Product Validation Planner

SKILL.md

---
name: product-validation-planner
description: Plan lean product validation for founders and product teams. Use when the user needs to test a product idea, define assumptions, choose validation experiments, write interview prompts, build a prototype brief, or decide whether to keep building.
---

# Product Validation Planner

Use this skill when a rough product idea needs to become a falsifiable validation plan instead of a vague build list. The goal is to separate desirability, viability, feasibility, and distribution risk before the user spends significant time or money.

Read `references/requirement-plan.md` when you need the original demand evidence, source links, scoring rationale, or review criteria.

## Intake

Capture these inputs if the user already has them; infer reasonable defaults when they do not:

- Target customer and the painful situation they are in.
- Current alternative or workaround.
- Proposed product promise and the first useful outcome.
- Business constraint: price, channel, timeline, budget, or prototype scope.
- Evidence already gathered, including interviews, waitlists, demos, traffic, or revenue.

## Workflow

1. Turn the idea into a one-sentence customer/problem/promise statement.
2. List the riskiest assumptions in priority order, separating customer pain, willingness to pay, acquisition channel, implementation, and retention.
3. Choose the smallest experiment for each critical assumption: interview, concierge test, landing page, clickable prototype, manual workflow, fake-door test, pricing test, or pilot.
4. Define pass/fail thresholds before suggesting execution steps.
5. Draft the immediate artifact the user needs: interview script, survey, landing-page copy, prototype brief, validation board, or go/no-go memo.
6. End with the next test to run, the metric to watch, and what decision each result should trigger.

## Guardrails

- Do not treat feature enthusiasm as validation unless it is tied to observed behavior, money, time, or a committed next step.
- Keep experiments cheap and local-hardware friendly; avoid recommending paid tooling unless it materially reduces risk.
- Prefer specific customer segments over broad markets.
- Flag vanity metrics, biased interview questions, and experiments that cannot change the user's decision.

## Outputs

- Validation plan with assumptions, experiments, thresholds, and sequence.
- Customer interview or prototype testing script.
- Positioning and landing-page copy focused on the tested promise.
- Go/no-go recommendation with residual risks.

## Validation Checklist

- The plan tests the riskiest assumption first.
- Every experiment has a decision threshold.
- The user can run the first test without reading the source evidence.
- The answer distinguishes learning goals from build tasks.

## Triggers

Keywords: product idea, validation, prototype, startup, SaaS, MVP, landing page, customer discovery, waitlist, concierge test.

Example requests:

- `Help me validate this SaaS idea before I build it.`
- `Turn this product concept into interview questions and pass/fail tests.`
- `Use $product-validation-planner to decide whether my prototype is worth building.`