“An app where independent barbers take bookings and deposits, so they stop losing money on no-shows.”
What was understood
Read by a recorded reading kept with the product.
- Business. A software product “An app”
- Where you are. An idea assumed
- What you sell. an app for barbers to take bookings and deposits “take bookings and deposits”
- To whom. independent barbers “independent barbers”
- Restricted area. payments. Customers pay deposits. “deposits”
- Restricted area. personal-data. Bookings hold customers' names. “bookings”
- Restricted area. sign-in. Barbers and their customers would have accounts. assumed
Your company: 7 agents, 1 goal for 30 days, about 3 approvals a day from you.
By day 30: five people among independent barbers can use the first version from a link, checked by a recorded walkthrough of each of the five using the main flow, and the acceptance sentences passing.
Who does what
Tap a role to see what it does.
Chief of staffstandard model28 USD a month (estimate)
What it does for you
Keep the company moving inside the plan. Keep the workspace clean and the record straight. Know what is live, and be able to undo it.
Merged in to fit the plan: clerk, release manager.
- What it produces
- The day's orders
- The daily brief (ten lines at most, decisions first)
- The weekly review
- The log digest
- The list of what is live where
- Hygiene reports
- Budget alerts
- Preview deployments
- The rollback
- What it decides alone
- Order of work inside the week's scope
- Who gets which item
- Mechanical fixes
- Archiving
- Previews
- What it asks you
- Anything outside what may start this week
- Any approval
- A role sent back twice
- Anything it cannot fix mechanically
- Anything public: always an approval
- How often it works
One planning pass each weekday; the brief daily; Twice a day; Per change. budget-watch: every day at 07:00 and 15:00, daily-plan: weekdays at 08:00, weekly-retro: Fridays at 16:00, daily-brief: weekdays at 17:00, log-digest: weekdays at 17:30 and release-previews: when this happens: change ready.
CPOsenior model21 USD a month (estimate)
What it does for you
Turn the vision into a goal that can be checked.
- What it produces
- The 30-day goal and its check
- The weekly plan
- The proposal of what may start this week
- The monthly review
- What it decides alone
- Priorities inside the goal
- What is parked
- What it asks you
- The goal itself
- A change of customer or offer
- How often it works
Weekly, and on a vision change. weekly-plan: Mondays at 09:00.
Product designerstandard model12 USD a month (estimate)
What it does for you
Say what the customer sees and does.
- What it produces
- Screens
- Flows
- Acceptance sentences in plain words
- What it decides alone
- Layout and wording inside the brief
- What it asks you
- A flow that changes the offer or the price
- How often it works
Per feature. design-session: when another role orders it.
CTOsenior model55 USD a month (estimate)
What it does for you
Own the technical decisions so that nobody builds on a guess. Build one whole slice at a time.
Merged in to fit the plan: engineer.
- What it produces
- The architecture note
- Technical decisions with their reasons
- The technical risks of the week
- A change with tests and a preview
- What it decides alone
- Architecture inside the scope
- How it is built
- What it asks you
- A new external service
- Anything irreversible
- Anything in a restricted area
- Restricted areas
- How often it works
One architecture pass a week; on order for a decision; One to five sessions each weekday. architecture-weekly: Mondays at 09:00, build-morning: weekdays at 09:00, build-afternoon: weekdays at 13:00 and technical-decision: when another role orders it.
QA testerstandard model20 USD a month (estimate)
What it does for you
Prove the behaviour, not the code.
- What it produces
- An end-to-end run of each acceptance sentence
- A recorded walkthrough
- Pass or fail
- What it decides alone
- The verdict; partial is fail
- What it asks you
- A check it cannot run (which is itself a fail)
- How often it works
Per change, and nightly on what is live. qa-run: weekdays at 15:00.
Head of administrationstandard model4 USD a month (estimate)
What it does for you
Get the business set up properly and keep its paperwork ready.
