The skill in practice
Effective Product
Decide what is worth building, and how it should work.
Start here when the open question is about the product: who it serves, which problem matters, what to build first, what to charge, or how the experience should behave. Effective Product helps gather the evidence and turn it into a decision a team can act on.
The range
What it covers
- Discovery and research
- Research plans, interviews, Jobs to Be Done, service pilots, customer language, market sizing, dated competitive profiles, and opportunity assessment.
- Strategy and scope
- Product theses, outcomes, operating models, initial scope, roadmaps, quality bars, and release decisions.
- Application concepts
- Develop a new application concept and review it for conflicting requirements before planning implementation.
- Experience design
- Problem framing, mental models, objects, user flows, information architecture, prototypes, and responsible retention design.
- Pricing and naming
- Value metrics, packaging, trials, migrations, service pricing, and name shortlists with language and availability checks.
- Durable decisions
- Architecture Decision Records that preserve the options, evidence, tradeoffs, and conditions for revisiting a choice.
From request to result
How it works
Frame the decision
Identify the user, the outcome, and what evidence would change the answer.
Investigate and compare
Gather or assess evidence, expose assumptions, and develop meaningfully different options.
Make the next step usable
Define the chosen direction, unresolved questions, quality bar, and validation plan.
The result: A product direction with evidence, explicit tradeoffs, and a clear next decision.
Ask in your own words
Try a real task.
Give the agent the relevant files, source material, and constraints. Start with an outcome like one of these:
We think enterprise teams want an audit log. Design the research that would tell us whether that is true, and what would falsify it.
Turn these behavioral findings into an object model, key flows, and a prototype plan. Show me two structurally different directions.
We charge per seat and customers are gaming it. Give me two or three value metrics with realistic billing scenarios and migration paths.
Choose the right discipline
When to use it
Use this skill for research, product decisions, and experience modeling. It does not invent participants, quotes, demand, or willingness to pay. Browser implementation belongs to Effective Web; system design and code belong to Effective Engineering. Specialist legal, statistical, or regulated research questions still need appropriate expertise.
For the complete workflow and routing rules, read the agent instructions on GitHub .
Add this discipline
Install Effective Product
With Node.js installed, run this command for an agent that supports Agent Skills:
npx skills add sebastian-software/effective-agent --skill effective-product
Then describe your task in the agent. This skill works on its own; add another when the work crosses disciplines.
For managed installations, pinned selections, and multiple agent targets, see all installation options or the DALO setup guide.