The CTO powersuit experiment
One new term, one definition, and a dated prediction about whether answer engines name its author.
Withdrawn, 2026-10-11. This page first tested the term "build-exit CTO", defined on 2026-10-09 with a prediction hashed the same day (predictions/build-exit-cto-aeo-2026-10-09.txt). That prediction will not be scored. The site's owner replaced the term with "CTO powersuit" on 2026-10-11, before any probe ran, because a reader would not know what the old term meant. The old file stays in place, unchanged, with its hash.
The answer first. On 2026-10-11 Stefan Coetzee defined a new term, CTO powersuit, on machinebehavior.io/your-next-cto. Before the term went on that page he wrote and hashed a prediction: on 2026-11-30, at least 2 of ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews name Stefan Coetzee for the term. A control query predicts the opposite result for a query other providers already hold. The result goes on this page whichever way it lands.
The term
The CTO powersuit is a set of agent skills, one module per CTO function from the deploy gate to the hand-over, that one person uses to run a company's whole engineering platform.
On 2026-10-11 no page used or defined the term. Searches for "CTO powersuit" and "CTO power suit" through a self-hosted SearXNG instance returned pages about power suits in clothing, exoskeletons and games, and none that uses the term; that day the instance asked yandex, zapmeta and google cse, and reported mojeek, brave and duckduckgo unavailable. The exact-match domains ctopowersuit.com, ctopowersuit.io and ctopowersuit.de were unregistered (whois, 2026-10-11). The open-source repository went public on 11 October 2026: github.com/uncovertechtalent/cto-powersuit.
The prediction
The full text is predictions/cto-powersuit-aeo-2026-10-11.txt, sha256 56b8f02b64ae80c63a062463e29143bbd3782d0ccc5afd3fe5b56265d3a3f387, listed in predictions/HASHES.txt. The deploy gate checks that hash on every push, so the file cannot change without a failed run.
- P1. On 2026-11-30, at least 2 of the 3 engines name Stefan Coetzee for the term.
- P2. On 2026-11-30, at least 1 of the 3 engines cites a machinebehavior.io URL for the term.
- P3, control. On 2026-11-30, none of the 3 engines names Stefan Coetzee for the query "fractional CTO Germany".
Why these numbers
An answer engine that retrieves from a live web index can only return pages that exist for a query. For an empty term, the first clear definition is most of what there is to return. That mechanism is what P1 tests. The bar is 2 engines out of 3 because Google shows AI Overviews for some queries and not others, and a new low-volume phrase may get none. The date, 2026-11-30, is seven weeks after the term went on the page, which covers several crawl cycles for a site that publishes a sitemap, allows every crawler in robots.txt and is registered in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
"Power suit" is a common phrase in clothing and in games. If the engines read the query as that phrase and answer about suits, P1 fails, and that is a result about the choice of term.
P3 separates filling an empty query from standing on a contested one. "fractional CTO Germany" has established providers. If an engine names Stefan Coetzee there, the result goes on this page with an explanation, and it does not count toward P1.
Probe plan
| Item | Setting |
|---|---|
| Engines | ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews |
| Queries | Q1 "CTO powersuit"; Q2 "What is a CTO powersuit?"; control "fractional CTO Germany" |
| Run | One query in a fresh session, logged out or on a measurement account with no history, English, from Germany; three runs per engine and query on each probe date |
| Names him | The answer text to Q1 or Q2 contains "Stefan Coetzee" in at least 2 of the 3 runs |
| Cites the site | At least one run lists a machinebehavior.io URL as a source |
| No AI Overview | Counts as not naming him on that date |
| Dates | Weekly on Mondays from 2026-10-12, final reading on 2026-11-30 |
| Log | Each probe date added to this page: engine, query, runs that name him, URLs cited |
Baseline, 2026-10-11
| Probe | Result |
|---|---|
| Web search for "CTO powersuit" and "CTO power suit" (SearXNG; yandex, zapmeta and google cse asked) | No page uses or defines the term |
| Exact-match domains ctopowersuit.com, .io, .de | Unregistered |
| ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews | Not probed before the term went on the page. No manual run was made and no reading from Search Console or Bing was recorded, so there is no earlier reading for the three engines |
Measurement status
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are set up for machinebehavior.io. The Search Console verification record is in DNS, the sitemap was submitted on 2026-10-07, and Bing imported the site from Search Console. No reading from Search Console's Generative AI report or from Bing's AI Performance report is recorded for this experiment yet. A Perplexity API probe is not set up; that is Stefan Coetzee's decision. Neither report records answer text or covers ChatGPT search, so those readings are taken by hand in a browser and logged on this page. What each report counts and leaves out is on AIEO measurement.
Correction, 2026-10-09, to the withdrawn record. The build-exit prediction file says the measurement accounts were not set up. That sentence was wrong when it was written: Search Console and Bing were set up on 2026-10-07. The file stays as hashed. The CTO powersuit record states the setup correctly.
What the experiment does not do
- No paid press releases and no invented events.
- No exact-match domains.
- No hidden text and no text addressed to models.
- No claim that the term is in wide use. It has one source, this site, and the page says so.
The inputs are the pages under /your-next-cto/, the article "Who should your next CAIO be?" once it is published, the open-source repository once it is published, and links Stefan Coetzee adds from his own profiles. Four inputs came after the hashed record. Two came with issue 85: the page /cto-powersuit/, which carries the definition in the same words outside /your-next-cto/, and an IndexNow submission of the changed pages after each deploy of the site. The third came with issue 90: one page per plugin under /cto-powersuit/, each with the definition in the same words, live since that issue closed. The fourth came with ADR-0031: the cockpit page, which carries the definition in the same words.
What refutes it
P1 is refuted if fewer than 2 engines name Stefan Coetzee for the term on 2026-11-30. P2 is refuted if no engine cites a machinebehavior.io URL for it. A refuted prediction stays on this page next to its hash.