Core concepts

Skeleton Key is built around a simple containment model: organizations hold brands, brands hold campaigns, and campaigns hold the outputs of each phase. Once that model is clear, everything else follows from it: who can see what, which phases you can run, and why your previous outputs don't disappear when you generate new ones.

Orgs, brands, and campaigns

An organization is the top-level container. Every user belongs to at least one, and most users own one. If you belong to multiple organizations (say, a personal account and a client's workspace), you can switch between them using the org switcher in the sidebar. Switching orgs changes which brands are visible everywhere in the app.

A brand lives inside an organization. One organization can hold many brands; one brand belongs to one organization. The brand selector in the sidebar filters every page (Research, Strategy, Media Plan, Documents) to that brand's content. Owners and Admins can create brands inside their org and manage which members have access to each one.

A campaign lives inside a brand. A single brand can have as many campaigns as you need, each with its own brief and its own set of Research, Strategy, and Media Plan outputs. Campaigns are how you scope downstream work: when you run Research inside a campaign, those outputs are tied to that campaign's brief and feed directly into that campaign's Strategy and Media Plan.

Roles and permissions

Organizations and brands each have their own role system. They're separate, and the word "Admin" appears in both. At the org level it's a broad role over the whole organization; at the brand level it's a role on one specific brand. A user can be an Org Member and a Brand Admin at the same time. Org role controls org-wide actions like creating new brands and inviting people. Brand role controls what they can do inside that brand: running workflows, editing outputs, and (for Brand Admins) managing collaborators on the brand.

At the organization level:

• Owner — Full control. Manages org settings, members, and brand creation. One Owner per org.
• Admin — Same as Owner except cannot delete the org or transfer ownership.
• Member — Can use all workflow features for the brands they have access to. Cannot manage org settings or members.
• Guest — View-only access to specific brands and outputs. Cannot start or edit workflows. Useful for sharing work with prospective clients or external collaborators.

At the brand level:

• Admin — Manages collaborators on this specific brand and runs all workflows.
• Standard — Runs all workflows on this brand. Cannot manage collaborators.
• Viewer — Read-only.

Org Owners and Admins automatically have full edit access to every brand in their org. Brand-level roles apply to Org Members and Guests, determining what they can do (or see) on each brand they have access to.

How the features fit together

Skeleton Key's features fall into four groupings, ordered by how you use them on a real campaign. Setup is the foundation: Brand, Campaigns, and the per-brand Documents library. Phases build sequentially on each other: Research, then Strategy, then Media Plan. Refine acts on Phase outputs so you can iterate without starting over. Explore (Brand Maps and Chat) reads across everything that has been generated.

Setup must be in place before any Phase can run, and each Phase requires its upstream Phase to be complete. Refine and Explore both read from Phase outputs, so they only become useful once at least one Phase has produced something on the campaign.

How the steps depend on each other

The five steps run in a fixed order, and each one requires the previous to be complete before it becomes available.

Brand Profile is the starting point. Without a completed Brand Profile, you cannot create a Campaign inside that brand. A Campaign brief, in turn, is what gives Research, Strategy, and Media Plan the campaign-level context they need. Once Research is complete inside a campaign, Strategy becomes available. Once Strategy is complete, Media Plan opens.

The product enforces these dependencies automatically. Trying to open a downstream phase before its upstream is complete shows a prompt explaining what needs to be done first rather than letting you into an empty page. This is by design: each phase grounds its outputs in the previous phase's findings. A Strategy built without Research would be working without the market intelligence layer; a Media Plan built without Strategy would have no planning rationale to draw from.

Research is the one exception to strict campaign-scoping: it can be run at the brand level, outside of any campaign, and is useful when you want exploratory market intelligence that isn't tied to a specific brief. Strategy and Media Plan are always campaign-scoped.

Runs and version history

Each time you generate Research, Strategy, or a Media Plan, you create a run. The first time you generate Research for a campaign, that's version 1. When you Refine, Rerun, or Restore that phase, a new run is created. Previous runs aren't deleted; they're kept as version history and accessible via the History icon on each phase page.

The phase page always shows the current run by default, which is the latest version. Opening version history lets you view any previous run in read-only mode. From there you can restore it with one click, which promotes that older version to current. The version you restored from stays in history.

Editing a Media Plan in edit mode also creates a new run, capturing the state of the plan at save time. If you edit a plan and later want to go back to the auto-generated version, that earlier version is still in history.

Version history is per-phase. Refining Strategy doesn't touch Research. Refining Research, though, means your Strategy and Media Plan were built on the previous Research version. The product surfaces a staleness indicator on those downstream phases so you know they don't yet reflect the latest Research. The full Refine model, including how targeted feedback works and which agents re-run, is covered in the Refine workflow guide.

Where to go next

The Refine workflow guide covers the full model for iterating on outputs: feedback, partial reruns, and how the version history grows over time. For per-phase detail, see Research, Strategy, and Media Plan. For org-level administration (managing members, brand access, and billing), see Administration.