| name | product-shaping |
| description | Use this skill to shape product or engineering work before committing time to it: set appetites instead of estimates, narrow raw ideas into bounded problems, sketch solutions at the right level of abstraction, de-risk rabbit holes, write pitches, bet with capped downside (circuit breaker), and govern builds with discovered scopes and scope hammering. Adapted from Basecamp's Shape Up and extended for human+AI-agent teams. Use when a raw idea, feature request, or "redesign X" grab-bag needs to become a bounded project before anyone builds; when planning how much work an idea is worth; or when delegated agent builds need budgets, kill criteria, and non-convergence rules. Do not use for discovering whether a problem is real (use product-discovery), for portfolio-level sequencing across quarters (product-roadmapping-and-portfolio), for formal specification after the bet is placed (spec-driven-development), or for task-level prioritization frameworks like RICE (product-methodology). |
| license | MIT |
| metadata | {"tags":"product-shaping, shape-up, appetite, pitch, betting, circuit-breaker, scope-hammering, hill-chart, bounded-delegation"} |
Product Shaping
Pre-commitment methodology for product and engineering work, adapted from Ryan Singer's
Shape Up (free edition at basecamp.com/shapeup),
extended for teams whose builders include AI agents.
The loop: shape a raw idea into a bounded pitch → bet a fixed appetite on it →
build by discovering scopes and hammering scope to fit the box → move on,
letting post-ship feedback re-enter as raw ideas.
The core moves
- Set boundaries — choose the appetite ("how much is this worth?") and narrow the
problem to one specific story. Kill grab-bags ("redesign X", "X 2.0").
- Find the elements — sketch the solution rough, solved, and bounded: breadboards
for flows, fat-marker fidelity for visual problems, components-and-contracts for
non-UI work.
- Patch rabbit holes — attack your own sketch; settle hard decisions now, declare
out-of-bounds cases, cut what the appetite can't afford.
- Write the pitch — problem, appetite, solution, rabbit holes, no-gos.
- Bet — commit the box uninterrupted, downside capped. No finish, no extension by
default: the circuit breaker routes failure back to shaping.
- Build — one integrated slice first, then discovered scopes tracked as
uphill→downhill states; sequence scariest-first; compare down to baseline when
deciding to stop.
- Move on — scope cuts are not quality cuts; new feedback needs shaping, not
instant yes.
Reference files
Load only what the current step needs:
| Reference | Load when |
|---|
| references/principles.md | You need the why: appetite vs estimate, fixed-time-variable-scope, rough/solved/bounded, evidence boundaries, lineage |
| references/shaping.md | Shaping steps 1–4 in detail, including shaping non-UI/backend/infrastructure work |
| references/betting.md | Bets vs backlogs, circuit breaker mechanics, cycles as optional scaffolding, handling defects between bets |
| references/building.md | Hand-over-responsibility, one-piece-done, scope mapping, hill-state tracking, deciding when to stop |
| references/hybrid-adaptation.md | Any bet involving AI-agent builders: budget currencies, batched steering, verification cost inside scope, kill criteria for non-converging loops |
| references/anti-patterns.md | Before betting anything that matters — documented field failures and their mitigations |
Templates
Entry points
When not to use
- The problem itself isn't validated yet →
product-discovery. Shaping narrows
validated problems; it does not investigate whether the problem is real.
- The question is strategic (positioning, market entry, portfolio weight across
quarters) →
product-strategy or product-roadmapping-and-portfolio. This skill
packages a single bet — one bounded commitment with an appetite and circuit breaker;
roadmapping sequences many such bets across cycles with continue/pause/kill criteria.
- The bet is already placed and the work needs a formal spec →
spec-driven- development consumes shaped output when formal specification is warranted.
- Comparing unrelated feature proposals by score →
product-methodology (RICE/
MoSCoW). Appetite replaces scoring inside this skill's scope; use one system, not both
on the same decision.
- An epic resists decomposition because nobody can define done → route BACK here:
that is an unshaped project, and force-splitting it produces disconnected tasks.
- The work is small, routine, and fully understood — skip shaping overhead; just do
it.
- The bet is placed and you need intent-to-delivery control — classification,
five-field intent contracts, autonomy gating, failure routing, and resumable status
across the run. Route to
bmad. Shaping ends at the bet; bmad carries the placed
intent through bounded, inspectable, resumable agent work.
Related skills
product-discovery — upstream: validates the problem before narrowing beginsproduct-strategy, product-roadmapping-and-portfolio — strategic context above betsproduct-methodology — downstream consumer of a won bet (prioritization, spec drafting)spec-driven-development — optional formal specification of shaped output post-betimplementation-planning, subagent-driven-development — execution after the bet;
decompose only downhill work, never pre-shred a pitchbmad — intent-to-delivery control-plane protocol once the bet is placed:
classification, five-field intent contracts, autonomy gating, failure routing,
resumable spec statuswork-tracking — where scope/hill state lives during the buildqa-methodology — edge-case QA as late-cycle level-up, not gate
Evidence note
Every practice claim originates from one company's account (Basecamp, 2019).
Independent team records through 2026 show real adaptations and documented abandonments;
read references/anti-patterns.md before betting anything that matters, and treat six-week
cycles as tunable scaffolding rather than doctrine.
