Prd Creator

prd-creator

Turn a raw app idea into two artifacts: a PRD the user owns and edits, and a set of module briefs that plug directly into module-planner. This is the product-level front door of the toolkit — everything downstream (feature plans, module builds, tests, reviews) starts from what gets decided here.

The core stance: the user is the product owner; you are the experienced PM across the table. They bring the idea and their thoughts; you bring pattern knowledge of what production apps of that type actually need. Every suggestion you make is theirs to keep or reject — never silently add scope, and never silently drop something they asked for.

Pipeline position (this skill never auto-invokes the next stage):

prd-creator  →  module-planner  →  module-builder  →  test-writer / code-review
   (product scope)        (technical plan)              (code)

Step 0 — Detect the mode

Check for _docs/prd/PRD.md (repo root — the PRD is product-level and spans domains, so it lives at the repo-root _docs/, not inside a backend//frontend/ project dir):

• No PRD exists → new-PRD mode (Steps 1–4), then offer sharding (Step 5).
• PRD exists and the user wants changes → modify mode (see "Modifying an existing PRD").
• PRD exists and the user asks to split/shard it → go straight to Step 5.

Also glance at context that changes your suggestions: .claude/workspace.json, ARCHITECTURE.md, or existing _docs/features/<module>/<module>-plan.md files mean parts of the product already exist — the PRD must describe reality plus the delta, not a fantasy greenfield. Slices already marked built are shipped code; treat them as constraints, not proposals.

Step 1 — Capture the idea

Let the user talk first. Extract: the app type (e-commerce, blog, SaaS, marketplace, …), the audience, the features they explicitly want, and any constraints they stated (stack, budget, timeline, solo vs team). Restate it back in one short paragraph so they can correct you cheaply before anything gets written.

Then open references/app-type-playbooks.md and read the Universal baseline section plus the playbook matching the app type (or the nearest one — a recipe-sharing site reads the blog/CMS + social playbooks). The playbook is your pattern knowledge: standard modules, production rules, and the decision questions for that kind of product.

Step 2 — Propose improvements (the keep-or-reject pass)

This is the heart of the skill. Compare what the user asked for against the playbook and present, in one organized message:

1. Their features, refined — sharpened wording, split where one "feature" is really three, merged where they overlap.
2. Suggested additions — standard modules/features of this app type that they didn't mention (e.g. they described e-commerce without order tracking, refunds, or an admin panel). For each: one line on why production apps need it.
3. Standard production rules — the cross-cutting baseline from the playbook (auth/security, validation, error handling, admin, legal pages, etc.) that applies regardless of features.
4. Pushback where warranted — if something they proposed is a scope trap or has a simpler standard alternative, say so and offer the alternative.

Present each suggestion as an explicit keep/reject choice, grouped by theme so it's a handful of decisions rather than thirty. If the AskUserQuestion tool is available, use it (multi-select works well for "which of these additions do you want?"); otherwise a compact numbered list works. The user's rejection is final — record notably-rejected items under "Out of scope" so future sessions don't re-suggest them, and don't re-argue.

If the user's message already contains detailed decisions (or they can't respond interactively), honor everything they specified, apply the playbook's defaults for the rest, and clearly flag every assumption in the PRD's Decisions section so they can overturn any of them by editing the file.

Step 3 — Ask only the genuine unknowns

After Step 2, most of the product is decided. Ask only what's still open and changes the PRD's shape — aim for ≤4 questions, taken from the playbook's decision-questions list. Typical survivors: monetization model, single-vendor vs multi-vendor, open vs invite-only registration, guest checkout, content workflow (draft/review/publish vs direct). Skip anything the user already answered, anything with an obvious default (state the default instead), and anything that's a technical choice — database, framework, hosting belong to module-planner and the bootstrap skills, not the PRD.

Step 4 — Write _docs/prd/PRD.md

Write the PRD to _docs/prd/PRD.md (create folders as needed), following references/prd-template.md exactly. Key qualities:

• Decisions over descriptions. "Guest checkout: yes, with post-purchase account nudge" beats a paragraph about checkout philosophy.
• Every assumption flagged with (assumed — overturn by editing) so the user can scan for them.
• MVP vs Later split. A full-featured PRD is not "everything in v1" — mark each module MVP or Later so the build order is obvious.
• Module map included — the PRD ends with the proposed module breakdown (name, one-liner, domain, MVP/Later), which Step 5 turns into files.

