| name | product-lens |
| description | Use this skill to validate the "why" before building, run product diagnostics, and pressure-test product direction before the request becomes an implementation contract. |
| origin | ECC |
Product Lens — Think Before You Build
This lane owns product diagnosis, not implementation-ready specification writing.
If the user needs a durable PRD-to-SRS or capability-contract artifact, hand off to product-capability.
When to Use
- Before starting any feature — validate the "why"
- Weekly product review — are we building the right thing?
- When stuck choosing between features
- Before a launch — sanity check the user journey
- When converting a vague idea into a product brief before engineering planning starts
How It Works
Mode 1: Product Diagnostic
Like YC office hours but automated. Asks the hard questions:
1. Who is this for? (specific person, not "developers")
2. What's the pain? (quantify: how often, how bad, what do they do today?)
3. Why now? (what changed that makes this possible/necessary?)
4. What's the 10-star version? (if money/time were unlimited)
5. What's the MVP? (smallest thing that proves the thesis)
6. What's the anti-goal? (what are you explicitly NOT building?)
7. How do you know it's working? (metric, not vibes)
Output: a PRODUCT-BRIEF.md with answers, risks, and a go/no-go recommendation.
If the result is "yes, build this," the next lane is product-capability, not more founder-theater.
Mode 2: Founder Review
Reviews your current project through a founder lens:
1. Read README, CLAUDE.md, package.json, recent commits
2. Infer: what is this trying to be?
3. Score: product-market fit signals (0-10)
- Usage growth trajectory
- Retention indicators (repeat contributors, return users)
- Revenue signals (pricing page, billing code, Stripe integration)
- Competitive moat (what's hard to copy?)
4. Identify: the one thing that would 10x this
5. Flag: things you're building that don't matter
Mode 3: User Journey Audit
Maps the actual user experience:
1. Clone/install the product as a new user
2. Document every friction point (confusing steps, errors, missing docs)
3. Time each step
4. Compare to competitor onboarding
5. Score: time-to-value (how long until the user gets their first win?)
6. Recommend: top 3 fixes for onboarding
Mode 4: Feature Prioritization
When you have 10 ideas and need to pick 2:
1. List all candidate features
2. Score each on: impact (1-5) × confidence (1-5) ÷ effort (1-5)
3. Rank by ICE score
4. Apply constraints: runway, team size, dependencies
5. Output: prioritized roadmap with rationale
Output
All modes output actionable docs, not essays. Every recommendation has a specific next step.
Integration
Pair with:
/browser-qa to verify the user journey audit findings/design-system audit for visual polish assessment/canary-watch for post-launch monitoringproduct-capability when the product brief needs to become an implementation-ready capability plan
