# Product Agentic Organisation Foundry — complete guide

Revenue Puzzles · The Product Agentic Organisation · v1.0 · September 2026

A working bookshelf for the people, knowledge, decisions and agents behind a product. From discovering what matters to building, operating and improving it.

Each book is a starting specification. Supply your organisation's approved content, actual owner and permitted actions.

Source: https://revenuepuzzles.com/playbooks/product-agentic-organisation/

## 01 — Purpose & customer value

Why should this product exist, and which customer outcomes justify the work?

Suggested owner: Product leader + founder

### Purpose & mission

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

State the change the product should make for customers and the business. Give every initiative a reason beyond shipping a feature.

Suggested first artifact: `product-charter.md`

**Human owns:** Choose the mission and resolve competing commitments.

**Agent contributes:** Check proposals against the approved purpose.

**Accepted when:** A real initiative can be accepted or declined using the charter.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Customer outcomes

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Define the progress customers seek, their current alternatives and the conditions under which the product is useful.

Suggested first artifact: `customer-outcome-map.md`

**Human owns:** Choose outcomes worth solving and validate them with customers.

**Agent contributes:** Organise evidence by desired outcome and unresolved assumption.

**Accepted when:** Each priority outcome links to observed customer evidence.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Value proposition

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Explain who benefits, why the product is preferable in a specific situation and what evidence supports its promise.

Suggested first artifact: `value-proposition.md`

**Human owns:** Approve the promise and the differentiated value.

**Agent contributes:** Compare alternatives and flag unsupported claims.

**Accepted when:** The promise states its intended audience, evidence and limits.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Business model & economics

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Connect customer value, who pays, cost to serve, delivery capacity and the economic assumptions behind the product.

Suggested first artifact: `product-economics.xlsx`

**Human owns:** Set business assumptions and acceptable trade-offs.

**Agent contributes:** Model cost and revenue scenarios with explicit assumptions.

**Accepted when:** The model includes downside scenarios and cost per useful outcome.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Product principles

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Document the principles used to trade off simplicity, speed, user control, reliability and business goals.

Suggested first artifact: `product-principles.md`

**Human owns:** Choose principles and resolve conflicts between them.

**Agent contributes:** Review designs against concrete examples of each principle.

**Accepted when:** Principles explain decisions in at least three realistic trade-offs.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Users, buyers & stakeholders

Tags: Discovery · All product teams

Distinguish users, buyers, administrators, affected people and distribution partners. Their needs and authority may differ.

Suggested first artifact: `stakeholder-map.md`

**Human owns:** Choose whose needs take priority in each decision.

**Agent contributes:** Identify gaps and connect research participants to their roles.

**Accepted when:** The map identifies excluded or underserved groups and decision owners.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 02 — Strategy & portfolio

Where will we compete, what will we invest in, and what will we stop?

Suggested owner: Product leadership + business owner

### Strategic choices

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Specify the target segment, problem, advantage, capabilities and explicit exclusions that give the team direction.

Suggested first artifact: `product-strategy.md`

**Human owns:** Choose the position and resource commitments.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare options and evidence for the strategic trade-offs.

**Accepted when:** The strategy names choices, exclusions and conditions for revision.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Market & competitive dynamics

Tags: Discovery · All product teams

Examine customer alternatives, switching costs, distribution, market structure and changes that could weaken the product's advantage.

Suggested first artifact: `market-and-alternatives.md`

**Human owns:** Interpret the market and choose a response.

**Agent contributes:** Track sourced changes and distinguish observations from forecasts.

**Accepted when:** Every important market claim has a dated source and implication.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Opportunity portfolio

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Compare opportunities using value, evidence, effort, dependencies and downside. Treat a score as decision support.

Suggested first artifact: `opportunity-portfolio.csv`

**Human owns:** Prioritise investments and make stop or defer decisions.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare comparable evidence and sensitivity to assumptions.

**Accepted when:** Each funded opportunity has an owner, uncertainty and next evidence gate.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Outcome metrics & guardrails

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Define outcomes, leading signals and unwanted side effects with formulas, units, cohorts, time windows and authoritative sources.

