# Game-Changing Features

A strategic product thinking skill that helps identify 10x opportunities and high-leverage improvements for your product.

## Purpose

This skill shifts your mindset from incremental improvements to transformative thinking. Instead of asking "what feature should we add next?", it asks "what would make this 10x more valuable?" It's designed for founders, product managers, and teams who want to find the moves that make users unable to live without their product.

## When to Use

Activate this skill when you need:

- Strategic product thinking and prioritization
- To identify high-impact features that differentiate from competitors
- To find quick wins with outsized impact
- To explore what would make your product 10x better
- Product strategy discussions about "what should we build next?"
- To validate if you're working on the right things

Trigger phrases include:

- "What would make this 10x better?"
- "Product strategy"
- "What should we build next?"
- "10x opportunities"
- "Game-changing features"
- "High-leverage improvements"

## How It Works

### The Approach

This skill follows a structured 5-step workflow:

1. **Understand Current Value** - Deep dive into what the product does today, who uses it, and why
2. **Find 10x Opportunities** - Think across three scales (Massive, Medium, Small)
3. **Evaluate Ruthlessly** - Score ideas on impact, reach, frequency, differentiation, defensibility, and feasibility
4. **Identify Highest-Leverage Moves** - Find quick wins, strategic bets, and compounding features
5. **Prioritize** - Stack rank into Do Now, Do Next, Explore, and Backlog

### Three Scales of Thinking

**Massive (High effort, transformative)**

- Features that fundamentally expand what the product can do
- Opens new markets, use cases, or capabilities
- Makes competitors nervous

**Medium (Moderate effort, high leverage)**

- Significantly enhances the core experience
- Force multipliers on what already works
- Turns casual users into power users

**Small Gems (Low effort, disproportionate value)**

- Tiny changes that punch way above their weight
- Often overlooked because they seem "too simple"
- Single buttons/shortcuts that save minutes daily

### Evaluation Framework

Each idea is assessed across 6 criteria:

| Criteria        | Question                                            |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------------- |
| Impact          | How much more valuable does this make the product?  |
| Reach           | What % of users would this affect?                  |
| Frequency       | How often would users encounter this value?         |
| Differentiation | Does this set us apart or just match competitors?   |
| Defensibility   | Is this easy to copy or does it compound over time? |
| Feasibility     | Can we actually build this?                         |

Scoring:

- 🔥 **Must do** - High impact, clearly worth it
- 👍 **Strong** - Good impact, should prioritize
- 🤔 **Maybe** - Interesting but needs more thought
- ❌ **Pass** - Not worth it right now

## Key Features

### Systematic Exploration

Forces you through 10 idea categories to ensure comprehensive coverage:

- Speed - What takes too long?
- Automation - What's repetitive?
- Intelligence - What could be smarter?
- Integration - What else do users use?
- Collaboration - How do users work together?
- Personalization - How is everyone different?
- Visibility - What's hidden that shouldn't be?
- Confidence - What creates anxiety?
- Delight - What could spark joy?
- Access - Who can't use this yet?

### Documentation-First

All session outputs are saved to `.claude/docs/ai/<product-or-area>/10x/session-N.md`. This ensures:

- Full traceability of strategic thinking
- Easy sharing with team members
- Historical record of decisions
- No chat clutter - pure strategy focus

### Pure Strategy Mode

This skill is **code-free**. No implementation, no prototypes - just strategic thinking. Implementation comes later, after you've identified the right moves.

## Usage Examples

### Example 1: SaaS Dashboard Product

```
User: I want to think about 10x opportunities for our analytics dashboard

[Skill activates and guides through:]
1. Understanding current dashboard capabilities
2. Exploring opportunities like:
   - Massive: AI-powered anomaly detection that auto-investigates issues
   - Medium: Collaborative annotations and shared insights
   - Small: One-click report scheduling from any view
3. Prioritizing quick wins vs strategic bets
4. Output saved to `.claude/docs/ai/analytics-dashboard/10x/session-1.md`
```

### Example 2: Mobile App

```
User: What would make our fitness app 10x better?

[Skill explores:]
- Speed: Instant workout logging with voice
- Automation: Smart rest day recommendations
- Intelligence: Predictive injury prevention
- Collaboration: Virtual workout buddies
- Delight: Achievement celebrations that don't feel gamified

[Result: Prioritized list of 15 opportunities with clear next steps]
```

### Example 3: Developer Tool

```
User: Product strategy session for our API testing tool

[Skill identifies:]
- Do Now: Auto-generate test cases from API docs (2 weeks, huge value)
- Do Next: Team collaboration with shared test suites (1 month, unlocks enterprise)
- Explore: AI that writes tests by watching you use the API (3 months, could be transformative)

[Output: Full strategic document with rationale and risk assessment]
```

## What You Get

After a session, you'll have:

- **Current Value Assessment** - Clear understanding of your product's core value proposition
- **Categorized Opportunities** - Ideas organized by scale (Massive/Medium/Small)
- **Scored Ideas** - Each opportunity evaluated on 6 criteria with clear scoring
- **Prioritized Roadmap** - Stack-ranked into Do Now / Do Next / Explore / Backlog
- **Evidence-Based Reasoning** - Ideas grounded in codebase research and user behavior
- **Unblocked Questions** - Clear list of assumptions to validate and decisions to make

## Core Principles

1. **Think Big First** - Don't self-censor with "that's too hard"
2. **Small Can Be Huge** - Don't dismiss simple ideas; sometimes one button changes everything
3. **User Value > Feature Count** - 10 features adding 1% each ≠ 1 feature adding 10x
4. **Be Specific** - "Better UX" is not an idea; "One-click rescheduling from notification" is
5. **Question Assumptions** - "Users want X" may be wrong
6. **Compound Thinking** - Prefer features that get better over time
7. **No Safe Ideas** - If every idea is "obviously good," you're not thinking hard enough
8. **Cite Evidence** - Reference what you saw in codebase or research

## Tips for Best Results

### Before Starting

Provide context on:

- Product/Area you're thinking about
- Current state (brief description)
- Constraints (technical limits, timeline, team size)

### During the Session

- Be open to uncomfortable ideas
- Push back on assumptions
- Ask "what would make users tell their friends?"
- Consider both 10x team size and 1/10th team size scenarios

### After the Session

- Validate key assumptions with users
- Share the strategic document with your team
- Pick 1-2 quick wins to test first
- Revisit and update as you learn

## Output Location

All sessions are saved to:

```
.claude/docs/ai/<product-or-area>/10x/session-N.md
```

This keeps your strategic thinking organized, searchable, and shareable with your team.

## Not Included

This skill does NOT:

- Write code or implementation plans (use after strategy is clear)
- Make final decisions (provides recommendations, you decide)
- Replace user research (complements it with strategic analysis)
- Guarantee success (identifies high-potential opportunities to test)

## Related Skills

- `feature-planning` - For breaking down chosen features into implementation plans
- `implementation-blueprint` - For architecting how to build selected opportunities
- `dev-spec` - For creating detailed specs after strategy is set
- `critical-brainstorm` - For stress-testing specific ideas before committing

---

**Remember**: This skill is about finding the moves that matter. Not every idea will work, but the goal is to identify the ones worth testing that could fundamentally change your product's trajectory.
