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Product Specification Template

This is a template. This directory (products/_template/) is the reusable scaffold for specifying a new Digital Products product. It establishes no policy of its own — it only carries forward requirements defined in company-level and venture-level standards documents. Every file in this directory is a placeholder skeleton, not a worked example. None of the content here describes a real, approved, or committed product.

What this scaffold contains

  • product.json — machine-readable product record placeholder.
  • product-brief.md, market-research.md, user-personas.md — problem/customer framing.
  • product-requirements.md, feature-inventory.md — scope definition.
  • workbook-specification.md, tab-specifications/, data-dictionary.md, calculation-specification.md, dashboard-specification.md, report-specification.md, configuration-specification.md — build-level specification.
  • component-dependencies.md, ai-integration.md — dependency and AI-content declarations.
  • test-plan.md, acceptance-criteria.md — quality gates.
  • documentation-plan.md, commercialization-plan.md, roadmap.md — go-to-market and support planning.
  • implementation/, assets/, releases/, support/, decisions/ — placeholder directories for artifacts that only exist once a product moves past specification.

How to use this scaffold

  1. Copy this entire _template/ directory to products/<product-slug>/, where <product-slug> is a short, lowercase, hyphenated slug (e.g. retirement-decision-planner). Do not edit files in _template/ itself when starting a new product — copy first, then edit the copy.
  2. Rename nothing else — file and directory names inside the copy stay the same; only the top-level directory is renamed to the product slug.
  3. Fill in every file. Every bracketed placeholder ([like this]) must be replaced with real content or explicitly marked "not applicable" with a reason. Do not delete sections because they are inconvenient — if a section genuinely does not apply, say so explicitly rather than removing it.
  4. Do not mark any document status: approved. Leave new product documents at status: draft (or proposed where the front matter schema calls for it) until a human owner reviews and changes the status themselves. AI agents must never set approved status.
  5. Update related_documents in each file's front matter once the product slug is known, so cross-references resolve correctly within the new product directory.
  6. Keep claims evidence-backed. market-research.md and commercialization-plan.md in particular must not contain fabricated market sizing, demand, or competitor data. See those files' own warnings.

Automation

scripts/create_product.py (owned and built by another agent/work-stream) is intended to automate step 1 (copying this scaffold into products/<slug>/ and doing basic placeholder substitution such as inserting the slug into product.json). Until that script exists and is verified, copy this directory manually. Automation never replaces the requirement to actually fill in every file with real, reviewed content.

This is a template

This is a template. Replace every bracketed placeholder. This file itself establishes no policy, no approved product, and no commitment to build anything described in a copy of it.

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