Suggested first artifact: `product-metric-contracts.md`

**Human owns:** Approve the meanings, targets and decisions metrics support.

**Agent contributes:** Calculate from approved definitions and flag missing or incomparable data.

**Accepted when:** A second analyst can reproduce the result from the contract.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Outcome-based roadmap

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Sequence problems, hypotheses and evidence gates while separating customer commitments from discovery options.

Suggested first artifact: `outcome-roadmap.md`

**Human owns:** Choose priorities and approve external commitments.

**Agent contributes:** Maintain dependencies and evidence behind proposed changes.

**Accepted when:** Every roadmap item has a problem, owner and decision checkpoint.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### AI literacy & capability fit

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Explain models, context, tools and agents in task terms. Compare an AI approach with rules, conventional software and human work.

Suggested first artifact: `ai-capability-fit.md`

**Human owns:** Decide where uncertainty and model behaviour are acceptable.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare representative task trials and compare quality, cost and latency.

**Accepted when:** The chosen approach beats a documented baseline on relevant cases.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Platform & distribution strategy

Tags: Growth · AI & platform · All product teams

Choose how value reaches users through interfaces, integrations, marketplaces, partners or embedded workflows.

Suggested first artifact: `product-distribution-map.md`

**Human owns:** Choose access routes and ecosystem dependencies.

**Agent contributes:** Compare channel constraints and prepare integration hypotheses.

**Accepted when:** Each route has a target user, adoption hypothesis and responsible owner.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Assumptions & pre-mortems

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Record what must be true for a bet to succeed and imagine how it could fail before committing more resources.

Suggested first artifact: `strategy-assumptions.md`

**Human owns:** Decide which uncertainty deserves investigation first.

**Agent contributes:** Surface contradictions and update evidence behind assumptions.

**Accepted when:** The highest-risk assumption has a time-bounded validation plan.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 03 — Authority & accountability

Who may decide or act, with which permissions and routes for intervention?

Suggested owner: Product owner + relevant control owner

### Decision rights

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Assign accountable people for priorities, design choices, spending, customer promises, releases and incidents.

Suggested first artifact: `product-decision-rights.csv`

**Human owns:** Assign authority and resolve ownership gaps.

**Agent contributes:** Route decisions with evidence and the required approver.

**Accepted when:** Every consequential decision has an owner and escalation path.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Autonomy & human control

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Set authority per action and context, including what an agent may read, propose, change or release and how a person can intervene.

Suggested first artifact: `agent-authority-matrix.csv`

**Human owns:** Approve scope, limits and changes to delegated authority.

**Agent contributes:** Act through granted permissions and pause at defined boundaries.

**Accepted when:** A denied or approval-required action cannot execute through the tool layer.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Data use & research permissions

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Document allowed data collection, research participation, access, reuse and retention for each source and workflow.

Suggested first artifact: `product-data-use-register.md`

**Human owns:** Approve applicable rules with responsible specialists.

**Agent contributes:** Apply documented rules and surface uncertain permissions.

**Accepted when:** Each source has an owner, permitted uses and a retention decision.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Security & service expectations

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Specify expected service behaviour, access boundaries and failure consequences before choosing the architecture.

Suggested first artifact: `service-and-security-requirements.md`

**Human owns:** Approve requirements and acceptable operational trade-offs.

**Agent contributes:** Identify requirements that proposed designs do not satisfy.

**Accepted when:** Requirements have measurable checks and accountable technical owners.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Promises & commitments

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Control claims about product behaviour, delivery dates, AI capability and service levels, including budget and vendor commitments.

Suggested first artifact: `product-commitment-register.csv`

**Human owns:** Approve claims and commitments within assigned authority.

**Agent contributes:** Compare drafts and plans with approved evidence and constraints.

**Accepted when:** An external promise traces to approval and evidence or a stated condition.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Escalation & acceptance

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Define what accepted work looks like, who resolves uncertainty and how blocked, failed or disputed work is handled.

Suggested first artifact: `acceptance-and-escalation.md`

**Human owns:** Accept material outcomes and resolve exceptions.

**Agent contributes:** Stop on unmet criteria and prepare a clear exception record.

**Accepted when:** A failed case reaches the right owner without being marked complete.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 04 — Team & operating model

How do people, product disciplines and agents coordinate around outcomes?

Suggested owner: Product leadership + functional leaders

### Team topology & product trio

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Map the partnership between product, design and engineering, with research, data and other specialists connected to the decisions they support.

