| name | product-lifecycle |
| description | Route a product through its full lifecycle — discovery, strategy, portfolio choice, roadmap, UX and requirements, experimentation, delivery handoff, adoption, success, and lifecycle review — by composing existing specialist product skills with phase-entry evidence, handoff artifacts, and escalation rules. Use when evaluating a new product idea, managing a product through its lifecycle, or connecting product phases that currently operate in isolation. Do not use for a single product task that is already owned by a specialist skill (load that skill directly); do not use for software delivery lifecycle work (route to neckbeard); do not use to duplicate product discovery, strategy, UX, experimentation, analytics, release, or delivery methods. |
| license | MIT |
| compatibility | Agent harness with file read/write, terminal, and skill loading. No network or runtime dependency required by the bundle itself. |
| metadata | {"spec-version":"1.0","tags":"product, lifecycle, portfolio, discovery, strategy, delivery, adoption, orchestration"} |
Product Lifecycle
A thin orchestration bundle that routes a product through nine lifecycle phases
by composing existing specialist product skills. It provides cross-skill
routing and evidence handoff — it does NOT duplicate any specialist's
step-by-step methodology. Load this umbrella when you need to navigate a product
across multiple lifecycle phases; load individual specialist skills directly
when you only need one phase's capability.
Phase routing table
Each phase routes to one or more specialist skills. Entry evidence must exist
before the phase starts. Output artifacts are handed off to the next phase
through the lifecycle evidence ledger. Every phase has explicit escalation
behavior and completion criteria. Full phase contracts are in
references/phases.md.
| # | Phase | Primary specialist(s) | Entry evidence | Output artifacts | Escalation behavior | Completion criteria |
|---|
| 1 | Discovery | product-discovery | Product idea, market signal, or stakeholder request | Problem statement, stakeholder map, discovery log, product type classification | Stop if: problem cannot be articulated in user terms; no stakeholder describes a real need; problem is already solved; out of organizational remit | Problem statement exists that a stakeholder recognizes; product type classified; proceed/pause/stop decision recorded |
| 2 | Strategy and portfolio choice | product-strategy, strategy-frameworks | Problem statement and discovery log from Phase 1 | Strategic assessment, market sizing, portfolio recommendation, investment thesis | Stop if: opportunity conflicts with strategy; market evidence contradicts thesis; resource constraints are infeasible; strategic direction is ambiguous | Strategic assessment with fit/no-fit reasoning; portfolio decision recorded; resource estimate recorded |
| 3 | Roadmap | product-roadmapping-and-portfolio | Strategic assessment and portfolio decision from Phase 2 | Outcome roadmap entry, Now/Next/Later placement, strategic bet record, dependency map, capacity allocation | Stop if: dependencies cannot be resolved; capacity unavailable; confidence below threshold; conflicts with higher-priority bet | Roadmap entry exists; bet record complete with kill criteria; dependencies mapped and acknowledged |
| 4 | UX and requirements | product-design-and-ux | Roadmap entry and bet record from Phase 3; discovery log | Information architecture, task flows, interface contracts, acceptance criteria | Stop if: UX reveals fundamentally different problem; user research contradicts hypothesis; behavior cannot be specified testably; constraints cannot be satisfied | IA and task flows documented; interface contracts exist; acceptance criteria are testable and traceable |
Supporting and cross-cutting skills
These skills are loaded on trigger, not by phase. They support multiple phases
and are routed to when their specific capability is needed.
| Skill | When loaded |
|---|
| product-methodology | When a phase produces alternatives that need ranking (RICE, MoSCoW, Kano, OST) |
| product-operations-and-governance | When setting up or changing governance; at phase boundaries needing formal decision authority |
| financial-modeling | When unit economics, pricing, or business-model analysis is needed (Phases 2, 8) |
| go-to-market | When positioning, acquisition strategy, or growth modeling is needed (Phases 7, 8) |
| data-scientist | When statistical design, causal inference, or rigorous experiment analysis is needed (Phases 5, 8) |
| spec-driven-development | When formal specification with phase gates is needed (Phase 6) |
| privacy-engineering | When any phase handles PII, consent, retention, or data flows |
| secure-software-engineering | When any phase touches trust boundaries, auth, or sensitive data |
| verification-methodology | At every phase gate where evidence is required |
| qa-methodology | When test strategy and quality gates are needed (Phase 6) |
| site-reliability-engineering | When reliability, SLOs, or operational readiness is needed (Phase 6) |
| platform-engineering | When infrastructure, CI/CD, or platform capabilities are needed (Phase 6) |
|
Loading protocol
This umbrella is the guaranteed discoverable entry point. Nested skills and
referenced specialists load on trigger — the umbrella does not pre-load them.
- Read this SKILL.md for the phase routing table and locate the current phase.
- Load the phase contract from references/phases.md for
detailed entry evidence, escalation behavior, and completion criteria.
- Load the specialist skill(s) named in the phase row. Follow the specialist's
method; do not re-derive it from the umbrella.
- Write phase outputs to the lifecycle evidence ledger (see
references/phases.md for ledger fields and conventions).
- The next phase reads the ledger; it does not re-derive prior-phase evidence.
- When the lifecycle completes or stops, the ledger is the durable record.
For capability lookup without traversing the full lifecycle, use the
references/capability-map.md.
When not to use
- Single specialist task. If the work is entirely within one phase (e.g., a
stakeholder interview, an experiment design, a roadmap update), load the
specialist skill directly. The umbrella adds orchestration overhead that is
unnecessary for single-phase work.
- Software delivery lifecycle. If the work is a code change, bug fix, or
feature implementation — not product-level decision-making — route to
neckbeard.
- Duplicate methodology. This bundle does NOT duplicate product-discovery,
product-strategy, product-design-and-ux, product-experimentation,
product-analytics-and-measurement, or release-engineering methods. Load those
skills directly for their step-by-step instructions.
- B2B SaaS assumption. This bundle does NOT assume a B2B SaaS product.
Customer-success routing (Phase 8) is CONDITIONAL on product type.
Internal tools, public-service products, transactional products, and consumer
products proceed without loading
conditional-customer-success.
- Strategic frameworks. For standalone strategic analysis (Five Forces,
Blue Ocean, Ansoff) without a lifecycle context, load
strategy-frameworks directly.
- Financial modeling. For standalone financial analysis without a lifecycle
context, load financial-modeling directly.
File map
| Path | Loaded when |
|---|
| references/phases.md | Entering any lifecycle phase; defines entry evidence, output artifacts, escalation behavior, and completion criteria per phase |
| references/discovery-brief.md | Understanding the bundle boundary and how it compares to existing bundles |
| references/capability-map.md | Looking up which specialist skill owns a specific capability without traversing the full lifecycle |
| manifest.yaml | Machine-readable composition contract (schema v1): purpose, audience, stages, included skills, prerequisites, outputs, handoffs, conflicts, and eval suite; consumed by the lifecycle capability matrix |
