/explore-prd

name: explore-prd
description: Early-stage feature exploration before full PRD
category: PRD Management
version: 0.4.2

Explore PRD Command

Lightweight exploration of feature ideas before committing to full PRD.

Purpose

Validate feature ideas early:

• Quick problem validation
• Solution brainstorming
• Effort estimation
• Go/No-Go decision
• Lightweight documentation

Workflow

1. Problem Definition

**Capture initial idea**:

• User pain point
• Current workaround
• Frequency and impact
• Evidence (if available)

**Example**:

🔍 Exploring: Export to PDF

Problem: Users can't share reports offline
Current: Screenshots or manual copy-paste
Frequency: ~20 requests/month
Impact: Medium (workaround exists)

2. Solution Brainstorming

**Generate alternatives**:

• Approach A: Build custom PDF generator
• Approach B: Use third-party service (e.g., PDFKit)
• Approach C: Browser print-to-PDF
• Approach D: Export to Google Docs, then PDF

**Quick pros/cons** for each.

3. Rough Effort Estimate

**T-shirt sizing**:

• S (1-2 days)
• M (3-5 days)
• L (1-2 weeks)
• XL (2+ weeks)

**Include**:

• Development time
• Testing time
• Documentation time

4. Competitive Check

**Quick research**:

• What do competitors do?
• Industry standard approach?
• Open source libraries available?

5. Decision Point

**Three outcomes**:

1. **GO → Create PRD**:

• Problem validated
• Solution promising
• Effort acceptable
• Action: `/create-prd` with exploration as input

2. **DEFER**:

• Good idea but not now
• Timing not right
• Action: Save in `.prds/ideas/` for later

3. **KILL**:

• Not worth doing
• Better alternatives exist
• Action: Document reasoning, close exploration

6. Document Exploration

**Save exploration** to `.prds/explorations/YYYY-MM-DD-feature-name.md`:

# Exploration: Feature Name

**Date**: YYYY-MM-DD
**Status**: Go/Defer/Kill

## Problem
{What user pain we're solving}

## Solutions Considered
1. Approach A: {pros/cons}
2. Approach B: {pros/cons}

## Recommended Approach
{Which solution to pursue and why}

## Effort
{T-shirt size with rough breakdown}

## Decision
{Go/Defer/Kill with reasoning}

## Next Steps
{What to do next}

When to Use

**Use explore-prd when**:

• New feature idea needs validation
• Unsure if worth full PRD effort
• Want quick estimate before committing
• Multiple solutions need comparison

**Don't use when**:

• Feature already decided (go straight to /create-prd)
• Tiny change (just do it)
• Urgent bug fix (use /debugging)

Success Criteria

• ✅ Problem clearly defined
• ✅ Multiple solutions considered
• ✅ Rough effort estimated
• ✅ Clear decision made (Go/Defer/Kill)
• ✅ Exploration documented
• ✅ Next steps identified

Example

🔍 Exploring: Export to PDF

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PROBLEM
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Users can't export reports for offline sharing
Current: Manual screenshots (painful)
Evidence: 23 support tickets in last 3 months

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SOLUTIONS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. Custom PDF Generator (Puppeteer)
   ✓ Full control
   ✗ Complex, 2 weeks effort

2. Browser Print-to-PDF
   ✓ Simple, 2 days effort
   ✓ No dependencies
   ✗ Limited formatting control

3. Third-party API (PDFShift)
   ✓ Quick, 1 day integration
   ✗ Recurring cost ($29/month)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
RECOMMENDATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Approach: Browser Print-to-PDF (Option 2)
Effort: M (3 days)
ROI: Good (solves 80% of use cases, minimal cost)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DECISION: ✅ GO
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Reasoning: Validated problem, simple solution, small effort

Next: Create PRD with full acceptance criteria
Command: /create-prd with this exploration as input

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**Version**: 0.4.2 **Plugin**: claude-prd-workflow v0.4.2