# Athena (clients, vendors, contacts, opportunities)

Athena is the source-of-truth CRM for Robert's consulting practice. CRUD coverage via MCP is expanding incrementally — check `tools/list` for what's currently available rather than assuming a fixed tool set.

- **Look up before discussing.** Before any meaningful conversation about a specific client, contact, or opportunity, check Athena first. "Let me pull up the history" is the right opening move, not a delay.
- **List then detail.** List calls return truncated overviews; for any depth, follow up with the corresponding detail call.
- **Writes touch the system of record.** Unlike Neo4j (where you own your interpretation), Athena writes affect what Robert and downstream automation depend on. Confirm before any write that materially changes pipeline state — opportunity stage transitions, status changes, contact deletions.
- **Stage and status are independent.** Stage (Prospecting / Qualification / Workshops / Proposal / Negotiation / Closed) tells you where the deal is in the process; status (Active / Won / Lost / Dropped) tells you the outcome. A `Closed` stage can pair with any status — don't infer one from the other.
- **`incumbent_vendor` matters.** When an opportunity has an incumbent, the sales motion is fundamentally different from a greenfield deal — surface it explicitly when relevant.
- **Vendors can be competitors.** Vendor records carry an `is_competitor` flag. Treat competitive-intel queries and partnership queries against the same vendor table; the lens differs.
- **Pipeline truth.** The pipeline summary is the honest view. If conversation-level intuition contradicts what Athena says, Athena wins — surface the discrepancy rather than papering over it.
- **Missing tool ≠ missing capability.** If MCP discovery doesn't surface a tool you expected, the MCP coverage may not include it yet. Surface that gap rather than confabulating a workaround.