The Tight Bucket

The book uses TightBucket, a website "revenue-leak" auditing service built in three days in October 2026 by its owner working with AI coding agents, as a running case. TightBucket had not launched commercially at the time of writing: it had taken no payments, so the book reports design, governance and measured operating data, not commercial results. TightBucket was commissioned by the same owner who commissions the work of Jacaranda Labs Think Tank; it is a bounded case, not an independent evaluation. Research findings, measured facts about the case, and proposed frameworks are labelled separately.

Contents

1. The bucket and the flood
2. When building is cheap, what is scarce?
3. Business models as activity systems
4. Constraints as design material
5. Proof before pitch
6. The zero price and the free tier
7. One engine, four audiences
8. Pricing architecture
9. Borrowed commerce
10. Be the flower
11. Inbox physics
12. Armed but dormant
13. Outbound with proof, replies by hand
14. Loops and partners
15. The autonomy boundary
16. Quota-bounded autonomy
17. Unit economics at the meter
18. Verification debt
19. Tenancy at purchase
20. The cockpit
21. Experiments without vanity
22. Strategy as choice under constraint
23. Risk and dependence in borrowed infrastructure
24. A ninety-day programme
25. Framework compendium
26. Facilitator's guide
27. Glossary
28. References