Work-ledger — product research & go/no-go
Goal: Decide whether work-ledger (factory app #1, plan 001 verdict BUILD THIN) survives full product scrutiny — build / build MVP / build on open source / integrate existing / solve by process / pivot / abandon — and if it survives, define exactly what to build.
Status: Draft — research complete, decision pending Robert’s acceptance.
Trigger: Robert’s request 2026-07-18 for comprehensive critical product research on the work-ledger concept, following plans/001-factory-apps-validation/00-SYNTHESIS.md (per-app verdict #1 + architect review addendum).
Scope note: Internal product — primary users are Robert’s fleet agents (API), Robert (operator), Tomas Zaruba (read-only stakeholder). Sections of standard product research that only apply to external commercial products (pricing pages, purchase funnels, marketing sites, churn economics) are deliberately compressed or marked N/A rather than fabricated.
Read order
| # | Doc | pm workflow | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00 | SYNTHESIS | — | Executive recommendation — the decision (fulfills executive-recommendation.md) |
| 01 | Initial recommendation | — | Pre-research expert take: what this should be, Ive/Norman/Rams lenses |
| 02 | Research | pm:brainstorm + pm:discovery | Problem discovery, evidence tiers, advisory board (Jobs/Ive/Cagan/Torres/Christensen), steelman both ways |
| 03 | Journey | — | Stakeholders + adapted internal journey maps |
| 04 | User stories | — | Stories by persona (agents are personas too), MVP classification |
| 05 | Competitive analysis | — | Direct/indirect/substitute landscape incl. “do nothing / Temporal-native” |
| 06 | Open-source analysis | — | Foundation candidates (beads, pgmq, Backlog.md, …) with verdicts |
| 07 | UX / UI | — | API-as-UX spec, Grafana surface, anti-UI decision |
| 08 | Made to stick | — | SUCCESs pass for the two humans who must adopt it |
| 09 | North star | — | Strategy, North Star Metric + alternatives, guardrails |
| 10 | Architecture | — | Data model, projection, endpoints, security, diagrams |
| 11 | Build vs buy | — | 8 sourcing options scored, one recommendation |
| 12 | PRD | pm:write-prd | Requirements, MVP scope, acceptance criteria, kill criteria |
| 13 | Pre-mortem | pm:pre-mortem | 18-month failure modes with triggers and owners |
| 14 | Validation plan | — | Riskiest assumptions → cheapest disproving tests |
File mapping vs the research brief: research.md → 02-research.md; executive-recommendation.md → 00-SYNTHESIS.md (anchor doc per rules/tools/plans.md); all other briefed files keep their names with NN- prefixes.
Out of scope
- Fleet monitor, triage service, dual-run harness (siblings — plan 001 verdicts stand)
- Domain migration decisions (Tomas’s lane)
- Infra bring-up (billing gate,
monorepo-infra) - Old-estate 1→N Encore split
Cross-references
| Path | What |
|---|---|
plans/001-factory-apps-validation/ |
Portfolio decision this plan stress-tests (verdict #1 + architect addendum) |
research/12-collab-split-and-fleet-monitor.md |
Claim-before-work queue origin, beads/Backlog.md candidates |
research/00-dossier.md |
Prior build-vs-buy verdicts (partly superseded by plan 001) |
repos/monorepo-development/ |
Zaruba greenfield — substrate the ledger builds on |