Innovate

/innovate — Stage 3: define why we win, then spec the features

This is the payoff stage. You retire market, value & moat risk by forcing a clear UVP, then you decompose the bet into the feature set that is the deliverable. Run as a guided interview, one question at a time.

Procedure

1. Load context & check the gate (soft)

Read Product/intent.md and Product/ideation.md. If ideation.md has gate: open, warn ("you haven't settled a validated bet yet — proceed anyway?") but don't block. If ideation.md is missing, suggest /ideate first.

2. Interview for differentiation

Ask, one at a time, challenging thin answers:

• The secret: what do you believe or know that competitors don't?
• Why 10x, not 10%: on which dimension are you an order of magnitude better — painkiller, not vitamin?
• The moat: what stops a fast follower copying you? Does the advantage compound (data, network, switching costs, brand)?
• Validation: what's the cheapest evidence the value is real (willingness-to-pay, retention, "very disappointed" signal)?

3. Write Product/innovation.md

Use the structure from the plugin's templates/innovation.md. You MUST enumerate the UVP elements as an id'd list (UVP-1, UVP-2…) — every innovation feature's contributes_to references one of these ids, so a prose-only UVP silently breaks tracing. Capture the unique insight, why-10x, moat, and validation plan.

3b. (Optional) Ground the UVP in competitor research

Offer to run /compete now. If the founder accepts — or Product/competition.md already exists — use the comparison matrix as evidence for the next steps: a capability that's table-stakes across the matrix becomes implementation; a whitespace capability that maps to a UVP id becomes innovation. If they decline, proceed on judgment. /compete writes Product/competition.md; it's optional and never blocks.

4. Decompose the bet into features

Enumerate every capability the MVP needs to deliver the UVP, plus the table-stakes needed for a usable product. Aim for completeness, not minimalism, at this step — /classify and priority will separate signal from noise.

> Optional fan-out (divergent decomposition): for a richer set, spawn 2–3 subagents via the Task tool, each decomposing from a different lens (e.g. "the differentiated core," "the table-stakes shell," "the riskiest assumptions to de-risk"). Dedupe their feature lists before writing. Use this when the product surface is broad; skip it for a tightly-scoped bet.

5. Write one file per feature

For each feature, create Product/Features/F-.md following the feature schema (see the /feature skill / templates/feature.md). For each:

• Complete user story + ≥3 Given/When/Then acceptance criteria.
• Classify innovation vs. implementation with the decision test; set innovation_weight (implementation = 0; innovation = 1–100); set contributes_to to a UVP id for innovation features; write a one-sentence rationale. If Product/competition.md exists, use the comparison matrix as evidence (universal capability → implementation; only-us + maps-to-UVP → innovation) and reference it in the rationale.

6. Portfolio sanity check

Confirm the healthy shape: mostly implementation with a few sharp, high-weight innovation features tracing to the UVP. If everything reads as innovation, push back — the founder is likely in love with the whole thing. If nothing is innovation, there's no reason to exist; revisit the UVP.

7. Build the index & close the gate

Run the /classify index generation to write Product/features-index.md (ranked). Set innovation.md gate: passed when: UVP stated, ≥1 innovation feature traces to it, and the feature set is complete.

8. Hand off

This is the end of the framework. Point the user to Product/Features/, suggest /product-status for the dashboard, and note that Implementation (the 4th I) is now a clean pick-up for a build team.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: InSciCo
• Source: InSciCo/i-framework
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.