diagnose
MANDATORY PREPARATION
Invoke /product-thinking — it contains the Context Gathering Protocol and the AI Slop Test. Follow the protocol before proceeding.
Mindset
Symptoms are not problems. Requests are not needs. Your job is to find what is actually broken — grounded in data and measured against the value you're supposed to deliver to each persona.
Most product problems are misdiagnosed at the framing stage. The team sees a symptom ("users don't use feature X"), jumps to a cause ("the UI is bad"), and builds a solution ("redesign the UI"). Meanwhile the real problem was that users never discovered feature X existed, or that feature X solves a problem they don't have.
Your job is to slow down the jump from symptom to solution.
Context Pull
Before diagnosing anything, load the full picture:
- Product context. Read
.acumen.md— strategy, positioning, what success looks like.
More from vgrss/acumen
features
Build and maintain a lightweight feature inventory. Use after shipping, when planning, or to understand the current product surface.
9measure
Check KPI health — what's working, what's not, where to dig deeper. Suggests /workshop for opportunities. Use for metric reviews, health checks, or when something feels off in the numbers.
9scout
Build and maintain a living competitor map. Supports both quick scans and deep competitive analysis. Use when entering a new market, a competitor launches something, before scoping a feature, or for strategic positioning decisions.
9persona
Build and maintain behavioral personas grounded in real user patterns. Use when launching, after user research, or when user understanding feels stale.
9narrate
Write product communication for a specific audience, including when stakes are high and stakeholders disagree. Use for exec summaries, eng briefs, customer announcements, or tradeoff negotiations.
9roadmap
Plan a sequence of bets, break into shippable increments, prioritize. Use when building a roadmap, sequencing work, triaging a backlog, or breaking an epic into increments.
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