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Decision skill · FreeProduct Loop

How small should your v1 be?

How small should the first version of your product be — and what earns a place in it?

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Version 1.0 · Plain text · No email required · CC BY-SA 4.0

What this skill does

Hand this file to Claude or ChatGPT. The assistant interviews you, one question at a time, through this decision's determining questions — on your specifics. It then applies the decision rules to your answers and gives you the recommendation plainly, with the conditions under which it would change.

The decision it executes
How small should your v1 be? →

A working method for cutting scope without gutting the idea: the one job v1 must do, the features that ride along for free, and the ones that only feel essential.

The guide is the canonical version: determining questions, paths with dated costs, what I'd do, and limits. It belongs to The Product Loop.

Escalation clause
An honest tool knows its edges.

This decision stops being self-serve — and needs a human with scars in the room — when:

  • The buyer is enterprise or regulated and the minimum bar (SSO, audit logs, data residency, certifications) is genuinely high — the bar must be verified against a real procurement checklist before scoping.
  • Breadth is the product — a thin slice of an "everything app" demonstrates nothing, and the funding requirements change the whole plan.
  • This is a follow-on build extending an existing product — integration and consistency constraints change the math, and "manual for a month" may break real customers.
When this skill revises
Optional. The download never depends on it.

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