AINS-M6001: Personal Attention & Influence Systems

Term I — Mag.AI-Marketing
Castalia Institute

Authoritative copy: part of the MyST project (myst.yml).

Course Overview¶

Every marketing system begins with a person allocating finite attention and finite trust to produce perceived value and action. Before you model an audience at scale, you model yourself as the smallest complete marketing world.

AINS-M6001 is the first course in the Mag.AI-Marketing program. Students construct an executable model of their own attention budget, credibility, message–audience fit, content economics, and integrated influence trajectory — the template for audience worlds, campaigns, and strategy that follow.

Final Artifact¶

An executable self-influence model: a simulation that takes your inputs (hours, credibility, message clarity, content costs) and runs scenarios — what happens if you shift time from creation to distribution, invest in trust, narrow your audience, or absorb a reputation shock.

Learning Objectives¶

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Define an ontology for a personal marketing world (attention, trust, message, channel effort)

2. Encode assumptions as computable rules

3. Build a simulation that steps forward in time

4. Perturb the simulation to test scenarios

5. Reflect on model quality using SAMWISE

6. Defend the model against Faculty challenge

7. Connect the model to real signals where appropriate using MCP-backed marketing tools (and document scope, limits, and ethics)

Technology Stack¶

Course Structure¶

8 lectures. Each lecture has Concept, PTAH Notebook, SAMWISE Reflection, Faculty Challenge.

Lecture Sequence¶

Lecture 1: What Is a Marketing World Model?¶

Concept: A marketing world model specifies who attends, what they believe, what messages exist, and how effort maps to reach and conversion. Your personal influence system is the smallest such world.

PTAH Notebook: 01_first_marketing_world.ipynb — Marketer entity: attention_hours_day, credibility, core_message_clarity, audience_touchpoints; rule: signal_reach = f(attention, credibility); run 30 ticks.

SAMWISE Reflection: What did you include or omit? What cannot this model represent?

Faculty Challenge — Dr. a.Porter:

“You modeled reach, but not why anyone should listen. Where is differentiation in your personal system — not slogans, but choice?”

Lecture 2: Attention as the Primary Constraint¶

Concept: Attention is scarcer than time: unclaimed focus is the inventory marketing competes for. Allocation across creation, distribution, learning, and rest shapes everything downstream.

PTAH Notebook: 02_attention_allocation.ipynb — AttentionBlock entities; productivity curve; rule: effective_signal = attention * clarity * credibility_multiplier.

SAMWISE Reflection: Stated vs revealed priorities; highest-leverage hour for your message.

Faculty Challenge — Dr. a.Taleb:

“Attention has fat tails — one scandal can dominate a year of careful posting. Where is tail risk in your model?”

Lecture 3: Credibility, Trust, and Reputation Leverage¶

Concept: Credibility is a stock replenished by consistency and depleted by overclaiming. Not all visibility is the same: trust leverage changes how the same effort converts.

PTAH Notebook: 03_credibility_leverage.ipynb — credibility state; rules for proof vs promise; scenarios: endorsements, mistakes, silence.

SAMWISE Reflection: Where are you borrowing trust you have not earned?

Faculty Challenge — Dr. a.Porter:

“Reputation is strategic. What are you not saying to preserve optionality — and is that omission modeled?”

Lecture 4: Message–Market Fit as Measurable Mismatch¶

Concept: Fit is the distance between what you say and what a specific audience needs to hear — reducible to variables in simulation, not vibes.

PTAH Notebook: 04_message_market_fit.ipynb — audience need vector vs message vector; mismatch score; sensitivity to clarity and niche width.

SAMWISE Reflection: Who exactly is the audience in your model — and who did you exclude to make the math easy?

Faculty Challenge — Dr. a.Porter:

“Narrow positioning trades reach for resonance. Show me the tradeoff curve in your simulation, not in prose.”

Lecture 5: Content Economics and Creative Runway¶

Concept: Content has unit cost (time, tools, collaborators) and decay (feed half-life). Creative runway is how long you can sustain output at quality q without burning out or boring the audience.

PTAH Notebook: 05_content_runway.ipynb — production cost per unit; backlog; quality decay under speed; runway under attention shock.

SAMWISE Reflection: Biggest hidden cost in your creative stack?

Faculty Challenge — Dr. a.Taleb:

“You optimized posting frequency. Convexity: sometimes silence is the optimal strategy. Can your model represent abstaining as a move?”

Lecture 6: Integration — Your Personal Influence System¶

Concept: Combine attention, credibility, message fit, and content economics into one PersonalInfluence world. Sensitivity analysis and three scenarios: baseline, optimized, stress (reputation hit + attention crash).

PTAH Notebook: 06_integration.ipynb — full integration; scenarios; one-page influence report.

SAMWISE Reflection: Single most important insight; what will you change in real life?

Faculty Challenge — Full Panel: Porter (differentiation), Taleb (tails), behavioral frame (bias in self-perception).

Lecture 7: MCP, Real Signals, and Documentation¶

Concept: A self-report-only model is fragile. Connect at least one external or carefully documented synthetic signal to a variable in your world — under MCP scope and program ethics.

PTAH Notebook: 07_mcp_signals.ipynb — data card; one ingest path (MCP, export, or synthetic); falsifiable comparison to the model.

SAMWISE Reflection: Where would real data hurt your self-story — and are you willing to look?

Faculty Challenge — Dr. a.Porter:

“You measured activity. Where is differentiation in the signal — would you pass a ‘why you’ test with only metrics?”

Lecture 8: Faculty Defense and Artifact Lineage¶

Concept: Credibility is inspectability: notebooks → rules → reflections → revisions. Prepare for faculty defense with a short lineage package and anticipated objections.

PTAH Notebook: 08_defense_prep.ipynb — checklist, revision log, one-page influence report final.

SAMWISE Reflection: What do you hope faculty do not ask — and what is your honest answer?

Faculty Challenge — Full Panel + MCP: Scope, consent, and what you refuse to automate.

Assessment¶

Artifact: Personal Influence Model¶

Deliverable: Complete executable PTAH-style world model (notebook + specification).

SAMWISE Journal¶

8 reflection entries (one per lecture). Assessed for honesty, evidence of changing thinking, depth of critique.

Faculty Defense (15 min)¶

• Present model (5 min)

• Faculty challenge (10 min)

Prerequisites¶

• Bac.AI or equivalent (programming, basic statistics, systems thinking)

• Familiarity with Python (or willingness to learn through PTAH-style notebooks)

Materials¶

AINS-M6001/
├── SYLLABUS.md
├── lectures/
│   ├── 01_what_is_a_marketing_world_model.md
│   ├── 02_attention_as_constraint.md
│   ├── 03_credibility_and_leverage.md
│   ├── 04_message_market_fit.md
│   ├── 05_content_economics_runway.md
│   ├── 06_integration.md
│   ├── 07_mcp_real_signals_and_documentation.md
│   └── 08_faculty_defense_and_artifact_lineage.md
├── notebooks/
│   ├── 01_first_marketing_world.ipynb
│   ├── 02_attention_allocation.ipynb
│   ├── 03_credibility_leverage.ipynb
│   ├── 04_message_market_fit.ipynb
│   ├── 05_content_runway.ipynb
│   ├── 06_integration.ipynb
│   ├── 07_mcp_signals.ipynb
│   └── 08_defense_prep.ipynb
└── samwise/
    ├── reflection_template.md
    └── prompts.md

Exercises (relative to repo root): exercises/ains-m6001/warmup.md, exercises/ains-m6001/mcp_tool_design.md.