Product Manager: Intake Guide

Product Manager: Intake Guide

Type-specific questions for /intake when creating a product manager project.

How to Use

When /intake is invoked for a product-manager type project, work through these questions. Not all questions apply to every product — use judgment about what to skip or reorder.

Remember: One question at a time. Let answers inform follow-up questions. Push for specificity — vague answers produce vague strategy.

Phase 1: The Product Vision

Core Idea

1. What's the product idea? (Describe it as you would to a friend — not a pitch deck)
2. Where did this idea come from? (Personal pain? Market observation? Customer request? Something else?)
3. What problem does it solve? (Be specific — "who has this problem" and "how bad is it?")

Motivation

4. Why you? Why now? (What's your unfair advantage? What changed in the world?)
5. What's the dream outcome? (If this succeeds beyond expectations, what does it look like in 2-3 years?)

The Quality

6. What's the ONE thing that makes this product different? (Not a feature list — the core insight. The thing that, if removed, would make this product pointless.)
   • Push hard here. This often takes multiple questions to uncover.
   • Examples: "It's the reverse prompting." "It's that we own the data layer." "It's the community network effect."

Phase 2: Users and Market

Target Users

7. Who is the user? (Be specific — not "everyone" or "small businesses")
   • What do they do today without this product?
   • How do they currently solve this problem (or work around it)?
8. Are there multiple user segments? If so:
   • Which segment would you test with first?
   • Why that one?

Market Context

9. What else exists in this space? (Direct competitors, adjacent products, substitutes)
10. Why do those solutions fall short? (What's the gap they leave?)

Validation

11. Have you talked to potential users? (What did they say? What surprised you?)
12. Is there any evidence this works? (Prototypes, MVPs, beta tests, analogies from other markets?)

Phase 3: Strategy and Business Model

Strategic Bets

13. Tell me a story about something you've built before that succeeded. (Not the product — the strategy pattern. What was the key insight that made it work?)

    • This reveals the founder's strategic instincts. Listen for patterns like:
      • Focus vs. breadth
      • Testing cheaply before investing
      • Finding the one metric that matters
      • Building moats vs. moving fast
    • Connect this pattern to the current product.

14. What's your hypothesis? (If they have one — don't force it. Some founders need to discover it through exploration.)

    • If they have one: "How would you test that?"
    • If they don't: "That's fine — we'll discover it. What do you believe most strongly about this product?"

Business Model

15. How does this make money? (Or will it — what's the revenue model when it gets there?)
16. What's the path from here to revenue? (Phase 1 → Phase 2 → Phase 3, or a single focused bet?)

Defensibility

17. What would make this hard to copy? (Network effects? Data moats? Brand? Switching costs?)
18. What's your biggest strategic risk? (The thing that keeps you up at night)

Phase 4: Team and Constraints

Team

19. Who's on the team today? (Solo? Co-founders? Contractors?)
20. What capabilities are you missing? (Technical? Design? Sales? Domain expertise?)

Constraints

21. What's your timeline? (MVP in weeks? Fundraising deadline? Market window?)
22. What's your budget? (Bootstrapped? Seed funded? Revenue-funded?)
23. What technical constraints exist? (Platform requirements, integrations, regulatory, etc.)

Development Approach

24. How will this get built? (AI-assisted development? Traditional engineering team? No-code? Hybrid?)
25. What's the SDLC approach? (This PM project handles left-side thinking — who handles the right-side building?)
    • If there will be a dev Claude project: note sibling project relationship
    • If external team: note handoff format requirements

Phase 5: Working Style

Session Rhythm

26. How do you want to work with this PM? (Daily check-ins? Weekly deep dives? On-demand when you need to think through something?)
27. What does a productive PM session look like for you? (Exploring? Pressure-testing? Generating specs? All of the above?)

PM Voice Calibration

28. How direct should the PM be? (Most people say "very" — confirm)
    • "Should I push back hard when an idea doesn't hold up?"
    • "Should I tell you when you're avoiding a hard question?"
29. Any topics that are off-limits or sensitive? (Competitive dynamics, team issues, financial specifics?)

After Intake

Once these questions are answered, you should have enough to:

1. Articulate the product hypothesis (or identify that it needs discovery through /explore)
2. Define the target user segment for initial focus
3. Understand the strategic pattern the founder uses (focus vs. breadth, testing instincts, etc.)
4. Map the competitive landscape at a high level
5. Set the PM voice (how challenging, what behaviors to emphasize)
6. Establish the working rhythm (session frequency, primary commands to use)
7. Identify the dev handoff model (sibling project, external team, not yet)

Write captured information to:

• context/requirements.md
• context/decisions.md
• context/constraints.md
• context/questions.md (for things that need more exploration)

If the founder has existing research, transcripts, or documents, queue up /process to extract insights.