continuous-discovery
Continuous Discovery Habits provides a framework for embedding weekly customer interviews into product team rhythm, using Opportunity Solution Trees to map desired outcomes to customer needs to testable solutions. Apply it when establishing regular discovery cadences, prioritizing experiments against customer opportunities, validating assumptions before building, or connecting discovery insights directly to delivery decisions across product trios.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wondelai/skills /tmp/continuous-discovery && cp -r /tmp/continuous-discovery/plugins/product-innovation/skills/continuous-discovery ~/.claude/skills/continuous-discoverySKILL.md
# Continuous Discovery Habits Framework Framework for building a sustainable weekly practice of customer discovery that keeps product teams progressing toward desired outcomes. Discovery is not a phase before development — it is embedded in the ongoing rhythm of product work so every decision is informed by fresh evidence. ## Core Principle **Good product discovery requires a continuous cadence, not a one-time event.** Teams that talk to customers every week, map opportunities visually, and test assumptions before building consistently outperform teams that rely on intuition, stakeholder opinions, or quarterly research cycles. The benchmark: at least one customer touchpoint per week, every week, by the product trio (product manager, designer, engineer). ## Scoring **Goal: 10/10.** Score a discovery practice by the seven Quick Diagnostic rows below — start at 3, add 1 point per row answered "yes" (max 10). Bands: **9-10** = weekly cadence, a living Opportunity Solution Tree, systematic assumption testing, and every shipped feature traceable to a customer opportunity; **5-6** = some discovery happening but ad hoc, PM-only, or disconnected from delivery; **≤3** = intuition- and stakeholder-driven with no regular customer contact. Report the current score, the failing rows, and the specific fix for each. ## Framework ### 1. Opportunity Solution Trees **Core concept:** An Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) visually connects a desired outcome (top) to customer opportunities (middle) to potential solutions and experiments (bottom), making implicit product thinking explicit and shared. **Why it works:** Most teams jump from business outcome straight to solutions, skipping the customer need entirely; the OST forces understanding of the opportunity space first, preventing features nobody wants. **Key insights:** - Four layers: Outcome > Opportunities > Solutions > Experiments - Opportunities are customer needs, pain points, and desires — framed from the customer's perspective - The tree is a living artifact, updated weekly as the team learns - Break large opportunities into smaller sub-opportunities to make them actionable - Pursue multiple opportunities simultaneously — don't bet everything on one **Product applications:** | Context | Application | Example | |---------|-------------|---------| | Quarterly planning | Map the opportunity space before committing to features | "Increase trial-to-paid conversion" → discover why users don't convert | | Feature prioritization | Compare solutions across opportunities for the highest-leverage bet | Three solutions for "can't find content" vs. two for "confusing onboarding" | | Stakeholder alignment | Use the tree as the shared strategy visual | Walk leadership through why you chose opportunity X over Y | **Ethical boundary:** Never cherry-pick opportunities to justify a predetermined solution — the tree must reflect needs discovered through research. See [references/opportunity-trees.md](references/opportunity-trees.md) when building or auditing a tree — adds the 4-layer diagram, good-vs-poor outcome tables, solution-generation techniques, a weekly update rhythm, healthy/dying-tree signals, two worked examples, and four anti-patterns. ### 2. Experience Mapping **Core concept:** Current-state experience maps capture how customers accomplish a goal today, step by step, revealing pain points that become opportunities on the tree. **Why it works:** Teams assume they understand the customer's current experience; mapping it from interview data exposes gaps, workarounds, and emotions invisible from inside the building. **Key insights:** - Map the current state, not a future ideal — understand reality first - Include actions, thoughts, and feelings at each step - Build collaboratively with the full trio, sourced from interview data, not assumptions - Experience maps cover the customer's full experience; journey maps cover only your product's touchpoints - Pain points and high-emotion moments become OST opportunities **Product applications:** | Context | Application | Example | |---------|-------------|---------| | New problem space | Map end-to-end before designing | How a small business owner handles invoicing, from creation to chasing payment | | Churn analysis | Map churned users' experience to find failure points | Users abandon onboarding at step 4 — they lack data they need on hand | | Cross-functional alignment | Build the map together | A three-hour collaborative session produces one shared reference artifact | See [references/experience-mapping.md](references/experience-mapping.md) when mapping a new problem space or churn flow — adds the current-state map template, the experience-vs-journey-map distinction, and the collaborative mapping exercise. ### 3. Interview Snapshots **Core concept:** Story-based interviews capture specific past experiences (not opinions or predictions), and each interview is synthesized into a one-page snapshot the whole team can absorb and reference. **Why it works:** Customers are poor predictors of their own future behavior; grounding insights in real past events reveals what they actually did and felt, and snapshots turn each interview into a growing library of evidence. **Key insights:** - Ask about specific past behavior: "Tell me about the last time you..." not "Would you use...?" - Each snapshot captures the story, key quotes, opportunities identified, and an identifier - The trio interviews together so insights aren't lost in translation - Automate recruitment so interviews happen weekly without heroic effort - Patterns across snapshots reveal opportunities; single interviews only reveal stories **Product applications:** | Context | Application | Example | |---------|-------------|---------| | Weekly cadence | Standing 30-minute interview slots | Recruit via in-app prompt; rotate who leads | | Opportunity discovery | Extract needs from stories onto the OST | A data-export workaround becomes an op
Build lean, opinionated products using the 37signals philosophy from "Getting Real", "Rework", and "Shape Up". Use when the user mentions "Getting Real", "Rework", "Shape Up", "37signals", "Basecamp method", "six-week cycles", "fixed time variable scope", "appetite vs estimates", "betting table", "breadboarding", "fat marker sketch", "build less", "underdo the competition", "opinionated software", "we have too many meetings", "how do we ship faster", or "stop overbuilding". Also trigger when cutting scope to ship sooner, running a small team, or avoiding long-term roadmaps. Covers shaping, betting, building, and the art of saying no. For MVP validation, see lean-startup. For design sprints, see design-sprint.
