary)

Full pricing and perks live on the sponsorship page. In brief:

Partner tiers are application-only (vetted, then paid) and carry a 6-month minimum. Annual prepay = two months free.

Disclosure travels with the file

Disclosure is on the artifact, not just the site — skills and guides get forked and re-indexed across the ecosystem, so the disclosure must survive that.

A Verified Partner integration guide opens with this header:

> **◆ Verified Partner integration.** [Tool] sponsors Marketing Skills. This integration
> is disclosed and vetted for fit; it does **not** change what any skill recommends. It's
> listed alongside the neutral options for the same job — use it when it's the right fit,
> not because it's a partner. See [Verified Partners](../REGISTRY.md#verified-partners).

Plus a ◆ marker in REGISTRY.md and an entry in ../partners.json. A House tool additionally states in its guide that the repo author owns the tool.

Editorial control & the integrity rubric

• The maintainer holds final editorial control and may edit or cut anything for neutrality and accuracy, at any time.
• Any content that names a tool — partner or not — must pass the integrity rubric: options not one answer, at the point of relevance, no forced endorsement, facts over framing, disclosed, and the swap test (swap the tool for a competitor and it should still read fair).
• Partner integrations surface only at the point of relevance — when a user is implementing or working with that tool. They never hijack generic queries and never insert themselves into a skill's recommendation as the answer.

Category exclusivity (precise definition)

• Skill Partner is non-exclusive. Competitors may hold Skill Partner placements in the same category.
• Category Partner buys a slot, not the answer. No competing tool receives a Verified Partner integration or partner slot in that category while the agreement is active. It does not mean core skills only recommend that partner, and it does not restrict what any skill says. Categories are defined in writing in the agreement; a multi-category tool claims one category.
• House-tool categories are not for sale (e.g. email verification is held by Truelist).

The partner lifecycle

1. Apply — application via the sponsorship page (vetted for fit).
2. Agreement — the Partner Agreement (6-month minimum), accepted at checkout.
3. Pay — Stripe; acceptance (version + timestamp) recorded with the subscription. Nothing publishes until the first payment clears.
4. Onboard — the partner submits logo, blurb, docs, and setup specifics via the onboarding form.
5. Author — the integration guide is drafted collaboratively; the maintainer holds the pen and final editorial control.
6. Publish — add the partner to ../partners.json, run ../scripts/sync-partners.mjs to regenerate the README + registry blocks, commit. The site reads partners.json directly.
7. Renewal / lapse — renewal is an explicit conversation, never an automatic charge. On lapse there's a 30-day notice period where the integration is flagged as unmaintained before removal — installs are never silently broken. Deactivate with "active": false (keeps history, removes it from every surface).

tools/integrations/ spec (any tool, partner or not)

What qualifies: a real marketing tool with a programmatic surface an agent can use — an API, MCP server, and/or CLI. Neutral integrations are welcome from anyone via PR.

Format (match the existing guides, e.g. integrations/resend.md):

• # Tool Name + a one-line description
• ## Capabilities table — API / MCP / CLI / SDK availability with notes
• ## Authentication — auth type; secrets go in env vars / a secret manager, never in the repo
• Setup + common operations (with real command/code examples)
• Links to official docs

CLIs (../clis/*.js) are zero-dependency Node 18+ scripts: show usage with no args, support --dry-run, and never require credentials just to print help. See AGENTS.md build/verify rules.

A partner integration is all of the above plus the disclosure header, the ◆ marker, and the partners.json entry.

Single source of truth

The partner data lives once in ../partners.json. sync-partners.mjs generates the README Partners section and the Verified Partners table from it; the site fetches the same file. Edit one place, run the script, commit — every surface updates together. Run node scripts/sync-partners.mjs --check to verify nothing has drifted.