jtbd-prd

name

jtbd-prd

description

Validate customer need before any build. Use when about to design, code, ship, or scope a feature, product, page, or skill. Gathers evidence from interviews, tickets, sales calls, surveys, and artifacts; clusters jobs; scores confidence; emits a Job Article that frames the upcoming build as a Jobs-to-be-Done PRD. Activates on "JTBD", "jobs to be done", "validate this", "should I build this", "is there a real need", "what job does this serve", or "/jtbd-prd". Also auto-suggests when the user pastes a build proposal, feature brief, or hypothesis without supporting evidence.

jtbd-prd

Purpose

Sit upstream of every build. Block work that lacks customer evidence. Produce a single canonical artifact — the Job Article — that any subsequent PRD, spec, or implementation must reference.

Inspired by Christensen's "hire/fire" framing and Tony Ulwick's outcome-driven phrasing. Defaults to Ulwick form because it is measurable and easier to extract from raw text.

When to activate

Activate when the user is about to:

• Build a new feature, product, page, or skill
• Write a PRD or spec
• Pivot or expand an existing build
• Ask "should we build this?" or "is there demand for X?"
• Validate a hypothesis with customer evidence
• Reverse-derive jobs from existing copy, docs, or competitor artifacts

Do not activate for:

• Tactical execution work where the job is already validated
• Pure code refactors with no product-facing change
• Internal tooling with a single known user (the user is the researcher)

Inputs accepted

Input type	Format	Example
Customer interview	Markdown transcript	interview-2026-04-03-acme-corp.md
Support tickets	Markdown or JSON dump	exported Intercom / Zendesk thread
Sales call notes	Markdown	win/loss debrief
Survey free-text	CSV column or markdown list	NPS response open-ends
Existing artifact (reverse mode)	URL, markdown, or pasted text	published page, competitor PRD
Build hypothesis	One-sentence statement	"We want to build X for Y users"

Output: the Job Article

A single markdown file conforming to templates/job-article.md and schemas/job-article.json. Functions as PRD framing — the build that follows must reference this article.

Sections in fixed order:

1. Primary Job Statement — When… I want to… so I can…
2. Evidence — table of quotes with source, role, date, confidence
3. Job Dimensions — functional, emotional, social
4. Outcome Statements — Ulwick form: minimize/increase/reduce X
5. Underserved vs. Overserved — where current solutions fail or overreach
6. Build Implication — what the next build must do and avoid
7. Verdict — validated / under-evidenced / unvalidated

Flow

1. Identify mode:
   - discovery (raw inputs → jobs)
   - validation (build hypothesis → check against evidence)
   - reverse (existing artifact → inferred jobs)

2. Run the appropriate extractor:
   - prompts/extract-from-interview.md
   - prompts/extract-from-tickets.md
   - prompts/reverse-from-artifact.md

3. Cluster + score:
   - prompts/cluster-and-score.md

4. Render Job Article:
   - templates/job-article.md

5. Issue verdict:
   - prompts/verdict.md

Trigger phrases

Phrase	Mode
"JTBD", "jobs to be done", "/jtbd-prd"	Discovery (default)
"validate this", "should I build this", "is there a real need"	Validation
"what job does this serve", "reverse JTBD"	Reverse
"extract jobs from these interviews"	Discovery
user pastes build proposal without evidence	Auto-suggest validation

References

• references/jtbd-framework.md — Christensen + Ulwick distillation
• references/job-statement-grammar.md — the canonical shape
• references/dimension-tagger.md — functional / emotional / social rules
• references/prd-framing.md — how the Job Article seeds a PRD

Verdict thresholds

Confidence	Rule
high	≥5 sources, ≥2 distinct roles, ≥1 measurable outcome
medium	≥3 sources, ≥3 quotes
low	<3 sources or single role only

Verdict	Rule
validated	confidence ≥ medium AND outcome statements measurable
under-evidenced	confidence = low OR outcomes ambiguous
unvalidated	no customer evidence OR build hypothesis contradicts evidence

Output destination

By default, write the Job Article to the working directory the user is in, named job-article-<short-slug>.md. If the working directory is a repo, place in docs/jtbd/ if that directory exists; otherwise repo root.

Never write to the infolog-skills repo itself unless explicitly asked.