- What it produces
- The checklist from idea to a registered business with a business account, each step with its official source
- A comparison of legal forms, a business address to keep the home address private, and bank accounts, with what each official source says; an accountant confirms the choice of form
- Forms prepared as drafts
- The calendar of what is due when
- What it decides alone
- Formatting and filing
- What it asks you
- Choosing a legal form: an accountant confirms the choice of form every time; never recommends or chooses one
- Proving identity: only you do it
- Signing or accepting terms: only you do it
- Paying: only you do it
- Everything else: it has no authority
- How often it works
On order; weekly while the business is being set up. setup-weekly: Mondays at 14:00 and paperwork: when another role orders it.
Independent reviewersenior model30 USD a month (estimate)
What it does for you
Nothing counts as done on the author's word.
- What it produces
- A verdict per deliverable, with evidence
- A second look on restricted areas
- What it decides alone
- Pass or fail
- Send back once, with reasons
- What it asks you
- A deliverable failed twice
- A missing or unrunnable check (which is itself a fail)
- How often it works
Per deliverable. review-deliverable: when this happens: deliverable ready.
The first 30 days
Week 1A clickable prototype of the main flow, the acceptance sentences in plain words for you to approve, the 30-day goal and its check, approved and a thin first slice behind it, with its checks.
Week 2A working preview of the main flow on test data that you can open on your phone and the screens for the second flow and for what goes wrong.
Week 3Payments through a hosted checkout link, never card data in the product, with a qualified human flagged for the payment path, the personal data the product keeps listed, with a way to remove it and a mid-month review of the plan.
Week 4Five people can try it from a link (inviting them is your action), the day-30 check run, with the result stated plainly and the month report, with the goal declared reached or not and the next goal proposed.
What you will be asked
About 2.7 a day
About 2.7 items a day at normal activity: decision 1.4, release 1.3.
Restricted areas of this company
- payments. The product never handles card data: payments go through a hosted checkout link.
- payments. A qualified human confirms the payment path.
- personal-data. Personal data is kept to the minimum the product needs, with a way to remove it.
- personal-data. A qualified human confirms where personal data is stored.
- sign-in. Sign-in is never written by an agent: it uses a proven sign-in service, and a qualified human confirms it.
- sign-in. No agent stores or reads a password.
First, before anything outward runs: you confirm what this company does and that it is allowed. Nothing is published, sent, spent or released before that.
Some approvals can never be delegated: spending, accepting terms or signing, deleting data, changing an account, changing the company, accepting a known gap.
What it does not do
6 things
- It prepares previews you can click; you decide what customers see.
- It never handles card data: payments go through a hosted checkout link.
- It does not publish to an app store; stores require an account holder, and that is you.
- It does not sign, accept terms, pay, or create accounts for you.
- It does not replace your accountant or your lawyer.
- It never poses as a person: every message to someone outside says an AI assistant prepared it.
What it costs to run
About 170 USD a month of AI usage, for the whole team at a normal pace.
This is what the agents consume at your AI provider to do their work. You pay it to your AI provider, not to us. It is an estimate.
- A quiet month (little to do): about 9 USD.
- A normal month: about 170 USD.
- A very busy month: 200 USD at most. That is your limit: the team slows down instead of going over it, and asks you before any change.
The amount on each role in the chart is its share of this monthly total.
Why this organization
8 reasons, 8 assumptions
- Every company gets a chief of staff, an independent reviewer and a clerk.
- A software product at the idea stage needs: strategist, designer, technical lead, engineer, qa, administrator.
- A software product is approved by clicking it, so previews exist from the first week.
- At the idea stage roles that never check each other's work are merged from the start.
- The idea stage starts lean: the technical lead also builds as the engineer, carrying the lead’s title.
- The idea stage starts lean: previews and the list of what is live are one small job, the clerk's.
- The roles did not fit the plan (177 of 170 USD, 8 of 8 roles), so clerk joins chief of staff: they never check each other's work.
- Still over the plan after merging and deferring, so the company slows down: the roles the business does not require first, then coordination, then the roles it requires, and the roles that build last. No role goes below 40 % of normal activity.
Assumptions
language=en · timezone=UTC · market=unknown · existing=none · founderSkills=non-technical · rhythm=normal · adBudget=none · stage=idea (assumed by the reader: not in your words)