requirements-engineering
Activate when creating Product Requirements Documents (PRDs) with business objectives, functional requirements, success criteria, and implementation planning
Activate when creating Product Requirements Documents (PRDs) with business objectives, functional requirements, success criteria, and implementation planning
Expert UX researcher specializing in user insights, usability testing, and data-driven design decisions. Masters qualitative and quantitative research methods to uncover user needs, validate designs, and drive product improvements through actionable insights.
Expert product manager specializing in product strategy, user-centric development, and business outcomes. Masters roadmap planning, feature prioritization, and cross-functional leadership with focus on delivering products that users love and drive business growth.
Expert visual designer specializing in creating intuitive, beautiful, and accessible user interfaces. Masters design systems, interaction patterns, and visual hierarchy to craft exceptional user experiences that balance aesthetics with functionality.
You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.
Use when planning with fixed deadline or target outcome, working backward from future goal to present, defining milestones and dependencies, mapping critical path, identifying what must happen when, planning product launches with hard dates, multi-year strategic roadmaps, event planning, transformation initiatives, or when user mentions "backcast", "work backward from", "reverse planning", "we need to launch by", "target date is", or "what needs to happen to reach".
Use when planning high-stakes initiatives (migrations, launches, strategic changes) that require clear specifications, proactive risk identification (premortem/register), and measurable success criteria. Invoke when user mentions "plan this migration", "launch strategy", "implementation roadmap", "what could go wrong", "how do we measure success", or when high-impact decisions need comprehensive planning with risk mitigation and instrumentation.
Use when making high-stakes decisions under uncertainty that require stakeholder buy-in. Invoke when evaluating strategic options (build vs buy, market entry, resource allocation), quantifying tradeoffs with uncertain outcomes, justifying investments with expected value analysis, pitching recommendations to decision-makers, or creating business cases with cost-benefit estimates. Use when user mentions "should we", "ROI analysis", "make a case for", "evaluate options", "expected value", "justify decision", or needs to combine estimation, decision analysis, and persuasive communication.
Internal vs external career growth paths, goal setting, career maintenance, and long-term planning for software engineers. Use when deciding between internal promotion vs external job search, setting career goals, or planning long-term career trajectory.
Frameworks for technical interviews and salary negotiation. Use for behavioral interview prep (STAR method), technical interview communication, offer evaluation, and compensation negotiation strategies.
Prioritize roadmap initiatives with tradeoffs. Use when a senior developer needs help ranking projects.
Deep market analysis for iOS/macOS apps including market sizing (TAM/SAM/SOM), growth trends, market maturity, entry barriers, distribution channels, and revenue potential. Use when user asks for market research, market size, market opportunity, growth potential, TAM/SAM/SOM, or market trends.
Measure and manage team cognitive load
Use when teams need shared direction and decision-making alignment. Invoke when starting new teams, scaling organizations, defining culture, establishing product vision, resolving misalignment, creating strategic clarity, or setting behavioral standards. Use when user mentions North Star, team values, mission, principles, guardrails, decision framework, or cultural alignment.
Use when starting technical work requiring structured approach - writing tests before code (TDD), planning data exploration (EDA), designing statistical analysis, clarifying modeling objectives (causal vs predictive), or validating results. Invoke when user mentions "write tests for", "explore this dataset", "analyze", "model", "validate", or when technical work needs systematic scaffolding before execution.
Use when proposing new features/products, documenting product requirements, creating concise specs for stakeholder alignment, pitching initiatives, scoping projects before detailed design, capturing user stories and success metrics, or when user mentions one-pager, PRD, product spec, feature proposal, product requirements, or brief.
Jeff Patton's User Story Mapping technique for Agile discovery. Visualizes user journey as a map, identifies backbone activities, walking skeleton, and release slices. Use when organizing requirements into deliverable increments or defining MVP scope.
Guide progression from In-Loop to Out-Loop to Zero-Touch Engineering. Use when assessing agentic maturity, planning ZTE progression, or identifying requirements for autonomous operation.
Deep dive Event Storming beyond big picture
Use when designing Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs), building platform teams, or improving developer experience. Covers platform engineering principles, Backstage, portal design, and platform team structures.
Navigate difficult conversations and deliver constructive feedback using structured frameworks. Covers the Preparation-Delivery-Follow-up model and Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) feedback technique. Use when preparing for difficult conversations, giving feedback, or managing conflicts.
Interactive idea refinement using Socratic method to develop fully-formed designs
Use when testing ideas cheaply before building (pretotyping with fake doors, concierge MVPs, paper prototypes) to validate desirability/feasibility, choosing appropriate prototype fidelity (paper/clickable/coded), running experiments to test assumptions (demand, pricing, workflow), or when user mentions prototype, MVP, fake door test, concierge, Wizard of Oz, landing page test, smoke test, or asks "how can we validate this idea before building?".
Adapting technical communication for different audiences - engineers, product managers, executives, and customers. Use when communicating across functions, translating technical concepts, presenting to leadership, or building shared understanding with non-technical stakeholders.