product

name	product
description	Product strategy skill covering positioning frameworks, competitive research methodology, messaging principles, and go-to-market patterns. Research-first — agents conduct extensive primary web research before analysis.
user-invocable	true

Product Strategy

A research-driven skill for product positioning, competitive analysis, messaging, and go-to-market strategy. Every assessment and recommendation must be grounded in primary research, not assumptions.

Commands in This Family

Command	Purpose
/product:position	Guided positioning exercise with competitive research
/product:audit	Research-driven assessment of product positioning and readiness
/product:brief	Generate product one-pagers, pitch content, and messaging from research + positioning

See the individual sub-skills for full details and research protocols.

When to Use This Skill

Activate this skill when:

• Assessing product-market fit and positioning quality
• Running competitive analysis and comparison
• Crafting or refining product positioning
• Generating product briefs, one-pagers, or pitch content
• Evaluating developer experience and onboarding paths
• Planning go-to-market strategy

Research-First Principle

Every product command must conduct primary research before analysis.

The agent does not rely solely on local codebase artifacts. Before any assessment, the agent researches:

1. The competitive landscape — Who else solves this problem? How do they position?
2. The market category — What category does this product compete in? What are category norms?
3. Comparable successes — What products in adjacent categories have strong positioning? What can we learn?
4. Community signal — What do users, developers, and industry observers say about products in this space?

Research Tools

Tool	When to Use
Web Search	Discover competitors, market analysis, industry trends, community discussions
Web Fetch	Read competitor landing pages, pricing pages, docs, READMEs, changelogs
Browser (Chrome DevTools MCP)	Screenshot competitor UX, analyze onboarding flows, inspect design quality
GitHub API (gh)	Analyze competitor repos — stars, activity, issues, contributor health, release cadence
Social/Community	Search X/Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, Dev.to for product mentions and sentiment

Research Standards

• Breadth: Research at least 3-5 competitors or comparable products per analysis
• Depth: For each competitor, read at minimum: landing page, pricing page, docs/README, and GitHub repo (if open source)
• Recency: Prefer recent sources (last 12 months). Flag findings based on older data.
• Attribution: Cite sources for every competitive claim. "Competitor X charges $Y/month" must link to the pricing page.
• Objectivity: Report what competitors do well, not just weaknesses. Honest assessment is more useful than cheerleading.

Positioning Frameworks

April Dunford — Obviously Awesome (Primary)

The core positioning exercise. Work through these five components in order:

1. Competitive Alternatives — What would customers use if your product didn't exist? (Not just direct competitors — include manual processes, spreadsheets, hiring, building in-house)
2. Unique Attributes — What do you have that alternatives don't? (Technical capabilities, design choices, architectural decisions — must be verifiable from the codebase)
3. Value — What does each unique attribute enable for the customer? (Translate features into outcomes)
4. Target Customer — Who cares most about that value? (Define the characteristics of your best-fit customer)
5. Market Category — What category makes your value obvious to your target customer? (Category choice frames expectations)

Gibson Biddle — DHM Model (Assessment)

Evaluate product strategy through three lenses:

• Delight: Does the product create genuine delight? (UX quality, surprising capabilities, emotional response)
• Hard-to-copy: What makes this defensible? (Unique data, network effects, integration depth, technical moat, community)
• Margin-enhancing: Does the business model scale? (Self-serve, usage-based pricing, low marginal cost)

Sean Ellis — PMF Test (Measurement)

Proxy indicators from artifacts (since we can't survey users directly):

• Problem articulation depth: Does the product name a specific pain, or generic value?
• Solution specificity: Is the solution concrete, or vague promises?
• Usage signals: Stars, downloads, community activity, issue velocity
• Retention signals: Changelog activity, release cadence, documentation depth

Strategyzer — Value Proposition Canvas (Discovery)

Map the value proposition:

• Customer Jobs: What are they trying to accomplish?
• Pains: What obstacles, risks, or frustrations do they face?
• Gains: What outcomes or benefits do they desire?
• Pain Relievers: How does the product address specific pains?
• Gain Creators: How does the product enable specific gains?

Messaging Principles

Clarity Hierarchy

1. What it is — One sentence, no jargon
2. Who it's for — Specific audience, not "everyone"
3. Why it matters — The outcome, not the mechanism
4. How it works — Only after the above are clear
5. Why now — Urgency or timeliness (if applicable)

Cross-Surface Consistency

Product messaging appears on many surfaces. All must align:

Surface	Role	Common Failure
README	Technical first impression	Too much implementation, not enough "why"
Landing page	Commercial first impression	Vague benefits, no specifics
Package metadata	Discovery (npm, PyPI, crates.io)	Generic description, wrong keywords
CLI help text	In-product guidance	Different terminology than docs
Error messages	Failure experience	Leaks internals, not actionable
Docs intro	Onboarding first page	Assumes context the reader doesn't have
GitHub description	Search/browse discovery	Doesn't match README positioning

Copy Patterns

• Specificity over superlatives: "Processes 10K events/sec on a single core" beats "blazing fast"
• Show, don't claim: Demo, screenshot, or benchmark > adjective
• Name the pain: "Tired of writing boilerplate auth middleware?" > "Simple authentication"
• Comparison anchoring: "Like X but for Y" or "X without the Z" — only if the anchor is well-known

Developer Experience Patterns (for dev-facing products)

Time-to-Value Path

The critical metric: how long from discovery to first meaningful output?

Discovery → Install → Configure → First success → "Aha" moment

Each step should be:

• One command where possible (install)
• Zero config for the default case (configure)
• Copy-pasteable quickstart (first success)
• Visibly valuable output (aha moment)

DX Anti-Patterns

• Requiring account creation before trying the product
• Multi-page setup instructions before any value
• "Coming soon" features prominently displayed
• Requiring specific environment/OS without stating upfront
• Error messages that say what went wrong but not how to fix it

Competitive Analysis Methodology

Research Protocol

For each identified competitor:

1. Landing page analysis: What do they lead with? What's the hero message? What's the CTA?
2. Pricing analysis: What model? What's the free tier? Where do they gate?
3. Documentation analysis: How's the quickstart? API reference completeness? Example quality?
4. GitHub analysis (if open source): Stars, forks, recent activity, issue response time, contributor count, release cadence
5. Community analysis: Search for "[product name] vs" discussions, reviews, complaints, praise
6. Technical analysis: What's their architecture? What trade-offs did they make? Where are they strong/weak technically?

Comparison Matrix Template

| Dimension | Our Product | Competitor A | Competitor B | Competitor C |
|-----------|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
| Core value prop | | | | |
| Target audience | | | | |
| Pricing model | | | | |
| Free tier | | | | |
| Key differentiator | | | | |
| Weakness | | | | |
| GitHub stars | | | | |
| Last release | | | | |
| Docs quality | | | | |
| Community size | | | | |

Commands

• /product:audit — Research-driven assessment of product positioning and readiness
• /product:position — Guided positioning exercise with competitive research
• /product:brief — Generate product one-pagers and pitch content from research + positioning

Related Skills

• workflow — /workflow:audit assesses code/test/infrastructure quality, which feeds into product completeness signals
• visual-design — UI polish patterns that contribute to product delight
• qa — Test coverage as a product trust/quality signal