Suggested first artifact: `product-team-map.md`

**Human owns:** Choose team boundaries and assign outcome ownership.

**Agent contributes:** Expose dependencies and unclear handoffs.

**Accepted when:** Every product outcome has an accountable team and named partners.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Roles & mandates

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Give every human and agent role a purpose, scope, inputs, outputs, decision rights and a named person accountable for its work.

Suggested first artifact: `role-and-agent-charters.md`

**Human owns:** Assign roles and resolve conflicting responsibilities.

**Agent contributes:** Check task assignments against documented mandates.

**Accepted when:** No agent role is treated as the accountable approver of its own authority.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Planning & review cadences

Tags: Shared foundation · All product teams

Connect strategic planning, continuous discovery, delivery, growth experiments and results reviews in one operating calendar.

Suggested first artifact: `product-operating-calendar.csv`

**Human owns:** Choose the cadence and make the decisions in each review.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare briefs, collect evidence and track open decisions.

**Accepted when:** Every recurring meeting has a purpose, inputs and a decision output.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Capacity & dependencies

Tags: Design & delivery · All product teams

Make people, technical constraints, agent workload, support load and cross-team dependencies visible when making commitments.

Suggested first artifact: `capacity-and-dependency-map.md`

**Human owns:** Approve capacity allocation and negotiate trade-offs.

**Agent contributes:** Find bottlenecks and model the effects of changes.

**Accepted when:** Delivery commitments account for maintenance and dependency constraints.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Hiring & proof of capability

Tags: Shared foundation · Agents in the team

Translate interview and career themes into role scorecards, fair work samples and evidence of product judgment, collaboration and technical fluency.

Suggested first artifact: `product-hiring-scorecard.md`

**Human owns:** Make hiring decisions and assess human context.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare structured rubrics and organise evidence for human review.

**Accepted when:** The same job-related criteria are applied consistently with documented decisions.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Capability growth & feedback

Tags: Shared foundation · Agents in the team

Define capability levels and practical learning through coached product work, results reviews and feedback on decisions.

Suggested first artifact: `product-capability-ladder.md`

**Human owns:** Coach people and own development or performance judgments.

**Agent contributes:** Suggest practice exercises and organise examples from agreed work.

**Accepted when:** Development goals connect to observed work and a review conversation.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 05 — Discovery & customer evidence

What should we learn before deciding what deserves to be built?

Suggested owner: Product trio + research lead

### Continuous discovery

Tags: Discovery · All product teams

Establish a recurring way to investigate opportunities with customers and connect learning to active product decisions.

Suggested first artifact: `continuous-discovery-plan.md`

**Human owns:** Choose learning priorities and maintain customer relationships.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare research plans and track unresolved questions.

**Accepted when:** Research leads to a specific decision or a revised assumption.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Interviews & field research

Tags: Discovery · All product teams

Plan recruitment, questions and observation around behaviour and context, with permission to use the resulting evidence.

Suggested first artifact: `interview-and-observation-guide.md`

**Human owns:** Run sensitive conversations and interpret context.

**Agent contributes:** Draft guides and structure permitted notes or transcripts.

**Accepted when:** Findings preserve source context and distinguish observation from interpretation.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Behavioural evidence

Tags: Discovery · All product teams

Use event data, support signals and permitted session observation to understand where users succeed or struggle.

Suggested first artifact: `behavioural-evidence-brief.md`

**Human owns:** Choose questions and interpret the limits of the data.

**Agent contributes:** Identify patterns, data gaps and cases worth investigating.

**Accepted when:** Instrumentation quality is checked before a behavioural claim is accepted.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Synthesis & opportunity mapping

Tags: Discovery · All product teams

Connect observations to needs, opportunities and alternatives while retaining disagreement, uncertainty and provenance.

Suggested first artifact: `opportunity-evidence-map.md`

**Human owns:** Judge the strength and meaning of patterns.

**Agent contributes:** Group evidence, propose themes and link back to sources.

**Accepted when:** Every material theme is traceable and contradictory evidence remains visible.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Assumption tests & prototypes

Tags: Discovery · Design & delivery · All product teams

Choose the cheapest credible test for a risky assumption, with a decision rule and the limits of what the test can establish.

Suggested first artifact: `assumption-test-card.md`

**Human owns:** Choose the hypothesis and decide what the result means.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare test materials and compare outcomes with the rule.