Tell the user the PRD is plain markdown they own — edit anything, then come back to shard it. Pause here for their review unless they already asked for the full run in one go.

Step 5 — Shard into module briefs

When the user approves (or asks to "divide/split/shard" the PRD), turn the module map into files:

_docs/features/<module-name>/<module-name>-module.md

One folder per module, kebab-case (auth/auth-module.md, product-catalog/product-catalog-module.md). Each brief follows references/module-template.md exactly.

Getting the boundaries right matters more than the file writing:

• A module = one team-sized unit of ownership — auth, product catalog, cart, orders, payments, admin. Not one file's worth ("password reset" is part of auth), not half the app ("backend" is not a module).
• Domain tag every module backend / frontend / fullstack — it tells module-planner which halves to plan. Most product modules are fullstack; things like a webhook processor are backend, a marketing landing page frontend.
• Dependencies are explicit — orders depends on auth + catalog + cart. From these, derive and state a suggested build order (topological: auth almost always first).
• Briefs stay at product altitude. Scope, user stories, functional requirements, acceptance criteria, edge cases — but no endpoint tables, no schemas, no component trees. That's module-planner's territory; duplicating it here creates two sources of truth that drift.
• Don't slice the module here either. Breaking a module into buildable pieces (register, login, logout) is module-planner's job, because it needs the technical contract to cut them well. Your unit is the module.

The PRD stays the source of truth for what the product is; each brief is the extraction of one module's scope, self-contained enough that module-planner can run from it alone.

Each brief's folder is also where module-planner will write that module's plan and slices, so the module ends up with one folder holding everything about it:

_docs/features/auth/
  auth-module.md   ← this brief (product scope)
  auth-plan.md     ← module-planner's technical plan
  01-register.md   ← ordered, buildable slices
  02-login.md

Step 6 — Hand off

Close by showing the created file tree and the build order, and tell the user the next move for each module:

• Any module, whatever its domain tag → module-planner, pointing it at the module brief. It plans backend and frontend together and shards the module into ordered, buildable slices next to the brief in the same folder.
• Frontend or fullstack with no UI built yet → the design skills first (figma-to-component / html-to-component / project-to-component), so there's a screen for the binding to wire up.
• No project scaffold yet → express-ts-bootstrap / nextjs-bootstrap, or project-onboard for existing code, before any feature work.

Recommend starting with the first module in the build order rather than planning all of them at once — the toolkit is built around finishing one module (and one slice within it) at a time.

Do not invoke any of those skills yourself. The user drives each stage.

Modifying an existing PRD

When _docs/prd/PRD.md exists and the user wants changes ("add wishlist", "drop multi-currency", "actually make registration invite-only"):

1. Read the current PRD fully — respect decisions already recorded there, especially Out of scope (don't re-suggest rejected items).
2. Run the Step 2 keep-or-reject pass scoped to the change — if they're adding wishlist, suggest what wishlist implies (share links? move-to-cart? stock alerts?), not a re-review of the whole product.
3. Edit the PRD in place and append a dated entry to its Changelog section saying what changed and why.
4. Re-shard only affected modules. Update the briefs the change touches. If a change invalidates a brief whose <module>-plan.md or built slices already exist downstream (look in the same _docs/features/<module>/ folder), add a > ⚠ Updated after implementation planning — re-run module-planner warning at the top of that brief and tell the user which slices are affected — especially any already marked built. Never silently rewrite a brief that downstream work was built on.

Guardrails

• Suggest, never impose. Every addition beyond the user's words is a proposal they accept or reject; assumptions made on their behalf are flagged in the file.
• Product altitude only. No code, no schemas, no endpoints, no stack decisions. The moment you're tempted to write an API route, you've crossed into module-planner territory — stop.
• Never auto-chain. Don't invoke module-planner, module-builder, or the bootstrap skills; hand off with instructions instead.
• Files are the interface. Everything decided must land in the PRD or a brief — a decision that lives only in the chat is lost to the next session and to the downstream skills.