| name | product-thinking |
| description | Product-oriented thinking for understanding user needs, prioritizing features, and designing solutions. Use when the task involves product decisions, feature prioritization, or understanding user impact. |
| chains_with | ["planning","communication"] |
Product Thinking Skill — Build What Matters
Framework
1. Define the Problem
What user problem does this solve?
Current behavior: [what happens now]
Pain point: [what's wrong with it]
Desired behavior: [what should happen]
Success metric: [how we measure it's fixed]
2. Prioritize
| Factor | Weight | Score (1-5) |
|---|
| User impact | 3x | |
| Business value | 2x | |
| Effort (inverse) | 2x | |
| Risk | 1x | |
| Dependencies | 1x | |
3. Solution Sketch
Before writing code, sketch the solution:
- User flow: what does the user see/do?
- Data flow: how does data move?
- Error states: what happens when things go wrong?
- Edge cases: what are the boundaries?
Feature Specification Template
## Feature: [Name]
### User Story
As a [type of user], I want to [action] so that [benefit].
### Acceptance Criteria
- [ ] Criterion 1
- [ ] Criterion 2
- [ ] Criterion 3
### Design
[Link to mockups or describe UI]
### Data Model
[Fields, types, constraints]
### API
[Endpoint, method, params, response]
### Error States
- What happens if input is invalid?
- What happens if backend is down?
- What happens if user has no permission?
### Out of Scope
- What we're NOT doing (explicitly)
Principles
- Start with the user: Every feature should trace to a user need
- Scope ruthlessly: The best feature is the one that ships
- Measure everything: If you can't measure it, you can't improve it
- Fail fast: Test assumptions with the smallest possible experiment
- Iterate: v1 is better than v0.5. Ship and improve.
- Say no: More features ≠ better product