**Accepted when:** The test can change a decision and has a recorded result.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Market & product case library

Tags: Discovery · Growth · All product teams

Study mechanisms behind other products and markets, recording what depends on context and what might transfer to your product.

Suggested first artifact: `product-case-study-template.md`

**Human owns:** Decide which lessons are relevant to the current situation.

**Agent contributes:** Collect sourced examples and compare operating mechanisms.

**Accepted when:** A proposed lesson states its context and a local validation step.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Product-market fit evidence

Tags: Discovery · Growth · All product teams

Combine customer pull, repeated use, delivered value, retention and commercial evidence appropriate to the product's stage.

Suggested first artifact: `pmf-evidence-review.md`

**Human owns:** Judge whether to persist, narrow, pivot or scale.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare segment-level evidence and flag conflicting signals.

**Accepted when:** A scale decision links to durable value evidence rather than a single score.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Feedback & support intelligence

Tags: Discovery · All product teams

Connect support conversations, customer requests and user feedback to product opportunities without equating request volume with priority.

Suggested first artifact: `feedback-routing-contract.md`

**Human owns:** Resolve customer commitments and prioritisation judgments.

**Agent contributes:** Cluster feedback and route evidence to the right owner.

**Accepted when:** Customer issues retain identity, history and a visible disposition.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 06 — Design & product specification

What experience and behaviour are we committing to, including failure cases?

Suggested owner: Product trio + relevant technical owner

### Journeys & information architecture

Tags: Design & delivery · All product teams

Design task flows, navigation, states and information structure around what users are trying to achieve.

Suggested first artifact: `experience-and-state-map.md`

**Human owns:** Choose the experience and key trade-offs.

**Agent contributes:** Generate alternatives and check state coverage.

**Accepted when:** The main journey and recovery routes can be walked through end to end.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Design systems & accessibility

Tags: Design & delivery · All product teams

Specify reusable interaction patterns, content standards and accessibility requirements across the product.

Suggested first artifact: `design-system-contract.md`

**Human owns:** Approve patterns and inclusive experience requirements.

**Agent contributes:** Check consistency and prepare component examples.

**Accepted when:** Representative flows pass agreed accessibility and usability checks.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Prototyping & usability

Tags: Design & delivery · All product teams

Build enough of an experience to test a specific question and record what remains simulated or unproven.

Suggested first artifact: `prototype-test-brief.md`

**Human owns:** Choose what to test and interpret observed behaviour.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare prototypes and organise usability findings.

**Accepted when:** A prototype result answers its research question without implying production readiness.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### PRDs & acceptance criteria

Tags: Design & delivery · All product teams

Specify problem, intended users, scope, scenarios, constraints, instrumentation and acceptance criteria, including what is excluded.

Suggested first artifact: `product-requirements.md`

**Human owns:** Own product intent and approve scope.

**Agent contributes:** Draft and reconcile requirements against evidence and constraints.

**Accepted when:** Engineering, design and QA can interpret the same examples consistently.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### AI interaction & user control

Tags: AI & platform · Design & delivery · Agentic product features

Design initiation, progress, uncertainty, confirmation, editing, cancellation and recovery around the customer's task.

Suggested first artifact: `agent-experience-spec.md`

**Human owns:** Decide where users must choose, confirm or intervene.

**Agent contributes:** Prototype interactions and check coverage of ambiguous states.

**Accepted when:** A user can understand the task state and recover from an unacceptable result.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Context & output contracts

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Define required context, authoritative instructions, input schemas, output schemas and evidence requirements for an AI task.

Suggested first artifact: `context-and-output-contract.md`

**Human owns:** Approve business meaning and required evidence.

**Agent contributes:** Assemble scoped context and return validated structured results.

**Accepted when:** Missing context or invalid output produces a defined failure state.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Model & capability selection

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Compare candidate models and approaches using representative tasks, access constraints, quality, latency and total operating cost.

Suggested first artifact: `model-selection-record.md`

**Human owns:** Choose acceptable trade-offs and release criteria.

**Agent contributes:** Run controlled comparisons and report failure patterns.

**Accepted when:** The selected model has measured performance on the intended task mix.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Failure, fallback & recovery UX

Tags: AI & platform · Design & delivery · Agentic product features

Define what users experience when confidence, evidence, permissions or services are insufficient, including human support and recovery.

