Playbook Builder.
Turns a Fit Analysis and ROI Projection into an executable partnership plan — the milestones, the owners on each side, the commercial structure, the compliance checkpoints, and the success criteria — scoped to 90 days so it actually ships. Designed by a team that has shipped banking partnerships; built to survive contact with a partnership committee that has seen every mistake.
Sections in every playbook
The one paragraph the partnership committee reads. Describes the partnership, the 90-day objective, the commercial shape, and the primary risk — in that order. Written to be copyable into a committee memo without editing.
3–5 measurable outcomes — not "establish the partnership," but "launch pilot with two named co-brand products by day 60 and validate 100+ end-customer transactions by day 90." Each objective has a numeric success threshold and a specific person responsible.
Six named phases: Discovery (days 1–14), Pilot design (days 15–30), Technical build (days 20–55 in parallel with design after day 20), Compliance review (days 40–65), Launch (day 65–70), Retrospective (day 85–90). Exact dates, not weeks. Dependencies between phases are explicit.
Who on each side is responsible for what. Names specific roles (Head of Partnerships, VP Engineering, Deputy Counsel, Head of Compliance) and, for each, a primary and backup. If the playbook target has fewer than 50 people, Owner Matrix collapses into a single point-of-contact with shared responsibility noted.
Deal type (revenue share, flat fee, equity, referral), proposed pricing or split, contract term (typically 12–24 months with renewal option), volume triggers for re-pricing, termination clauses. Seeded from CORTEX Benchmarks for comparable deals plus any historical deals you've signed.
KYB refresh requirements, legal review gates, counsel sign-off checkpoints, regulator notification requirements (if applicable to the partnership type), consent flow if end-customers are affected, data processing agreement milestone. Each checkpoint has a date and an owner.
Numeric thresholds that determine whether the pilot is a success and the partnership proceeds to full commercial launch. Broken down by dimension (technical, commercial, compliance, user experience). At day 85 the partnership team holds the retrospective against these criteria — no ambiguity about what counts as "yes."
Inherited directly from the Fit Analysis concerns section, plus any additional risks the model surfaces from the combination of commercial structure and target organization profile. Each risk has a specific mitigation and an owner.
Partnership templates
Playbook Builder ships with six pre-built templates for the most common partnership shapes in bank-FinTech work:
Pick a template or start from scratch — the model adapts each section to the chosen shape. The BaaS template, for example, expands the compliance section to cover interagency guidance (including OCC Bulletin 2023-17 / 2026-04), while the Referral template focuses the commercial section on compensation and attribution tracking.
Export and share
Every playbook is exportable in three formats:
- PDF — formatted for partnership-committee packs. Cover page, one-page-per-section, appendix with risk register.
- Notion-compatible Markdown — paste into Notion, Confluence, or any markdown-native workspace without reformatting.
- Linked live view — share a signed URL within TECH that preserves links back to the originating Fit Analysis, ROI Projection, and Pipeline Deal. Recipients can view without logging in; edit permissions require TECH authentication.
Lifecycle integration
A Playbook is not a static document — it is wired into the rest of TECH:
- Milestones from the playbook automatically populate in the Pipeline deal linked to this playbook.
- Activity on the Pipeline deal (messages, documents, meetings) feeds into CORTEX Pulse and Early Warning, which in turn surface if the deal is at risk of missing a playbook milestone.
- At day 85 (or on-demand), TECH generates a structured retrospective comparing actual progress to playbook success criteria.