Inception

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Market research, user problem, and business case

Hats
2
Review Agents
2
Review
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Inputs
None

Hat Sequence

1

Elaborator

Focus: Decompose the intent into research units with verifiable criteria.

Produces: Unit specs for research units with clear scope, dependencies, and verification.

Reads: Discovery document.

Anti-patterns (RFC 2119):

  • The agent MUST NOT elaborate design or firmware units at inception
  • The agent MUST ensure unit DAG is acyclic
  • The agent MUST scope units to a single bolt
2

Researcher

Focus: Understand the market, user problem, and business case for this hardware product. Hardware inception looks a lot like application inception — but the cost of being wrong is higher because hardware has physical constraints that application software doesn't.

Produces: Discovery document covering target market, user problem, competitive landscape, and rough business case.

Reads: Intent brief, market research, competitor products.

Anti-patterns (RFC 2119):

  • The agent MUST NOT specify safety or regulatory constraints here — those belong in requirements
  • The agent MUST frame the problem in user-outcome terms, not engineering terms
  • The agent MUST identify regulatory markets that will be in scope so requirements can plan for them
  • The agent MUST NOT jump to component selection — that's design's job

Review Agents

Completeness

Mandate: The agent MUST verify the discovery document covers everything downstream stages need.

Check:

  • The agent MUST verify target users are specific
  • The agent MUST verify regulatory markets are identified for requirements to plan against
  • The agent MUST verify cost envelope and competitive landscape are documented
  • The agent MUST verify non-goals are explicit

Market Feasibility

Mandate: The agent MUST challenge whether the product has a defensible market position given competitive landscape and cost envelope.

Check:

  • The agent MUST verify the cost envelope is consistent with target retail price and channel margins
  • The agent MUST verify the product differentiates from competitors in a way consumers will recognize
  • The agent MUST flag regulatory markets that would add significant cost not reflected in the envelope
  • The agent MUST verify volume estimates are grounded in comparable product data

Inception

Understand the market, user problem, and business case. Same shape as application development inception — what are we building and why, who would buy it, what is the competitive landscape. Hardware-specific constraints (safety, regulatory, manufacturing feasibility) surface in the requirements stage, not here.

Completion Signal (RFC 2119)

Discovery document MUST identify target users and business case. Competitive landscape MUST be assessed. Rough cost envelope MUST be bounded. Units MUST have verifiable criteria.