Suggested first artifact: `failure-state-catalogue.md`

**Human owns:** Approve which actions stop and which fallback is acceptable.

**Agent contributes:** Detect defined failures and prepare the permitted recovery step.

**Accepted when:** Failure tests produce understandable outcomes without unsupported completion claims.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 07 — Delivery & product lifecycle

How does an accepted idea become a maintained product in real use?

Suggested owner: Engineering lead + product trio

### Delivery workflow

Tags: Design & delivery · All product teams

Define how work moves from an accepted problem through design, implementation, review, release and follow-up.

Suggested first artifact: `delivery-workflow.md`

**Human owns:** Choose the operating workflow and resolve priority conflicts.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare task state, dependencies and evidence for handoffs.

**Accepted when:** Work cannot be marked complete before its acceptance criteria are met.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Engineering & task decomposition

Tags: Design & delivery · Agents in the team

Translate approved requirements into bounded implementation tasks with dependencies, expected changes and verification.

Suggested first artifact: `implementation-plan.md`

**Human owns:** Approve architectural choices and review material changes.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare code or configuration within a scoped task.

**Accepted when:** Changes meet the requirements and meaningful checks cover remaining risks.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Version control & change history

Tags: Design & delivery · AI & platform · Team + product

Version code, prompts, skills, schemas, evaluations and approved context so a result can be traced to its released configuration.

Suggested first artifact: `change-and-version-policy.md`

**Human owns:** Approve changes and manage release ownership.

**Agent contributes:** Record versions and produce reviewable change summaries.

**Accepted when:** A production result can be linked to the relevant released components.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Release & progressive rollout

Tags: Design & delivery · AI & platform · Team + product

Specify who receives a change, readiness checks, monitoring, rollback and the evidence required to expand exposure.

Suggested first artifact: `release-and-rollout-plan.md`

**Human owns:** Authorise release scope and decide expansion or rollback.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare readiness evidence and execute approved rollout steps.

**Accepted when:** A limited rollout has observed results and a tested stop or rollback path.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Product Ops & handoffs

Tags: Design & delivery · All product teams

Maintain product records, decision inputs and handoff contracts between product, engineering, support and commercial teams.

Suggested first artifact: `product-ops-handoff-map.md`

**Human owns:** Assign system ownership and resolve service expectations.

**Agent contributes:** Maintain records and identify missing handoff inputs.

**Accepted when:** Receiving teams can use the handoff without reconstructing the decision.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Maintenance & sunset

Tags: Design & delivery · All product teams

Plan support, technical debt, compatibility, migration and retirement alongside new feature work.

Suggested first artifact: `product-lifecycle-plan.md`

**Human owns:** Approve lifecycle trade-offs and customer communications.

**Agent contributes:** Identify affected users and prepare migration or retirement checks.

**Accepted when:** A retired capability leaves users, records and dependencies in a known state.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 08 — Growth & monetisation

How do users reach value, keep receiving it, and support a viable business?

Suggested owner: Product + growth lead + commercial owner

### Onboarding & activation

Tags: Growth · Design & delivery · All product teams

Define the first meaningful value milestone and remove barriers that prevent the intended users reaching it.

Suggested first artifact: `activation-contract.md`

**Human owns:** Choose the value milestone and experience priorities.

**Agent contributes:** Analyse drop-offs and prepare improvement hypotheses.

**Accepted when:** Activation is defined by customer value with a consistent cohort and time window.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Engagement & retention

Tags: Growth · All product teams

Distinguish useful recurring behaviour from empty activity, and understand retention by user need, cohort and product context.

Suggested first artifact: `retention-diagnostic.md`

**Human owns:** Interpret value delivery and prioritise interventions.

**Agent contributes:** Compare cohorts and surface changes requiring investigation.

**Accepted when:** Retention claims use appropriate cohorts and separate correlation from explanation.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Growth loops & distribution

Tags: Growth · All product teams

Describe how delivered value creates the next adoption event, including referral, collaboration, content or ecosystem mechanisms.

Suggested first artifact: `growth-loop-map.md`

**Human owns:** Choose the mechanism and acceptable customer experience.

**Agent contributes:** Model assumptions and instrument loop steps.

**Accepted when:** A loop has measured conversion, repeat behaviour and a clear failure point.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Pricing, packaging & AI costs

Tags: Growth · AI & platform · All product teams

Connect customer value, packages, usage limits and cost to serve. For AI, account for variable inference, tool and review costs.

