Z Market Validate

Market Validate

Turn a raw / half-baked idea into an evidence-backed validation report for an independent developer (solo founder / OPC). Bias toward honest negatives as much as positives. Prefer primary signals from real people complaining, paying, or shipping — not generic “AI market size” fluff.

When not to use

• Ready for real user interviews (Mom Test) → prefer z-customer-discovery
• Ready to test demand with a page + waitlist → prefer z-landing-smoke
• Idea is already shipping and needs growth experiments (different skill later)
• Pure technical design / architecture (use eng planning skills)
• Legal/compliance deep dive only

Output language

Write the final report in the same language the user used for the idea (Chinese → Chinese report; English → English). Keep source quotes in original language with short translations when helpful.

Non-negotiables

1. No empty confidence. Every major claim needs a source link or a clear “not found”.
2. Seek disconfirming evidence. Actively search for “scam”, “hate”, “cancelled”, “alternative”, “too expensive”, “doesn’t work”.
3. Indie lens. Score suitability for one person (scope, support burden, distribution, regulation, capital).
4. Short-term return is hard. Call out when “quick money” claims are weak; prefer 30/90-day plausible paths over fantasy ARR.
5. Do not invent numbers. If you cannot measure volume, say so and use qualitative bands.
6. Tools are host-specific. Use whatever the host provides: web search, X/Twitter search, page fetch/browse, Reddit search, etc. If a channel is unreachable, mark it blocked and continue.
7. Evidence does not upgrade on handoff. Preserve whether a claim is a secondary public signal, observed behavior, experiment result, search signal, or assumption when another skill consumes it.
8. The handoff is a fixed interface. End the primary report with one seven-row Evidence handoff table using these exact labels: Current decision, Evidence classes, Supported claims, Still unproven, Contradictions / exclusions, Source anchors, and Next validation. The class cell may contain only applicable names from primary behavior, observed experiment, secondary public, search signal, and assumption; put provenance and confidence qualifiers in the other fields.

Workflow

Phase 0 — Intake (≤ 5 questions if needed)

If the idea is too vague to search, ask only what blocks research. Prefer inferring the rest and stating assumptions.

Minimum to proceed:

Optional (ask only if missing and material): willingness-to-pay guess, skills the founder already has, hard constraints (no marketplace, no hardware, offline only).

Record assumptions explicitly in the report.

Phase 1 — Research frame (do this before searching)

Produce a short internal frame (can be in notes, not full user-facing yet):

1. Problem statement (user pain in their words, not product words)
2. Search query pack (8–20 queries), including:
   • problem phrases (“I hate…”, “looking for…”, “alternative to…”)
   • competitor / category names
   • “vs”, “pricing”, “worth it”, “shutdown”, “refund”
   • language variants (EN + local language if geography is CN or bilingual)
3. Success signals (what would count as “real demand”)
4. Kill signals (what would make this a no-go for an indie)

Read references/sources.md for channel tactics and query recipes. Read references/report-template.md before writing the final doc.

Phase 2 — Multi-channel demand scan

Scan at least 4 channels when tools allow. Mark each channel status: searched | partial | blocked | skipped (reason).

Default global stack (priority order):

If user / idea is China-primary or bilingual, also scan when reachable:

For each useful hit, capture a signal card:

- channel:
- url:
- date: (if known)
- quote/summary: (short)
- polarity: demand | praise | objection | churn | competitor | pricing | noise
- weight: high | med | low   # high = recent + specific + emotional/paying intent
- indie_relevance: high | med | low

Aim for 12–30 signal cards, not 200 dumps. Prefer quality and diversity (different channels and polarities).

Phase 3 — Competition & substitutes

Identify 3–8 alternatives people already use (including “do nothing”, Excel, agencies, manual process). For each:

• Who it’s for
• Pricing (if public)
• Gaps people complain about
• Why an indie might still win a wedge (or why not)

Phase 4 — Scoring (explicit, humble)

Score each dimension 1–5 with one-line evidence. Midpoint (3) means mixed or weak evidence — not “good”.

When averaging a composite, invert competition first: competition_fit = 6 - competition_intensity, then average the six “higher = better” values (demand, pay, competition_fit, indie, time-to-signal, short-term).

Calculate that composite once from the six displayed inputs. Round it once to two decimal places and treat that result as the report's single display value. Copy the exact same value into the score table, executive summary, and any later prose; never recompute or reround it from memory. Before delivery, search every composite mention and reconcile it with the visible formula. Any mismatch is an invalid report, even when the formula itself is correct.

Also pick a recommendation band:

Never let a high “market size story” override empty primary signals.

Phase 5 — Indie short-term return judgment

Answer explicitly (no hedging without saying why):

1. Commercial value? Yes / Mixed / Weak — in one paragraph with evidence.
2. Fit for independent developer? Yes / Conditional / No — scope, support, channels, skills.
3. Short-term return (30–90 days) odds? High / Medium / Low — what “return” means (first $100, first 10 users, consulting lead, etc.).
4. If going deeper, best entry direction — pick one primary wedge + 1–2 backups; say what to ship first and what to measure.

Prefer wedges that are:

• Narrow ICP
• Manual-first or uglier MVP OK
• Distribution via communities already scanned
• Avoid winner-take-all platforms on day one

Phase 6 — Deliver the report

Use the structure in references/report-template.md. Apply references/quality-bar.md before delivery.

Do not rename, split, or replace the template's seven Evidence handoff rows with equivalent prose or custom fields.

Delivery options:

1. Default: paste the full report in chat.
2. If the user is in a product repo and wants a file: write docs/z-market-validate-<slug>-<YYYYMMDD>.md (or path they specify).

End with:

• Top 5 evidence links
• Top 5 disconfirming links
• Next 48-hour actions (3 concrete tasks, not “keep researching forever”)
• Evidence handoff with supported claims, unproven claims, source anchors, and the next validation

Method notes (anti-BS)

• Upvotes ≠ revenue. PH medals ≠ retention.
• Loud Twitter ≠ paying customers.
• “I’d use this” comments are cheap; “I pay for X and hate Y” is gold.
• Founder echo chambers overstate novelty; search the buyer’s habitat, not only builder habitats.
• If everything looks positive, you under-sampled objections — go back to Phase 2.
• If everything looks negative, separate “bad idea” from “bad positioning / wrong ICP”.

Guardrails

• Do not claim survey statistical significance from a few posts.
• Do not recommend illegal, spammy, or ToS-abusive growth tactics.
• Do not scrape behind logins if the host cannot; mark blocked.
• Do not shame the user’s idea; be direct and constructive.
• If tools fail entirely, say so and give a manual research checklist from references/sources.md instead of fabricating a report.