Guided journey from a working codebase grown slow and tangled to one measurably fast, cleanly bounded, and readable. Orchestrates eight skills phase by phase - working-with-legacy-code, clean-architecture, software-design-philosophy, refactoring-patterns, system-design, ddia-systems, release-it, pragmatic-programmer - every phase carries its method inline so it runs standalone, asking the user questions at every decision point and recording results in the project docs/ folder (PERFORMANCE.md, ARCHITECTURE.md, ARCHITECTURE-OPTIMIZATION-PLAN.md) so the journey resumes across sessions. Use when the user wants to make an app faster, untangle drifted boundaries, fix slow endpoints and queries, or says ''it works but it is slow and getting worse''. For an untested prototype, improve-code-quality; for an aged codebase you fear to touch, remove-technical-debt; for greenfield structure, design-code-architecture; for marketing-site page speed, improve-website. For one framework in isolation, invoke that skill directly.
Create uncontested market space using value innovation instead of competing head-to-head. Use when the user mentions "blue ocean", "red ocean", "strategy canvas", "ERRC framework", "value innovation", "non-customers", "buyer utility map", "the market is too crowded", "how do we stand out", or "escape the price war". Also trigger when exploring a new market category, or finding underserved or non-customers. Covers the Four Actions Framework, Six Paths, buyer utility map, and value-cost trade-offs. For real strategy formulation and bad-strategy detection, see good-strategy-bad-strategy. For tech adoption strategy, see crossing-the-chasm. For product positioning, see obviously-awesome.
Structure software around the Dependency Rule: source code dependencies point inward from frameworks to use cases to entities. Use when the user mentions "architecture layers", "dependency rule", "ports and adapters (hexagonal)", "onion architecture", "screaming architecture", "where should business logic go", "decouple from the database", "swap the framework without a rewrite", or "keep business rules independent". Also trigger when deciding which layer code belongs in, isolating core logic from infrastructure, defining module boundaries, or debating whether the framework should call your code or the reverse. Covers component principles, boundaries, and SOLID. For code-level quality, see clean-code. For domain modeling, see domain-driven-design.
Write readable, maintainable code through disciplined naming, small functions, and clean error handling. Use when the user mentions "clean up this code", "this function is too long", "code smells", "naming conventions", "boy scout rule", "single responsibility", or "unit test quality". Also trigger when reviewing a pull request for readability, untangling a messy function, debating comment styles, or improving error-handling patterns. Covers SRP, comment discipline, formatting, and unit testing. For refactoring techniques, see refactoring-patterns. For architecture and dependency rules, see clean-architecture.
Start and scale networked products using Andrew Chen''s "The Cold Start Problem" framework for network effects. Use when the user mentions "network effects", "chicken and egg", "cold start", "two-sided marketplace", "atomic network", "hard side", "liquidity", "critical mass", "invite-only launch", "how do I get my first users", or "the marketplace has no buyers or sellers". Also trigger when launching a marketplace, social, or collaboration product that is worthless without other users, deciding launch sequencing and seeding tactics, or diagnosing stalled network growth at scale. Covers the five stages: cold start, tipping point, escape velocity, hitting the ceiling, and the moat. For word-of-mouth virality, see contagious. For habit-driven retention, see hooked-ux.
Engineer word-of-mouth and virality using the STEPPS framework (Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, Stories). Use when the user mentions "go viral", "word of mouth", "shareable content", "social currency", "why people share", "referral program", "nobody is sharing it", or "make this spread". Also trigger when designing shareable features, crafting social campaigns, or building products that spread through peer recommendation. Covers environmental triggers and high-arousal emotional content. For sticky messaging, see made-to-stick. For persuasion tactics, see influence-psychology.
Guided journey from a leaking conversion flow - landing page, signup, checkout, or in-app onboarding - to a measured, tested funnel. Orchestrates six skills phase by phase - lean-analytics, cro-methodology, storybrand-messaging, hundred-million-offers, influence-psychology, design-everyday-things - each phase carries its full method inline so it runs standalone, asking the user questions at every decision point and recording results in the project docs/ folder (FUNNEL.md, METRICS.md, EXPERIMENTS.md, CONVERSION-OPTIMIZATION-PLAN.md) so the journey resumes across sessions. Use when the user wants to raise conversion on a specific flow, fix checkout or signup abandonment, diagnose onboarding drop-off, or says ''people start but never finish''. With no site yet, use create-website; for a whole-site look, message, and speed audit, improve-website; if the flow converts but needs traffic, grow-website; for in-product engagement and retention, improve-app. For one framework in isolation, invoke that skill directly.