Suggested first artifact: `pricing-and-packaging-model.xlsx`

**Human owns:** Approve prices, packaging and commercial commitments.

**Agent contributes:** Model scenarios and flag margin or usage assumptions.

**Accepted when:** The model supports typical and heavy users without hiding cost assumptions.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Launch & product-led growth

Tags: Growth · All product teams

Connect the product's value, activation, distribution, communication and support readiness for an intended segment.

Suggested first artifact: `product-launch-brief.md`

**Human owns:** Choose the launch audience, narrative and readiness decision.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare launch assets and collect readiness evidence.

**Accepted when:** The intended customer can discover, try and reach value through a measured path.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Customer value & expansion

Tags: Growth · All product teams

Use delivered value, adoption and unmet needs to inform account growth, renewals and product improvements.

Suggested first artifact: `customer-value-review.md`

**Human owns:** Own customer commitments and expansion decisions.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare value evidence and surface adoption or delivery gaps.

**Accepted when:** An expansion proposal explains the additional value and its evidence.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 09 — Product brains & shared memory

What knowledge is authoritative, retrievable and worth remembering?

Suggested owner: A named owner for every context collection

### Product & strategy brain

Tags: Shared foundation · Team + product

Maintain approved purpose, product truth, strategy, principles, roadmap decisions and constraints in a versioned context index.

Suggested first artifact: `product-brain-index.md`

**Human owns:** Approve product truth and strategic changes.

**Agent contributes:** Retrieve the applicable context and flag contradictions.

**Accepted when:** Each important fact has an owner, source, version and review date.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Customer evidence vault

Tags: Discovery · Team + product

Store permitted interviews, observations and research artifacts with provenance, access rules, cohort context and uncertainty.

Suggested first artifact: `customer-evidence-schema.md`

**Human owns:** Approve evidence use and interpret sensitive context.

**Agent contributes:** Retrieve relevant evidence without stripping its source or limitations.

**Accepted when:** A synthesis can be traced to original permitted research records.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Metrics & semantic definitions

Tags: Shared foundation · Team + product

Keep event meanings, metric contracts, entities, units, time windows and exclusions consistent across teams and agents.

Suggested first artifact: `product-semantic-layer.md`

**Human owns:** Approve business definitions and changes to meaning.

**Agent contributes:** Use the current definitions and explain comparability limits.

**Accepted when:** Two workflows answer the same metric question consistently.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Technical & design context

Tags: Design & delivery · AI & platform · Team + product

Index architecture decisions, design rules, interface contracts and known constraints needed for reliable product work.

Suggested first artifact: `technical-context-index.md`

**Human owns:** Approve architectural and design decisions.

**Agent contributes:** Retrieve relevant contracts and flag outdated references.

**Accepted when:** A task can find the current interface and design constraints it depends on.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Decision & experiment memory

Tags: Shared foundation · Team + product

Record what was decided, by whom, using which evidence and what would justify revisiting the decision.

Suggested first artifact: `product-decision-log.csv`

**Human owns:** Accept learnings and authorise changes in direction.

**Agent contributes:** Surface relevant precedents and prepare proposed updates.

**Accepted when:** A repeated debate can recover the original evidence and decision conditions.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Context lifecycle & retrieval policy

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Define approval, access, retrieval, freshness, conflict resolution and removal rules. Retrieved evidence does not grant authority to act.

Suggested first artifact: `context-lifecycle-policy.md`

**Human owns:** Approve authoritative context and retention decisions.

**Agent contributes:** Retrieve scoped evidence and report stale or conflicting material.

**Accepted when:** Tests exclude unauthorised sources and preserve provenance and current versions.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 10 — Agent roles & orchestration

Which bounded work can agents own operationally, and how is it coordinated?

Suggested owner: An accountable human owner for each agent

### Skills & work contracts

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Give every reusable agent skill a trigger, input contract, tools, output, permissions, acceptance criteria and stop conditions.

