discover

name	discover
description	Product discovery workflow that turns an idea into market, user, scope, hypothesis, and validation notes.
argument-hint	idea, problem, market, or product hypothesis
license	MIT
metadata	{"category":"planning","tags":["discovery","product","market","mvp"],"effort":"high","side_effect":"docs-write","explicit_invocation":false}

Discover

Create DISCOVERY.md, IDEA_SCORECARD.md, and VALIDATION_PLAN.md for a product idea.

Use /market-scan before scoring when the idea has public market risk, competitor risk, ICP uncertainty, launch uncertainty, or depends on current user/community demand.

Process

1. Clarify target user, painful problem, current alternatives, budget, timeline, and success metric.
2. Run /market-scan when fresh public market or community signals can affect the score.
3. Score the idea by pain, urgency, segment clarity, willingness to pay or adopt, audience access, validation speed, complexity, and strategic fit.
4. Run the evidence quality gate:
   • count real user conversations by segment;
   • separate past behavior evidence from opinions or hypothetical future intent;
   • record contradicting evidence;
   • state what must be true before the idea can receive BUILD.
5. Run adversarial discovery: why the idea may be wrong, why a competitor may win, which alternatives users already use, and which uncomfortable signals are being ignored.
6. Decide KILL, TEST, or BUILD.
7. Identify user segments and primary persona.
8. Summarize alternatives and differentiation.
9. Define the riskiest assumptions and validation experiments.
10. Design customer discovery around concrete past behavior, not "would you use this?" questions.
11. Prioritize features with MoSCoW and a lightweight RICE score.
12. Define the MVP scope, non-goals, and kill criteria.

Output

Write or update:

IDEA_SCORECARD.md with:

• Candidate idea
• Target segment
• Evidence-backed score
• Evidence quality gate: real conversations, past behavior, contradicting evidence, and BUILD truth conditions
• Weaknesses to test first
• KILL, TEST, or BUILD decision

VALIDATION_PLAN.md with:

• Core hypothesis
• Customer discovery interview profile, forbidden questions, and five-interview debrief
• Riskiest assumptions
• Experiments
• Expected and actual signals
• Continue, pivot, or stop decision

DISCOVERY.md with:

• Problem statement
• Target users
• Customer discovery plan
• Jobs to be done
• Alternatives and competitors
• Positioning
• Hypotheses
• MVP scope
• Feature priority table
• Kill criteria
• Risks and unknowns

Self-validation

Before final output, verify:

• Route, side-effect, and confirmation requirements match metadata.
• Required artifacts or read-only result are explicit.
• Verification, blockers, and next route are stated.

Rules

• If facts are unknown, mark them as assumptions.
• Do not invent market numbers without research.
• Do not invent recent social, competitor, or community signals. Use /market-scan or mark evidence as missing.
• Do not treat future-intent answers like "I would use this" as strong validation.
• Do not let BUILD scope pass when the scorecard still says KILL.
• Do not let BUILD scope pass without contradicting evidence or an explicit no-evidence exception.
• Ask before overwriting existing discovery or validation docs.