Steve Says
Claude Code plugin channeling Steve Jobs's documented decision frameworks. "The question isn't X. The real question is Y."
Steve evaluates your products, strategies, teams, and presentations through the lens of Jobs's philosophy -- as documented by the 10 people who worked alongside him. Binary verdicts. Specific reasoning. No hedging.
Available through the Ryde Ventures plugin marketplace.
Installation
# Add the Ryde Ventures marketplace (one-time)
/plugin marketplace add rydeventures/claude-plugins
# Install the plugin
/plugin install steve-says@rydeventures-claude-plugins
Quick Start
# Get oriented
@steve /hello
# Evaluate a product or feature
@steve /evaluate [describe your product]
# Get strategic clarity
@steve /strategy should we build our own AI model or use APIs?
# Kill complexity
@steve /simplify we have 12 product lines and none is winning
# Evaluate team health
@steve /team we're hiring a VP of Product, here's what we're looking for
# Review a pitch or keynote
@steve /pitch [describe your presentation]
Commands
| Command | Purpose |
|---|
/hello | Orientation |
/evaluate | Binary product/idea verdict with specific reasoning |
/strategy | Strategic reframing and decision frameworks |
/simplify | The Simple Stick -- kill complexity, find the essence |
/team | A-player analysis and organizational health |
/pitch | Presentation craft, demo technique, storytelling |
What Steve Looks For
The 25-Item Jobs-ism Checklist
Product and Design: Death by committee, feature creep, design-engineering separation, invisible quality, demo day thinking, integration seams.
Strategy and Focus: Incremental vs. paradigm shift, focus group dependency, market research building, fixed constraints, static strategy, sunk cost loyalty, worshipping the comfortable, template thinking.
People and Culture: B-player tolerance, mercy invitations, managing by popularity, celebrating mediocrity, PowerPoint culture, honesty avoidance, divisional organization.
Business and Execution: Profit-first product decisions, competing on price, hiding behind process, the Jobs caricature.
Example
Input: "We're building a project management tool. We have task boards, time tracking, invoicing, team chat, file storage, and a wiki."
Steve says:
Verdict: This is not there yet.
The Real Problem: You don't have a product. You have six products pretending to be one. A product with six priorities has no priorities. Which one of these is so good that someone would switch from their current tool? If the answer is "the combination," you've already lost -- you're competing with Slack AND Notion AND Harvest AND Dropbox simultaneously, and you're worse than all of them at everything.
What to Kill: Time tracking, invoicing, team chat, file storage, wiki. All of them.
What Remains: Task boards. Make the best task board anyone has ever used. Make it so good that people show it to other people.
Next: Pick the one thing. Kill the other five. Today.
Knowledge System
Steve loads relevant knowledge based on your question:
| Topic | Knowledge |
|---|
| Product evaluation, UX, features | Product design frameworks |
| Teams, hiring, firing, A-players | Leadership principles |
| Business strategy, positioning | Strategic decision frameworks |
| Complexity, focus, saying no | Simplicity and subtraction |
| Keynotes, pitching, demos | Presentation craft |
| Deals, partnerships, M&A | Negotiation patterns |
| Innovation, disruption, timing | Innovation frameworks |
| Craft, aesthetics, design roots | Zen and design philosophy |
| Branding, naming, messaging | Marketing principles |
| How to decide | Decision framework selection |
Research Foundation
Built from documented accounts by:
- Walter Isaacson -- authorized biography
- Brent Schlender -- 25 years of interviews (Becoming Steve Jobs)
- Jony Ive -- design philosophy and collaboration
- Ed Catmull -- Pixar creative leadership (Creativity, Inc.)
- Tony Fadell -- iPod/iPhone creation (Build)
- Ken Segall -- Think Different campaign (Insanely Simple)
- Guy Kawasaki -- early Apple evangelism
- Bob Iger -- Disney acquisition negotiations
- David Yoffie -- Harvard Business School case studies
- Hayashi Nobuyuki -- Japanese aesthetic influence
Philosophy
- Product over profit -- great products first, margins follow
- Simplification as strategy -- fewer products, fewer features, fewer people in the room
- End-to-end integration -- own the whole widget
- Conviction over consensus -- one owner, one decision
- Craft in the invisible -- the back of the cabinet matters
- The learner, not the genius -- the evolved Jobs, not the caricature
See Also
breethomas