Suggested first artifact: `agent-skill-contract.md`

**Human owns:** Approve the mandate and allowed effects.

**Agent contributes:** Execute the defined skill and return evidence of its result.

**Accepted when:** A skill can be evaluated independently against representative tasks.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Research & synthesis agent

Tags: Discovery · AI & platform · Agents in the team

A proposed role for research preparation, permitted evidence analysis and source-linked synthesis supporting product decisions.

Suggested first artifact: `research-agent-spec.md`

**Human owns:** Own research relationships and interpret material findings.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare research briefs and structured evidence summaries.

**Accepted when:** Important findings trace to sources and retain uncertainty or disagreement.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Product & design copilot

Tags: Design & delivery · AI & platform · Agents in the team

A proposed role for refining problem briefs, requirements, design alternatives and decision packs within approved product context.

Suggested first artifact: `product-copilot-spec.md`

**Human owns:** Own product judgment, experience choices and commitments.

**Agent contributes:** Draft artifacts and check consistency across requirements and evidence.

**Accepted when:** A reviewer can see assumptions, alternatives and the basis for each recommendation.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Implementation & QA agent

Tags: Design & delivery · AI & platform · Agents in the team

A proposed role for scoped implementation, test preparation and review assistance under repository and release controls.

Suggested first artifact: `implementation-agent-spec.md`

**Human owns:** Approve architecture and release consequential changes.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare bounded changes and verification evidence.

**Accepted when:** The agent demonstrates behaviour against acceptance cases and reports failures.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Customer-facing product agent

Tags: AI & platform · Agentic product features

A proposed product capability that pursues a customer's task with scoped tools, clear progress, confirmation and recoverable outcomes.

Suggested first artifact: `customer-agent-spec.md`

**Human owns:** Approve the customer experience and operating boundaries.

**Agent contributes:** Perform authorised task steps and report the actual outcome.

**Accepted when:** Representative customer tasks complete correctly or fail transparently with recovery.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Plans, loops & graphs

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Choose a fixed workflow, bounded loop or branching graph according to task variability; define terminal states and iteration limits.

Suggested first artifact: `agent-control-flow.md`

**Human owns:** Approve the control structure and consequential branches.

**Agent contributes:** Track progress, evidence and permitted transitions.

**Accepted when:** Repeated or ambiguous steps cannot create an unbounded execution loop.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Coordination & delegation

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Use additional agents when separable work and evidence justify coordination cost. Define handoff contracts and independent acceptance.

Suggested first artifact: `agent-coordination-map.md`

**Human owns:** Own priorities, resource allocation and disputed results.

**Agent contributes:** Assign bounded subtasks and reconcile returned evidence.

**Accepted when:** Delegation preserves scope and cannot expand permissions or duplicate side effects.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Goals, checkpoints & budgets

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Attach quality, time, spend and action limits to each run, with checkpoints, cancellation and resumable state.

Suggested first artifact: `agent-run-policy.md`

**Human owns:** Approve budgets and decide when work should continue or stop.

**Agent contributes:** Track progress and pause at enforced limits.

**Accepted when:** An exhausted budget or cancellation causes a known, inspectable stopped state.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 11 — Systems & platform foundations

Where do agents run, retrieve context and interact with the product stack?

Suggested owner: Platform / engineering owner + system owners

### Model & inference services

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Register model services, versions, access constraints, performance expectations and supported fallback behaviours.

Suggested first artifact: `model-service-register.md`

**Human owns:** Approve providers and operational trade-offs.

**Agent contributes:** Use the approved service configuration and record failures or versions.

**Accepted when:** A service change triggers compatibility and quality checks for affected tasks.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Tools, APIs, MCP & CLIs

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Define callable capabilities, typed inputs, outputs, side effects and access scopes independently of a specific connector implementation.

Suggested first artifact: `product-tool-catalogue.md`

**Human owns:** Approve capabilities and the identity allowed to call them.

**Agent contributes:** Invoke permitted interfaces and preserve action receipts.

**Accepted when:** A tool call can be validated, authorised and reconciled to its actual effect.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Data, identity & event contracts

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Define entities, stable IDs, event semantics, access checks, duplicate prevention and reconciliation across systems.

Suggested first artifact: `data-and-event-contracts.md`

**Human owns:** Approve authoritative sources and conflict rules.

**Agent contributes:** Map records and process events under those contracts.

**Accepted when:** Duplicate or delayed events do not cause duplicate business actions.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Storage, indexes & retrieval

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Map operational records, files, search indexes and long-term context. Choose retrieval methods based on the question and evidence needs.

