Prototyping

What this skill is for

Prototyping is the practice of making design decisions concrete and testable at lower cost than full implementation. Its purpose is to reduce uncertainty — to move from "I think this will work" to "I have evidence this works (or doesn't)" before committing to a Design Spec or to code.

A prototype is not a deliverable. It is a tool for making decisions.

Load this skill when:

• Design decisions are genuinely unresolved and building the wrong thing is costly
• The interaction model is unclear — you don't yet know how the system should respond to user actions
• Two or more design approaches exist and you need to compare them against real scenarios before choosing
• A scenario walkthrough would reveal whether the design handles the user's goal — but the Design Spec hasn't been written yet
• A novel interaction pattern needs to be specified precisely enough to reveal ambiguity

Do NOT load this skill when:

• The design is already specified to a level sufficient for implementation — prototyping is for resolving uncertainty, not for creating deliverables from a resolved design
• You are evaluating an existing implementation (→ design-validation)
• You are ready to commit the resolved design into a handoff contract (→ design-specification)