The-Utopia-Studio So-What Stress Test
What it does
Compresses "should this exist?" into five business questions and one verdict. The fellow gives a one-liner and their best answer to each question. The skill grades each answer on the evidence ladder, then returns Pass, Redesign, or Kill. A Redesign comes with a concrete rewrite that fixes the weakest question. It is a fast whole-idea gate, not a deep-dive: five minutes, one table, a decision.
The Icarus reframe
The generic version asks the five questions and accepts the answers. This one refuses to. Every question demands a money-or-behaviour answer; "users will love it", "it's a huge market", "no one else does this" are graded as a fail on that question, not as a soft pass. A single question cleared only on opinion downgrades the whole idea to Redesign, and the skill must produce the rewrite rather than hand back a shrug. It treats "so what" as a materiality test with a number, and "what kills it" as a question the fellow must be able to answer — denial ("nothing kills it") is the loudest tell.
When to use / When NOT
Use when: a one-liner needs a fast whole-idea gate before more work goes in; the fellow asks to poke holes, pressure-test, or justify why an idea is worth doing; a concept has survived early excitement and now needs a money check across all five fronts.
| Not this skill | Use instead | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Score this problem on all 8 dimensions" | problem-quality-scorecard |
That is a numeric problem gate; this scores the whole idea across five business questions, not one 8-axis problem. |
| "Run the council / give me the five-lens teardown" | concept-council |
That is a multi-lens adversarial reading ending in one probe; this returns a five-question table and a Pass/Redesign/Kill. |
| "Pressure-test just my wedge" | wedge-five-questions |
That deep-dives the wedge alone against five pass thresholds; here the wedge is one row of five. |
If the input is a bare one-liner with no answers, do not run the five on air. Ask the one question that unblocks it, or return the smallest honest next step. Invent nothing.
Method
Copy this checklist:
So-What Stress Test progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Restate the one-liner in the fellow's words
- [ ] Step 2: Collect the fellow's answer to each of the five questions
- [ ] Step 3: Grade each answer on the evidence ladder
- [ ] Step 4: Apply the verdict logic
- [ ] Step 5: If Redesign, write the rewrite that fixes the weakest question
- [ ] Step 6: Run the self-check (kill line) before returning
Step 1–2. Fill the five rows of template.md. If the fellow left a question blank, that row is graded on what is there, which is nothing — an opinion at best.
Step 3 — grade each row. Score the answer on the evidence ladder, then map to a grade.
| # | Question | What clears it (required evidence type) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | So what? | A magnitude: money or hours saved per event, per unit, per period, tied to a countable event. Clears when someone already spends to avoid this pain. |
| 2 | Who pays? | A named role who signs the invoice, plus the budget line it comes from. The user is not the answer unless the user holds the budget. |
| 3 | What's the wedge? | The smallest action that forces adoption, plus the cost of not adopting. Clears when a design partner already runs it in a live workflow. |
| 4 | What's the moat? | One asset that compounds with use (proprietary data, switching cost, network), plus evidence it has started accruing. A plan to build a moat is opinion. |
| 5 | What kills it? | A named, credible killer, its earliest observable signal, and a mitigation that changes the odds. |
Grade bands:
| Grade | Q1–Q4 | Q5 (inverted) |
|---|---|---|
| pass | Evidence ≥ 0.7 — behaviour observed or money moved | Killer named, early signal defined, credible mitigation |
| weak | Evidence ≤ 0.5 — artefact, verbal commitment, or opinion only | No killer named (denial), or killer hand-waved with no mitigation path |
| fatal | (not applicable) | Credible killer, early signal already firing, no mitigation |
Step 4 — verdict logic (apply in order):
| Condition | Verdict |
|---|---|
Any row graded fatal |
KILL (overrides everything below) |
All five rows pass |
PASS |
One or more weak, none fatal |
REDESIGN |
Step 5 — the rewrite (Redesign only). Name the weakest question (the binding
constraint). When more than one row grades weak, the binding constraint is the
earliest-numbered weak question in the order So what → Who pays → Wedge → Moat → Kills
it, and the rewrite must fix that one first. Rewrite the one-liner so that question
would now grade pass. Change the idea, not the language. If the honest rewrite is
"this is a script, not a venture" or "this needs a different buyer", say that.
Step 6 — self-check. Run the kill line at the foot of template.md before returning.
Evidence standard
Money moved 1.0 → behaviour observed 0.7 → artefact shown 0.5 → verbal commitment 0.3
→ opinion 0.1. The pass bar for questions 1–4 is 0.7: only behaviour or money clears a
question. An artefact, a verbal "they said they'd buy", or an opinion caps the row at
weak and forces a Redesign. Tag every answer [Fact], [Assumption], or
[Hypothesis]. A probe exists to move an answer up the ladder; if it cannot be moved
above 0.1, the row fails. Never grade an opinion above 0.1, and never grade a question
pass on opinion evidence — that is the skill's own auto-fail.
Gotchas
- The user is not the payer. "Factory managers love it" answers who uses, not who pays. Q2 fails until a budget-holding role is named. This is the most common Redesign trigger.
- Denial on Q5 reads as a pass to the fellow and a fail to the skill. "Nothing really kills it" is weak, not strong. Push until a credible killer is named; a founder who cannot name one has not looked.
- A moat plan is not a moat. "We'll accumulate data over time" is opinion (0.1). The moat row passes only if the compounding asset is already accruing from real usage.
- Fatal overrides Pass. Four strong rows and one unmitigated killer is a Kill, not a four-out-of-five Pass. Do not average the rows.
- A one-liner with no answers is not a Redesign. It is unanswered. Ask the one unblocking question instead of grading blanks.
- Solution in disguise. A pre-chosen solution ("we don't have a mobile app") is a feature, not a problem — it gives Q1 no countable event to grade. Name the trap, reframe to the job the feature would serve and its cost, then grade the job. Do not grade the feature.
Examples
examples/sample.md — Azraq's data-centre incident-risk subscription run through all five questions to a PASS, showing what money-and-behaviour answers look like next to the opinion answers they replaced.
Related skills
concept-council— the multi-lens adversarial teardown. Run this first for a fast five-question gate; escalate to the council when the idea survives and needs a deeper read.problem-quality-scorecard— the 8-dimension problem gate. That interrogates one problem; this interrogates a whole idea's business case.wedge-five-questions— the wedge deep-dive. When this skill grades the wedge rowweak, hand off there to rebuild it.- Supersedes nothing. It is the entry gate to the Icarus concept-council stage.