Suggested first artifact: `storage-and-retrieval-map.md`

**Human owns:** Choose canonical stores and access or retention boundaries.

**Agent contributes:** Retrieve relevant authorised data with provenance.

**Accepted when:** Retrieval tests measure relevance, completeness and correct access boundaries.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Runtimes, queues & schedules

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Specify execution environments, triggers, concurrency, retry behaviour, timeouts and state required to resume work safely.

Suggested first artifact: `runtime-and-trigger-map.md`

**Human owns:** Approve service expectations and operational limits.

**Agent contributes:** Execute eligible work and checkpoint progress.

**Accepted when:** An interrupted run can resume without losing state or repeating completed effects.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Workspaces, harnesses & toolchain

Tags: Design & delivery · AI & platform · Agents in the team

Give teams controlled environments for research, prototyping, coding and agent work, with reusable context and clear environment boundaries.

Suggested first artifact: `product-workspace-standard.md`

**Human owns:** Choose tool families and approve environment access.

**Agent contributes:** Work within the assigned project, instructions and tool scopes.

**Accepted when:** Prototype, test and production environments have explicit access and promotion rules.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## 12 — Evaluation, reliability & learning

How do we know the product works, and how do results improve the organisation?

Suggested owner: Product + engineering + data / evaluation owners

### Evaluation cases & baselines

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Build representative tasks covering normal, difficult and failure cases; compare results with a baseline and task-specific acceptance criteria.

Suggested first artifact: `product-evaluation-pack.md`

**Human owns:** Define acceptable outcomes and review ambiguous cases.

**Agent contributes:** Run checks and report case-level evidence.

**Accepted when:** A change cannot pass by averaging away a material failure class.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Human review & judge calibration

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Use explicit rubrics and human-labelled examples to assess automated judging. Measure disagreement and recheck after task or model changes.

Suggested first artifact: `evaluation-rubric.md`

**Human owns:** Own quality judgments and adjudicate disagreements.

**Agent contributes:** Apply calibrated rubrics and surface uncertainty.

**Accepted when:** Automated scores are checked against human judgments and known blind spots.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Experiments & causal evidence

Tags: Growth · Discovery · All product teams

Define the hypothesis, assignment unit, success metric, guardrails, exposure and analysis plan before interpreting an experiment.

Suggested first artifact: `experiment-plan.md`

**Human owns:** Approve the design and business decision rule.

**Agent contributes:** Check instrumentation and analyse results within the agreed plan.

**Accepted when:** The conclusion states uncertainty and what the design can establish.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Observability, quality & cost

Tags: AI & platform · Team + product

Track task outcomes, traces, quality, latency, cost and human review load separately from activity volume.

Suggested first artifact: `agent-observability-contract.md`

**Human owns:** Choose thresholds and decide interventions.

**Agent contributes:** Link runs to outcome evidence and flag actionable deviations.

**Accepted when:** A failed or costly outcome can be traced to its relevant steps and versions.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Regression & release evidence

Tags: Design & delivery · AI & platform · Team + product

Check the combined effect of code, prompts, models, skills, data and tool changes before increasing customer or operational exposure.

Suggested first artifact: `release-evidence-record.md`

**Human owns:** Approve release acceptance and any explicit exception.

**Agent contributes:** Assemble comparisons and report unresolved regressions.

**Accepted when:** The release decision records the tested configuration and remaining limitations.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

### Results reviews & incident learning

Tags: Shared foundation · Team + product

Connect product results, failed assumptions and operational incidents to proposed changes in strategy, design, workflows and agent instructions.

Suggested first artifact: `results-and-learning-review.md`

**Human owns:** Approve lessons and changes to the operating model.

**Agent contributes:** Prepare evidence, recurring patterns and follow-up tasks.

**Accepted when:** Each material lesson has an owner, an approved action and a follow-up check.

Owner: ______  |  Approved version: ______  |  Review date: ______

## Project paths

### Start one useful team agent

Outcome: One research workflow that produces a useful, source-linked brief with a named reviewer.

Books in order: Purpose & mission → Continuous discovery → Customer evidence vault → Research & synthesis agent → Autonomy & human control → Skills & work contracts → Evaluation cases & baselines → