Boss fight 07 · The Art of the Wedge

vs. The Procurement Committee

Win the beachhead or get walked out. The intel card knows the psychology — the physics are in The Art of the Wedge.

Amygdala

The Procurement Committee

Anything over five thousand dollars goes to quarterly vendor review. Next window is in four months. Also, are you on the approved vendor list? No? Hm.

The Procurement Committee

Three people who can spend $4,999 without a signature

Running in their head: Process IS the product. They aren't hostile — they're a filter that eats momentum. Below-threshold spend is invisible to them by design.
Amygdala triggers: Setting precedents. Unvetted vendors touching production data. Being audited for an exception they granted.
What lands: Budget dust: a pilot priced under the threshold, expensed as 'software tools,' touching only data the user already exports by hand.
Win condition: They confirm the pilot needs no committee review — the wedge slides under the radar, legitimately.

PRISM lexical screen

Auto-rejects: transform · disrupt · revolutionary · paradigm · synergy · leverage · game-changing · AI-powered … Safe-words: refinance · validate · reversible · boring · pilot.