product-discovery

Product Discovery — Stakeholder Map

Choose the entry by the decision at stake. For an existing draft, preserve the artifact-first entry below. For external demand or problem uncertainty, load customer/problem discovery before turning an idea into requirements. For internal requirements, begin with stakeholder mapping:

Reference	Load when	File
Stakeholder Mapping & Sequencing	You need to decide who to interview and in what order	references/stakeholder-mapping.md
Interview Protocol Design	You're designing a question stack for a specific stakeholder type	references/question-patterns.md
Gap Detection Techniques	You're preparing to recognize what stakeholders don't say	references/gap-detection.md

Pipeline: Phase 0 — Discovery

RAW NEED → [MAP] → [INTERVIEW] → [SYNTHESIZE] → [DISTILL] → [VALIDATE] → SPEC.md
              |           |              |            |            |
         Who to       What to        Resolve      Convert to   Stakeholder
         talk to      ask            conflicts    structured   review

Load the reference for the phase you're entering.

Core principles

• Closed questions confirm what you already think; open questions discover what you didn't know to ask. If the answer can be "yes" or "no," you're validating, not discovering.
• Knowledge holders come first; authority holders validate — they don't originate. The person who knows the problem is not the same person who approves the budget.
• Conflicts are almost never about what they appear to be. Surface disagreements are proxies for unstated differences in assumptions, risk tolerance, or incentives.
• Every weasel word represents a gap. "Probably," "ideally," "eventually" — each is a known issue the stakeholder hasn't committed to addressing.

Quick Start — Where to Enter

You have this	Start here
A PRD, brief, or spec to grill with its author	Load references/artifact-first-interview.md — ask one consequential question at a time, then patch only affected passages
Unproven external customer problem or demand	Load references/customer-problem-discovery.md and use templates/customer-evidence-ledger.md — assess the problem before requirements
A vague idea or problem space	Load references/stakeholder-mapping.md — identify who to interview
An interview scheduled with no protocol	Load references/question-patterns.md and references/gap-detection.md — design your question stack
Raw interview notes from one or more sessions	Load references/transcript-to-spec.md — distill into structured spec components
A draft spec that needs stakeholder verification	Load references/transcript-to-spec.md (Interpretation Audit Trail section) — run the validation loop
Stakeholders who disagree on requirements	Load references/conflict-resolution.md — classify and resolve before spec
Limited time with a stakeholder	Load references/time-constrained-discovery.md — maximize signal in minimal time
An AI agent conducting interviews	Load references/ai-conducted-discovery.md — account for sycophancy and trust dynamics

Done with discovery? Use product-methodology to choose scope, then product-design-and-ux to define user-facing behavior. Jump to the Is Discovery Complete? checklist at the bottom.

Artifact-first review

When the user brings a draft to interrogate, load artifact-first interviewing. Read the artifact before asking; choose one decision-bearing question, wait for the answer, then adapt. Reuse the gap register for assumptions and unresolved conflicts, and the interpretation log for decisions and patch provenance. Stop when the user stops, the agreed question budget expires, or no consequential unresolved decision remains. Return a targeted proposed patch and explicitly unverified gaps. This bounded review does not satisfy the full-discovery checklist below.

Customer/problem discovery

Keep internal requests separate from external customer evidence. Record stated preference, reported past behavior, observed behavior, and costly commitment as distinct evidence classes; enthusiasm is not validation. Assess problem severity, frequency, workarounds, segment differences, and contradictions before specifying a solution. A real problem does not establish solution value, usability, feasibility, or business viability. Route experiment design to product-experimentation, measurement to product-analytics-and-measurement, product choices to product-strategy, and economics to financial-modeling (AI workflow economics to ai-operating-economics). Stop, defer, or narrow when evidence does not justify the next bounded investment; do not manufacture requirements to keep a pipeline moving.

Load references/customer-problem-discovery.md for the workflow and evidence limits; use templates/customer-evidence-ledger.md when recording customer claims or a continue/narrow/defer/stop recommendation. This path ends with an evidence-backed investment recommendation and gaps, not automatically a SPEC.md. Existing draft review remains one question at a time and never establishes external validation.

When not to use

Route personal routines and life priorities to daily-life-discovery, general research plans to research-methodology, and execution sequencing for settled requirements to implementation-planning. General stakeholder research for a product still uses this skill’s existing MAP/INTERVIEW workflow; do not force it into draft review.

Trigger Conditions

Load this skill when:

• You need to know whether an external customer problem warrants investment
• You want to grill a PRD, poke holes in a proposal, or be interviewed about a draft
• You're starting product discovery for a new feature or project
• You have a vague idea that needs to become a structured specification
• You need to interview stakeholders but don't have a protocol
• You have raw interview notes that need to become a SPEC.md
• You're about to enter Phase 1 (SPECIFY) of SDD and need upstream input
• You're evaluating whether you've done enough discovery work

Loading Guide

Phase	Load When	File
MAP	You need to identify who to interview, in what order, and how to find the right stakeholders	references/stakeholder-mapping.md
INTERVIEW	You're about to conduct stakeholder interviews and need question patterns, gap detection, and conflict handling	references/question-patterns.md + references/gap-detection.md + references/conflict-resolution.md
SYNTHESIZE	You have raw interview notes and need to identify conflicts, risks, and gaps before distillation	references/conflict-resolution.md
DISTILL	You need to transform interview notes into structured SPEC.md with ACs, edge cases, and NFRs	references/transcript-to-spec.md
VALIDATE	You have a draft spec and need to verify interpretations with stakeholders	references/transcript-to-spec.md (Interpretation Audit Trail section)

Cross-Cutting Concerns

These dimensions apply across all phases. Load when relevant:

Concern	Load when	File
AI-conducted discovery	An AI agent is conducting discovery interviews	references/ai-conducted-discovery.md
Power dynamics	Stakeholders span multiple organizational levels; hierarchy may distort responses	references/power-dynamics.md
Time constraints	Stakeholder time is limited; need maximum signal extraction	references/time-constrained-discovery.md

Templates

Template	Pipeline Phase	Load when	File
Discovery Plan	MAP	You need to structure the full discovery effort — stakeholder map, interview schedule, timeline	templates/discovery-plan.md
Interview Guide	INTERVIEW	You need a structured question stack for an interview session	templates/interview-guide.md
Distillation Worksheet	DISTILL	You're transforming raw notes into structured spec components	templates/distillation-worksheet.md
Gap Register	SYNTHESIZE	You need to track unresolved gaps, deferred decisions, and open questions across interviews	templates/gap-register.md
Interpretation Log	DISTILL → VALIDATE	You need to track every translation from stakeholder language to spec language	templates/interpretation-log.md

Quick Reference: Is Discovery Complete?

For full stakeholder discovery before handing off to SDD Phase 1 (SPECIFY), use this checklist. A stopped artifact-first review reports remaining gaps instead of declaring these complete:

• All stakeholder types interviewed (knowledge holders, authority holders, affected parties, implementation knowers)?
• At least 3 independent sources for every requirement?
• Abstract nouns decomposed into measurable thresholds?
• Conflicts resolved or documented with decision-maker identified?
• Edge cases extracted from stakeholder anecdotes?
• Every AC classified: SAID / IMPLIED / INTERPRETED / INFERRED?
• HIGH-risk interpretations identified and flagged for validation?
• Gaps, deferred decisions, and avoided topics documented?
• Stakeholder validation loop completed?
• Interpretation audit trail preserved for handoff?