Product intent

Turn the request into a decision the product must support. Use the user's language and existing brief before inventing a new framing.

Work

• Identify the user, situation, current workaround, desired outcome, and business constraint. Separate evidence from assumptions.
• Trace one complete job from entry to a useful result. A list of screens is not a workflow.
• Set the smallest useful scope, explicit exclusions, and the question the next artifact should answer. Preserve features the user explicitly requested; explain tradeoffs before proposing alternatives.
• For existing work, compare the actual journey to the original promise. Keep what serves it, identify drift, and recommend a bounded correction.
• Ask only questions whose answers change scope or consequence. Continue with labeled, reversible assumptions where possible. Do not require an interview before a well-specified implementation task.

Deliver

A compact brief: user and situation → outcome → first workflow → scope → constraints → uncertainty → next action. Use a short paragraph or table; omit empty categories. Include an observable acceptance condition without inventing research or targets.

Follow this shape: