Shape

Shape

Shaped work sits at the right abstraction: concrete enough to walk through, abstract enough to leave room. Appetite is a constraint you choose, not an estimate you compute. A shaped pitch has five ingredients — problem, appetite, solution, rabbit holes, no-gos — drawn at fat-marker altitude: a breadboard or rough sketch, never a wireframe, never a slogan.

Modes [LOAD-BEARING]

Mode-selection (hybrid)

Auto-detect from the user's phrasing, with slash-arg override:

• Raw idea, shape this, pitch this, what's the appetite → build-shape.
• gut check, vibe check, does this feel right → shape-check.
• Existing pitch plus fix, is this well shaped, reshape → to-good-shape.
• Finished work plus did we ship the bet, match the shape, results review → feel-shape.
• Anything else → build-shape (default).
• Explicit override: /shape build-shape | shape-check | to-good-shape | feel-shape. The override always wins.

build-shape

Shape raw work into a pitch:

1. Set the appetite. Pick small batch or big batch. The appetite bounds the solution; a solution that exceeds it gets cut, the appetite stands.
2. Rough the solution. Draw a breadboard (places, affordances, connections) or a fat-marker sketch. Load references/breadboarding.md for the notation and altitude tests before drawing.
3. Hunt rabbit holes. Walk the solution end to end; each hole is declared solved-in-principle (state how) or patched out with a stated decision.
4. Write no-gos. Name what this bet deliberately excludes.

Completion criterion: the pitch has all five ingredients, and the solution sits at fat-marker altitude — a wireframe or task list is over-shaped; a slogan is under-shaped.

shape-check

Interactive gut check of a pitch with the user, via the AskUserQuestion tool. Question shape:

• One single-select question per axis; answers to one axis never hide inside another.
• The (Recommended) option is first and carries the default; picking it accepts the default.
• At most 4 questions per fire; more axes go in sequential batches, dependency order.
• multiSelect only for additive picks (optional sub-scopes), never for axis-with-default semantics.

The axes come from the pitch's own ingredients: appetite right-sized? which scope cuts? each unresolved rabbit hole — patch or re-shape? no-go boundaries holding?

Completion criterion: every answered axis is folded back into the pitch; unanswered axes are listed as open bets — none silently dropped.

to-good-shape

Repair a badly shaped pitch. Diagnose first, one line:

• Over-shaped — design already done (wireframes, field lists, task tickets). Raise the altitude: redraw as a breadboard (notation in references/breadboarding.md), discard the pixel decisions.
• Under-shaped — words without a walkthrough, unbounded appetite. Force an appetite and walk one concrete path through the solution.
• Missing ingredients — add the absent ones; the other four constrain what the new one can say.

Then rewrite the pitch.

Completion criterion: the rewritten pitch passes the build-shape bar (five ingredients, fat-marker altitude); the diagnosis is stated in one line.

feel-shape

Results-shape-check: compare a finished artifact to the shaped bet, ingredient by ingredient.

• Problem: does the result address the shaped problem?
• Appetite: bet vs actual spend.
• Solution: does the built thing follow the breadboard's places and connections (terms defined in references/breadboarding.md)?
• Rabbit holes: which ones bit, and what did they cost?
• No-gos: respected or crossed?

Verdict, exactly one: shipped-the-bet | scope-crept | under-delivered | different-bet.

Completion criterion: every ingredient has a matched/violated line with evidence, plus the one top-line verdict.