category-positioning

Choose the category pair where the Product's honest fit meets a chart it can plausibly reach. Output is a category recommendation — primary, secondary, rationale, and a switch plan when the pair changes — that the User applies in App Store Connect (App Information → Category); a category change ships with the next version, nothing is published by this Skill.

Gather

1. read_context — what the app does in one sentence, ICP, goal (installs, revenue, featuring, a top-100 rank), named competitors.
2. connector_asc_categories when the ASC Connector exists — the primary and secondary category as set. Without it, the genres of app_store_listing name them.
3. app_store_listing — the Product's rating and rating count. How long it has lived in the current category (a recent switch resets chart signals) is known when a past category recommendation from read_outputs records the switch; otherwise say it is unknown.
4. Each competitor the Foundation doc names, through fetch_url on iTunes Search (https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=<name>&entity=software&country=<storefront>&limit=1) — primaryGenreName, userRatingCount and currentVersionReleaseDate. Rating count and release recency stand in for chart strength when no analytics exist.
5. connector_asc_analytics when the ASC Connector exists — impressions, product page views and downloads by source (App Store Browse vs Search vs Referrer), 28d + trend. Browse share is the category's current contribution; downloads/day is the baseline against a chart's floor. Without it, say the Browse share is unknown and estimate reachability from the competitors' listings only.
6. fetch_url on the public top-charts page of the candidate category (apps.apple.com/<storefront>/charts/iphone/<category>-apps/<genre id>) when a candidate's leaders are unknown — flagged untrusted, used only to name the top apps and look them up on iTunes Search.

Score

Rules, the category list, the recurring trade-offs and the switch mechanics are in references/category-selection.md; read it before scoring. For the current pair and each candidate (two to four), score the six factors:

1. Truth fit — the app honestly belongs; a mismatch is rejected or moved back by App Review. Required, gates everything else.
2. Competitive density — how many top-100 apps compete head-on.
3. Top-app strength — leaders rankable in six months (thin rating counts, stale updates) or fortified (multi-year leaders, hundreds of thousands of ratings).
4. Chart reachability — the Product's downloads/day (from analytics) against the candidate's floor; a floor is estimated from the rating velocity of the apps sitting at #50–#100.
5. Audience match — the people browsing this category are the ICP; a mismatch produces views that convert poorly.
6. Featuring activity — how often Apple's editorial team curates in the category.

The winner is the highest audience-match category the Product can reach top 100 in within six months. Games pick the strongest mechanic, never the broadest theme.

Output: category recommendation

• Current — primary, secondary, tenure, Browse share of downloads when known.
• Candidates — one block per candidate with the six scores, the named leaders, and a verdict: recommend / hold / avoid.
• Recommendation — primary and secondary, each with a one-line reason; the secondary is chosen as a second discovery surface, never left empty.
• Expected outcome — reachable rank and horizon, featuring odds, the risk.
• Switch plan when the pair changes — the version to ship it with (clear of any launch window, see launch), listing changes that address the new audience (screenshots, subtitle), and the monitoring cadence during the four-to-eight-week re-indexing.
• Apply — App Store Connect → App Information → Primary / Secondary Category; effective with the next version.

Done when every candidate carries all six scores, the recommended primary passes truth fit, the rationale names the leaders it will compete with, and the recommendation states which data it lacked (downloads by source, chart floor) when a Connector was absent.

Related Skills

• app-store-featured — editorial pitch inside the chosen category.
• competitors — deeper competitive analysis of the new category's leaders.
• aso — full listing audit after the category is set.
• localization — the category pair is global, but the listing that matches its audience is per storefront.