Card v2 — three beliefs about the humans

The geometry is law, cited

Derived session-side from Lob's public help center (two pages, cited in GEOMETRY.md): 6x9 = 2775×1875px at 300dpi with 0.125" bleed per edge; safe zone 1/8" inside trim; the ink-free 4"×2.375" address block at 0.275"/0.25" from the bleed-inclusive right/bottom; nothing address-like in the front's bottom 2.375" (the opposite-side rule). Encoded once as a shared template + an ?overlay=1 lever every card honors — the zones draw themselves, labeled, with the fictional addressee shown at Lob scale. All three backs share one skeleton; only the fronts carry hypotheses — an A/B that varies two things teaches nothing.

(a) Artifact-forward — "It's yours."

Hypothesis: seeing beats being told — a finished thing with your name on it is self-evidently real in a way no sentence can be.

Rationale: the mail-stack glance is visual before it is verbal, so the live site fills the frame and the words recede to a plate. The screenshot is the actual deployed #005 host — the card does not mock its evidence. Endowment arrives through the eyes: that is my town list, my trade, my name in the masthead.

If (a) out-scans v1, we learn: the humans flip for artifacts, not authors — future creative should spend its budget on print fidelity and screenshot craft, and cut copy everywhere, demos included.

(b) Their-own-words — the customer as copywriter

Hypothesis: nothing a marketer writes out-credibilities the customer's own voice — recognition, not persuasion, earns the flip.

Rationale: one verbatim five-star review set huge, like a pull-quote from a paper the owner never knew they were in (synthetic here, from the #005 fiction, and labeled; production uses the prospect's real review under the existing scrape). The gift reframes as inevitability: "your customers already wrote your website — I put it online." No review counts anywhere, per the DNA.

If (b) out-scans v1, we learn: borrowed credibility beats the gift — the pipeline's front step becomes review sourcing, and every future hero (mail or demo) opens with the prospect's own reputation.

(c) The unfinished — "Your website is 90% built."

Hypothesis: open loops itch harder than gratitude warms — an almost-done thing demands its ending, and the last 10% belonging to the owner converts charity into agency.

Rationale: the only dark object in a white mail stack, and the only front that withholds resolution — the QR is the sole way to close the loop. First person survives ("I did the 90"), so the craftsman is still in the room; the driver just shifts from thanks to tension. One honesty seam, found by the LOOK and written down: the #005 host looks finished, and a card that says 90% must point at a demo that visibly shows its missing 10 — which the #005 client variant already models (the un-attested price line IS the honest missing piece: "what does a typical job run?" unanswered). If (c) graduates, that pairing is the design.

If (c) out-scans v1, we learn: curiosity plus agency beat both beauty and proof — the fleet should ship honest unfinished edges and invite completion, which changes demo philosophy, not just cards.

The ranking, argued from the renders

• 1 · (c) the unfinished. Wins the stack (sole dark card), wins the flip motive (the loop closes only by scanning), and keeps the craftsman present. It is also the most honest A/B against v1: same personal labor, different emotional engine — gratitude vs tension, cleanly isolated.
• 2 · (b) their-own-words. The strongest trust transfer and the most durable claim, but it asks the stack glance to read — a two-second tax the others don't charge. In production its hero is real by construction (the scraped review), which makes it the safest direction to mail.
• 3 · (a) artifact-forward. The purest endowment logic, but at true 6x9 scale it spends its evidence small: at stack distance it reads "phone ad" before it reads "my website." It also varies the least from v1's belief (artifact-led vs author-led presentation of the same gift), so as an A/B arm it teaches the least.
• On the standing champion: v1's personal-craftsman sits on reciprocity — the strongest single lever in the deck — and none of these replaces it; (c) sharpens it with an open loop, (b) re-sources it, (a) re-stages it. The recommendation is therefore not "v2 beats v1" but "v1 vs (c) is the first test worth paying for," with (b) queued second. If the humans shrug at both, the craftsman hypothesis stands proven hard to beat, and that finding is worth the postage.
• (d), proposed, not built (the №001 C12 restraint): THE WORKING TOOL — owners don't want websites; they want fewer interruptions and more booked jobs. Lead with the #005 quote-shaper mid-conversation ("it already answers 'what would that run?'"). Filed for the COO; built only if a direction above dies in review or a fourth arm is wanted.

The DNA, enforced by machine

Every candidate carries: first-person Jordan voice · the offer block verbatim $0 upfront | $79/month | cancel anytime · Scan to see it. at the QR · no review counts in headlines · the banned-words list · verbatim-style testimonial, synthetic and labeled · no emojis. render.py fails the build on any violation — 29 checks green at close, including the one that matters most to a funnel: the QR decodes off the rendered card at 75dpi and arm scale, all three directions (zxing, locally). Every visible word is a CANDIDATE; the CEO owns anything that ships.

Graduation — the A/B mechanics, verbatim

GRADUATION.md in the Lab repo carries it whole: trigger = Jul-31 S-band 0–2 (the checkpoint read lands in the 0–2 scan band → v1 has not earned its keep alone) · 50/50 split via Lob batch-ids at the first post-checkpoint cut · the chosen direction is ported into _postcard_batch_generate under the existing gates by a numbered production session (the Lab's HTML is reference, never copy-paste) · Lob zones stay design-free · the CEO selects the direction and owns every visible word. Until the Jul-31 read: the instrument stays frozen and these cards stay fiction.