The Thinking

Sketch it on a napkin, before you build it

Before you open Claude, take ten minutes to sketch what's actually in your head. This is that sketch: rough, fast, and just for you. It's the raw material you'll bring into the brainstorm.

Products come from problems, almost always. So you start with the problem, never the feature.
Step 0 · the napkin

Seven things to scribble

This is a session with yourself, not a document for anyone else. Here's the same thinking, scribbled out for Retention Pulse.

Retention Pulse — on a napkin
(my scribble, before I talked to Claude)
1
The problem
members leave quietly, I notice too late
2
The job
show me who's slipping in time to act
3
The pieces
members · visits · payments · classes
4
Connections
it all lives in Hapana → read via browser
5
The features
spot quiet ones · rank by $ · colour by urgency
6
The view
one board: who needs me today
7
The edges
no messaging. no CRM. just who to call.
rough is fine. it's a napkin, not a contract.
Each box, explained

What goes in each one, and why

1

The problem

What's the actual problem you're solving? And what's your evidence it's real, not just a hunch?

Products come from problems. If you can't point to evidence the problem exists, you're about to build a beautiful solution to nothing. Start here, every time.

Retention Pulse
Members leave quietly and I only notice after they've gone. Last quarter: 6 walked, and every one had stopped showing up weeks before they cancelled. The signs were there. I just couldn't see them.
2

The job

If this thing did one job brilliantly, what would it be?

One sentence. The north star everything else has to serve. If a feature doesn't serve the job, it doesn't make the cut.

Retention Pulse
Show me who's quietly slipping away, while I can still do something about it.
3

The pieces

What real-world things does it deal with?

The nouns. These become the information your tool works with, so just list the real things in your world that it touches.

Retention Pulse
Members. Their class visits. Their payments. The classes themselves.
4

The connections

Where does that information already live, and what does this need to plug into?

You almost never start from scratch. Your data is already sitting in software you use every day, and Claude can read it straight through your browser.

Retention Pulse
It all lives in Hapana. Claude reads the members, visits and payments straight through my logged-in browser.
5

The features

What does it actually DO with all that?

The verbs. This is where the tool earns its keep, so write what it does to the pieces, in plain words.

Retention Pulse
Spots who's gone quiet. Ranks them by the money at risk. Colours them by how urgent they are.
6

The view

What do you open and look at?

The one surface you'll actually use. Keep it to what you genuinely need to see, nothing more.

Retention Pulse
One board. A colour-coded list of exactly who needs me today.
7

The edges

What does it deliberately NOT do?

The most important box, and the one nearly everyone skips. "What it won't do" is what keeps the build small enough to actually finish.

Retention Pulse
No messaging members. No replacing my CRM. It just tells me who to call. I do the calling.
Now you've got a napkin

That scribble is what you carry into the brainstorm

You don't walk in cold anymore. You walk in with a problem, a job, and a rough shape. That's where Claude turns your napkin into a real plan, and the loop begins.