write-discovery-plan

name	write-discovery-plan
description	Set up a Teresa Torres continuous-discovery cadence — weekly customer interviews with the product trio, automated recruiting, and calendar discipline. Produces a discovery plan that runs continuously rather than as a one-off research sprint. Use when standing up discovery for a product slice or fixing a stalled interview cadence.
argument-hint	[product slice and its desired outcome]
user-invocable	true
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit, Bash, Glob, Grep

Set up a continuous-discovery cadence for $ARGUMENTS.

Most products fail because teams build the wrong thing, and the cure is talking to customers continuously rather than in big-bang research sprints that go stale before you ship. This skill produces a discovery plan based on Teresa Torres's continuous discovery: weekly touch points, run by the team building the product, in pursuit of a desired outcome. The plan must be runnable — a protected calendar slot, a self-sustaining recruiting mechanism, and the trio committed.

Follow every step. The output is a plan the team can start running next week.

Step 1: Confirm the desired outcome

Discovery serves a specific outcome — the metric you're trying to move. Agree it with the product leader before anything else. "Increase weekly active users" or "reduce week-one churn", not "learn about customers". If the slice has a roadmap (/product-manager:write-roadmap), the desired outcome is the roadmap root. This step is complete when one desired outcome is written and agreed.

Step 2: Form the discovery trio

Name the product trio: the PM, a designer, and an engineer. All three attend every interview. The rationale is non-negotiable: each role hears different things — the engineer hears constraints and workarounds, the designer hears interaction friction, the PM hears business context. If only the PM attends, the PM becomes a filter on what reaches the team, and filters distort. This step is complete when three named people have committed.

Step 3: Protect a recurring calendar slot

Set one recurring weekly slot for interviews — Torres's example is "Tuesday at 11am" — and protect it. The target is at least one customer conversation per week. Bi-weekly is the floor for teams that genuinely can't hit weekly; anything less frequent collapses back into periodic research, which is a weaker practice. This step is complete when a recurring slot exists on the trio's calendars.

Step 4: Automate recruiting

The most common reason a weekly cadence collapses is recruiting friction — hunting for participants each week becomes a bottleneck that kills the cadence within a few weeks. Automate it from the start:

Situation	Recruiting mechanism
Active product with logged-in users	In-product prompt to a % of users: "Do you have 20 minutes to talk about your experience in exchange for [incentive]?" Agreers enter a scheduling pool; a calendar integration books the next slot
Pre-launch / small B2B / enterprise	Recurring pool via customer success, LinkedIn, industry communities, or a specialist panel — build a pool, don't recruit per-interview

The goal: wake up Monday with an interview already on the calendar, having done nothing to arrange it that week. If you reference a paid panel or recruiting service, flag the cost explicitly — prefer the in-product or customer-success route first. This step is complete when the recruiting mechanism is specified and the first participants are in the pool.

Step 5: Define the interview type and target segment

State whether the cadence runs generative discovery interviews (/product-manager:write-interview-guide), switch interviews (/product-manager:switch-interview), or alternates. Name the target segment narrowly enough that themes will saturate — 20-30 interviews across a reasonably homogeneous segment typically reaches 90-95% saturation. This step is complete when interview type and segment are stated.

Step 6: Set the synthesis and OST update rhythm

Discovery without synthesis is just conversation. Set the rhythm:

• After every interview: log the participant, type, and key signal to docs/product/discovery-log.md
• Every 3-4 interviews: revisit the opportunity space and update the OST (/product-manager:synthesise-interviews, /product-manager:write-opportunity-solution-tree)
• Monthly minimum: full OST review

This step is complete when the synthesis cadence is written into the plan.

Rules

• The trio attends every interview. Researchers reporting back to a PM is not continuous discovery — it reintroduces the filter the trio exists to remove.
• Protect the slot. A discovery cadence that gets bumped for "more urgent" work isn't a cadence. The recurring slot is sacred.
• Automate recruiting before the first interview, not after the cadence stalls. Manual recruiting is the single biggest cause of collapse.
• Weekly beats a sprint. A one-time discovery sprint produces understanding that is months old by ship date. Continuous discovery keeps pace with a changing world.
• Flag paid recruiting services. In-product and customer-success recruiting are free; panels cost money. Name the cost and prefer the free route first.
• Discovery serves an outcome, not curiosity. If interviews aren't connected to a desired outcome and changing decisions, you're running discovery theatre.

Output Format

Write the plan to docs/product/discovery-plan-[slice].md:

# Discovery plan: [slice]

| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| Desired outcome | [metric, baseline → target] |
| Trio | [PM / designer / engineer] |
| Recurring slot | [day / time] |
| Cadence target | [weekly / bi-weekly] |
| Recruiting mechanism | [in-product / CS / panel] — [cost note] |
| Interview type | [generative / switch / alternating] |
| Target segment | [narrow segment] |
| Synthesis rhythm | [per-interview log; OST update every 3-4; monthly review] |

## First two weeks
- [ ] Calendar slot created and protected
- [ ] Recruiting mechanism live, first participants in pool
- [ ] First interview scheduled
- [ ] Discovery log initialised

Related Skills

• /product-manager:write-interview-guide — the guide for each generative interview.
• /product-manager:switch-interview — the guide when the cadence runs switch interviews.
• /product-manager:synthesise-interviews — turn the interview window into OST updates.
• /product-manager:write-opportunity-solution-tree — the artifact discovery keeps current.