founding-prompt

Founding Prompt (BRIEF framework)

You are helping a non-technical founder turn a rough idea into the single most-leveraged document they'll write: the Founding Prompt. Everything downstream (the PRD, the AGENTS.md rules, every prompt the founder writes after this) inherits from what gets nailed down here. Take your time; do not let this collapse into a five-minute exercise.

What to do

1. Check prerequisites. If /validate-demand hasn't been run yet, or the founder hasn't articulated who has this problem and why it hurts, stop and run that first. A founding prompt built on an unvalidated guess just produces a well-organized mistake.

2. Elicit the five BRIEF components, one at a time, in conversation — don't dump a form at the founder:

   • Background — What's the product, who's it for, what's the one-sentence problem statement? (e.g. "Small business owners can't efficiently manage employee schedules.")
   • Role — What should the AI act as for this build? (e.g. "senior full-stack developer specializing in React and Supabase")
   • Instructions — Core features, max 5 for v1. Push back if the founder lists more than 5 — ask "which one ships first?"
   • Examples — Any reference products/screenshots the founder can point to for calibration (hand off to /show-reference if they have visual references).
   • Format — Data model, integrations, and what "done" looks like (success metrics stated as observable behavior, not vibes).

3. Push for behavior rules, not feature prose. For each core feature, ask "when the user does X, what exactly happens?" until you have a WHEN/THEN statement. This is what goes into PRD.md's Behavior Rules section.

4. Push for explicit non-goals. Ask "what are we deliberately NOT building in this version?" — this list prevents scope creep later and is what the founder points to instead of re-litigating every feature request.

5. Generate the documents from templates/PRD.md.tpl, templates/AGENTS.md.tpl, and templates/llms.txt.tpl, filling in every {{PLACEHOLDER}}. If an AGENTS.md already exists in the project (e.g. created by the host tool's own /init), enrich it — append the founder-os-managed sections, don't overwrite founder-edited content. Also ensure templates/gitignore.tpl's entries are present in the project's .gitignore — creating it if missing, merging its entries in if one already exists — so .env is actually kept out of git even in a project that already had a .gitignore before this skill ran.

   Also generate founder.config.json from templates/founder.config.json.tpl at the project root — this is what lets bin/verify-gate.sh's Stop-hook test gate work for non-npm projects instead of silently no-op'ing. Set testCommand/buildCommand to whatever this project's stack actually uses (e.g. pytest, go test ./..., cargo test), not the template's npm-shaped default — check for an existing package.json, pyproject.toml, go.mod, Cargo.toml, etc. to infer the real command before falling back to asking the founder. If founder.config.json already exists, leave it alone rather than overwriting founder-made edits.

6. Run the PRD quality gate — node <founder-os-plugin-dir>/bin/lint-prd.js <project>/PRD.md — before presenting anything to the founder. This catches the two most common ways a rushed pass through this skill leaves PRD.md too thin to build from: a leftover {{PLACEHOLDER}} token that never got filled in, and Behavior rules left as vague feature prose instead of an actual WHEN/THEN statement. If it fails, go back and fill the specific gaps it names — don't hand a failing PRD off to the founder or to /map-architecture.

7. Read back a one-paragraph summary of what you generated in plain English and ask the founder to confirm before moving to /map-architecture or prototyping.

Anti-patterns to avoid

• Do not accept "an app with a dashboard and a user table" as a Background — push for the underlying problem statement.
• Do not silently cap features at 5 by dropping the founder's list yourself — make them choose.
• Do not skip the non-goals list because the founder seems eager to start building — this is the highest-leverage five minutes in the whole project.