discovery-interview-prep

The discovery-interview-prep skill helps product managers plan customer discovery interviews with the right goal, segment, constraints, and method. It solves the problem that discovery interviews often yield confirmation bias or surface-level feedback by guiding users through an adaptive prep process that outputs a tailored interview plan with methodology, question framework, and success criteria. It is explicitly not a script generator, a user testing script, a sales demo, or a survey at scale; it is a strategic prep process for deep qualitative interviews with roughly 5-10 people. The estimated time to complete is 15-20 minutes.

The skill runs an interactive flow that gathers product and problem context, defines research goals, identifies the target customer segment and access constraints, recommends an interview methodology (such as Jobs-to-be-Done, problem validation, or switch interviews), and generates an interview framework with questions, biases to avoid, and success metrics. It asks up to 4 adaptive questions, each offering 3-4 enumerated options. Step 0 gathers context (problem hypotheses, target segment, existing research such as support tickets or churn data, positioning materials, competitor reviews from G2 or Capterra, or community discussions). Question 1 covers the research goal with options for problem validation, Jobs-to-be-Done discovery, retention/churn investigation, and feature prioritization; Question 2 adapts the target segment options to the chosen goal; and Question 3 addresses constraints such as limited access. Anything supplied with the invocation, including text after the skill name or an appended ARGUMENTS line, counts as answers already given and is not re-asked.

This skill targets product managers starting discovery, repositioning a product, investigating churn or drop-off, evaluating feature ideas, or preparing for customer development sprints. It is bias-aware, highlighting pitfalls like leading questions, confirmation bias, and solution-first thinking, and adaptive to product stage and access constraints. It should not be used for usability testing a prototype, quantitative research at scale, or when the problem is already known and it's time for solution validation. The skill uses the workshop-facilitation skill as its default interaction protocol, which defines one-question turns, entry modes (Guided, Context dump, Best guess), progress labels, and pause/resume behavior.