Ship Learnings

Ship-learnings — post-ship compound-learnings capture

Capture what we learned from a completed ship so the next strategy refresh has accumulated evidence. Adapted from /ce-compound in EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin v3.5.0 (MIT).

Per Moretti's framing (K1): everything that ships is an experiment. Each ship tests a hypothesis from the strategy doc. Capture the result.

When to run

Invoke when the user says:

• "We just shipped [feature] — what did we learn?"
• "Run ship-learnings on [release]"
• "Post-ship review for [experiment]"
• "Compound learnings"

Do NOT invoke when:

• The session is the unit (use /session-wrap for session-scoped wrap)
• The ship is broken / incident (use engineering:incident-response)
• No ship has occurred — this is post-ship only

Distinct from /session-wrap

A ship may span 5 sessions; one ship-learnings record captures all of them.

Inputs

Required:

• Locked strategy-doc (the hypothesis being tested by this ship)
• Ship description: name, date shipped, scope summary

Recommended:

• Latest product-pulse (the metric movement post-ship)
• User feedback / quotes / support tickets from the ship period
• Original strategy track this ship belongs to

Steps

1. Phase 1 — Load context. Read locked strategy-doc + latest product-pulse. Identify which strategy track this ship belonged to.
2. Phase 2 — Pull ship signals. Metric deltas (from pulse), user quotes, support volume changes, anomalies.
3. Phase 3 — Run interview. Walk the user through the 7-section structure. The hardest section is §3 Result — push back if the user says "kind of worked" without evidence.
4. Phase 4 — Compose record. Apply length discipline: ≤ 600 words total.
5. Phase 5 — Self-roast. Run checks below.
6. Phase 6 — Push. Save to ship-learnings folder + flag in next strategy refresh review.

Self-roast (run before push)

• Hypothesis is quoted directly from strategy-doc (not paraphrased)
• §3 Result has explicit verdict (validated / partial / invalidated) — not vague
• §3 Result cites specific evidence (metric delta from pulse, user quote, ticket count) — not opinion
• §4 What worked and §5 What didn't are concrete (specific decisions / patterns) — not generic ("communication was good")
• §6 Action items have owners
• §7 Follow-on experiments are testable hypotheses, not vague ideas
• Total word count ≤ 600 (compounding-learnings should be easy to skim across many ships)
• Framing K1 applied: "shipping is an experiment" — verdict is data, not judgment

Ship-learnings: {feature name} ({YYYY-MM-DD})

Strategy track: {track name from strategy-doc} · Pulse ref: {latest pulse path}

Ship summary

{1-2 lines}

Hypothesis (from strategy-doc)

{direct quote from strategy-doc}

Result: {validated | partially validated | invalidated}

{paragraph with evidence}

What worked

-...

What didn't work

-...

What to do differently next time

• {action} — owner: {name}

Follow-on experiments

-...

## Composition rule reference

Ship-learnings is the feedback node in the **PM closed loop** (P3). Strategy → pulse → ship → ship-learnings → strategy refresh. See [.claude/rules/pm-loop.md](../../../../../rules/pm-loop.md).

## Attribution

Adapted from [EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin](https://github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin) v3.5.0 (MIT). Source pattern: `/ce-compound`. Framing basis: K1 "everything that ships is an experiment" from Marcus Moretti's AI PM Guide.