kerf.box maps where your category clusters today, finds the narrow defensible cut between clusters, and ships a wedge with a structural moat. If the moat doesn’t hold against named competitors, the system refuses to ship.
Three industries. Three Kerfs. Each one passes the refusal rule — moat names competitors and gives a structural reason.
All four publishers post highlight reels and pro-play clips at high frequency — the audience has tuned them out.
Quarterly trailers and cinematics designed for marketing, not for community — high gloss, zero personality.
TikTok #BTS for gaming is up 340% YoY and r/gaming threads show clip-fatigue with rising demand for dev-story content.
Devs in the queue. No private lobbies.
Riot Games and Bungie cannot follow this without contradicting their existing positioning lock-in: their cinematic-first marketing has trained audiences to expect distance and polish, and their headcount means any individual dev's voice is structurally diluted. Apex and Valorant can't credibly run dev-vs-community ranked because their pro-play industrial complex has trained audiences to read 'dev play' as a marketing stunt, not a humility signal. The moat is incentive structure, not effort.
Your developers play against your community on-stream, weekly, losses included.
The wedge IS this concept — devs playing the public queue, losing, and narrating it. Riot and Bungie structurally can't run this format with the same credibility.
r/gaming is exhausted by montages and asking for 'dev stories' — filling the exact gap competitors leave
Follow one low-ranked tournament player across a season — failures, redemption, all of it.
Narrative content about real low-ranked players — proof that the studio sees the queue, not just the pro stage. Competitors with pro-play industrial complexes can't credibly center a low-rank player.
TikTok gaming #BTS is up 340% YoY — narrative-driven content beats clips in this cycle
Weekly breakdown of a pro match that couldn't have been bought — just skill.
Public, falsifiable proof that wins came from skill — backs the wedge with evidence the F2P/pay-to-win cluster can't generate without dismantling their monetization model.
'No pay-to-win' is your most defensible moat — turn it into provable, shareable content
Strategy is not a story.
Strategy is a cut.
Other tools ship slop and call it strategy.
We refuse to ship undefendable cuts.
Generic AI marketing tools optimize for fluency. kerf.box optimizes for defensibility. The wedge has to name a competitor and explain why they can’t follow — or the run is refused and tells you why. The refusal is the brand POV expressed in code.
kerf.box ships as an MCP server and an OpenAPI 3.1 spec. Your agent can cut_kerf and generate_copy against the same engine that powers the web app.
No account, no API key — the API is open. You bring a key from any AI provider per call (passed through, never stored), or connect over MCP. The refusal rule applies to agents too: an undefendable Kerf is refused with a reason, not a hallucination dressed in a deck.
Bring a key from any AI provider — Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Kimi, Qwen, DeepSeek, Groq, OpenRouter, even a local Ollama — or connect kerf.box to Claude over MCP, and it’s free, forever. You pay your provider directly for the tokens you use. No subscription, no metering, no per-seat fee. We never run generation on our own key.
No. Generators write copy from a blank prompt. kerf.box does the strategic work first — maps the cluster, names the cut, defends the wedge — then writes copy that holds the wedge. The system refuses to ship if the moat is undefendable.
Borrowed from woodworking: a kerf is the narrow slot a saw makes. The Kerf method says strategy is the narrow defensible cut between where the category clusters today and where this brand can legitimately stand alone — not a story you tell, a slot you cut.
After generation, the wedge.moat field is checked. If it doesn't reference at least one competitor from the cluster map, or reduces to 'we'll execute better,' the run is refused — the stream emits an error with the reason instead of shipping. The brand POV — that undefendable strategy is worse than no strategy — is enforced in code.
Bring Your Own Key. You pass your own AI provider's API key with each call and pay that provider directly at cost. We never hold or proxy your key. This is the recommended path for agents and high-volume callers — and it's free.
Any of them. Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, Google Gemini, Kimi (Moonshot), Qwen (Alibaba), DeepSeek, Groq, OpenRouter, a local Ollama, or any custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint — pick the provider in the app, paste the key, done. Anthropic keys additionally run live web research with citations; every other provider cuts the kerf from model knowledge. See /help for per-provider setup.
Nothing. kerf.box is free — forever. You bring your own AI provider key (BYOK) or connect it to Claude over MCP, and you pay your provider directly for the tokens you use. There's no subscription, no metering, no per-seat fee, and we never run generation on our own key.
With an Anthropic key: live web search, and every signal ships with citations you can click and verify. With any other provider: the model's own knowledge of the category — still structured, still refusal-checked, but without fresh citations. Inferences are flagged. Nothing is invented.
About 60–90 seconds end-to-end. You'll see the cluster map, kerf, and wedge stream in live.
Yes. We ship an MCP server (npx -y kerfbox-mcp) and a public OpenAPI 3.1 spec at /api/openapi.json. Tools: cut_kerf and generate_copy. The API is open — no account, no API key. Bring a key from any AI provider (BYOK) for live runs, or call with demo:true.
Yes — kerfs save to your browser, and you can export each one as JSON or markdown to drop into Notion, Linear, or Slack, or re-import it on another device. There's also a JSON API and an MCP server for agent workflows.
Solo founders, indie hackers, small studios with a real wedge they're not articulating. If your positioning sounds like every competitor, this finds the cut.
Generate another. We add no metering on BYOK runs — you pay only your own provider's bill (a per-IP abuse cap of 10 runs/hour aside). Most users iterate 2–3 times to find the cut that holds; the refusal rule tells you exactly what's missing so the next run is sharper.
Cut your first kerf in 90 seconds. BYOK. No card, no commitment.
cut a kerf →