create-app

# Create an App

Take a raw app idea to a validated, cleanly architected first version that ships on a sustainable cadence — without over-building for scale you have not earned, or writing a prototype that calcifies into a rewrite. This journey runs ten phases: it asks before every decision and records each choice in `docs/` so you can stop and resume across sessions. The early phases often produce no code at all; once an experiment greenlights building, the engineering phases build the real thing well.

## Core Principle

**Validate fast while keeping options open: make the expensive-to-reverse decisions early and defer everything cheap.** Spend scarce early effort on the few things that compound — the riskiest assumption, the dependency boundaries, the domain language — and aggressively avoid waste everywhere else.

This skill sequences the phases, asks the questions, and records the decisions; the constituent skills carry the method. Invoke them rather than improvising their frameworks.

## Journey Map

| Phase | Skill | Question it answers | Artifact |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | lean-startup | Is the riskiest assumption true, and what is the MVP? | Creates docs/PRODUCT.md + docs/EXPERIMENTS.md |
| 2 | design-sprint | What should the core flow be? | Creates docs/DESIGN.md, extends docs/EXPERIMENTS.md — awaiting-evidence |
| 3 | clean-architecture | What boundaries keep options open? | Creates docs/ARCHITECTURE.md |
| 4 | domain-driven-design | What does the code mean? | Extends docs/ARCHITECTURE.md |
| 5 | clean-code | Is each function readable and tested? | Creates docs/TESTING.md |
| 6 | pragmatic-programmer | Which habits keep it healthy? | Extends docs/TESTING.md + docs/TECH-DEBT.md |
| 7 | system-design | How big must it really be? | Extends docs/ARCHITECTURE.md |
| 8 | ios-hig-design | Does it feel native on iOS? | Extends docs/DESIGN.md — iOS only |
| 9 | 37signals-way | What ships, and what is cut? | Extends docs/PRODUCT.md + docs/STRATEGY.md |
| 10 | software-design-philosophy | Where is complexity hiding? | Extends docs/TECH-DEBT.md + docs/ARCHITECTURE.md |

## Operating Rules

1. **Resume first.** Before anything else, read `docs/CREATE-APP-PLAN.md` and every artifact in the Journey Map. If the tracker exists, summarize the journey state in 3-5 lines and ask which phase to enter. Done when the user has confirmed an entry point. A journey with a tracker is resumed, never restarted.
2. **Intake on first run only.** No tracker: run the Intake below, then create `docs/CREATE-APP-PLAN.md` with every phase statused `pending | in-progress | awaiting-evidence | done | deferred: reason | skipped: reason`. Done when the tracker exists and the user has confirmed the phase plan.
3. **Phase entry.** Announce: what the phase does, the decision it forces, the artifact it produces, rough effort. Offer proceed / skip / defer — phases marked GATE may be deferred, never skipped. Mark the phase `in-progress` on proceed. Done when the user chose.
4. **Skill invocation and fallback.** Load the phase's skill and use it: each phase's Invoke line names the skill by slug — use that skill to run the phase. If it is not available, offer: `npx skills add wondelai/skills/<slug> --global`. If the user declines, run the phase from its Brief — the minimum viable method. State which mode you are in.
5. **In-phase decisions.** Ask every question under "Decide with the user" — with concrete options and your recommendation. Record the choice in the tracker's Key Decisions. A decision made silently is a defect.
6. **Phase exit.** Present the draft artifact content for sign-off before writing. On approval: write or extend the docs/ files, update the tracker (status, Key Decisions, Next Actions). Done when the files are written and the phase row shows `done`.
7. **Artifact discipline.** Read before writing; create a file only if missing, otherwise extend — add or update your sections, preserve everyone else's. Files are UPPERCASE in `docs/`. Every recommendation lands as a checkbox or a table row with owner and priority. See [references/artifact-templates.md](references/artifact-templates.md) when creating a docs/ file for the first time — create it from the full skeleton (all section headings), then fill the sections your phase names.
8. **The agent prepares and processes; only the human talks to customers and test users.** Draft sprint scripts and interview guides and score the results, then pause with status `awaiting-evidence` until the user returns with notes. The ios-hig-design phase applies only when shipping a native iOS app; skip it otherwise at intake.

## Intake

Ask these before creating the tracker:

1. What is the app idea in one sentence, and what is the riskiest belief behind it? (Gates Phase 1; if the job the app is hired for is fuzzy, add the jobs-to-be-done optional phase.)
2. Is the underlying idea already validated with behavioral evidence, or still a hunch? (Unvalidated and high-stakes makes Phase 1 mandatory; if paying customers already exist you may be in the wrong journey — improve-app or grow-app.)
3. What is the stage — weekend prototype, funded build toward launch, or a team forming around it? (A prototype leans on Phases 1-3 and 10; a forming team may add inspired-product.)
4. Will you ship a native iOS client? (Yes keeps Phase 8; no skips it.)
5. Do you have customers to talk to, or must you find them? (Gates the human evidence loop in Phases 1-2 and optional mom-test / continuous-discovery.)
6. What load do you expect in the first months — daily active users and actions per day? (Feeds Phase 7 capacity math and stops premature scaling.)
7. Solo build or team, and who owns shipping cadence? (Gates Phase 9 shaping.)

Phase-skip heuristics: skip Phase 2 when the core flow is already tested or trivial; skip Phase 8 unless shipping native iOS; skip Phase 7 only when load is obviously tiny — but still record the estimate; for a weekend prototype, run Phases 3-6 as one pass but never skip th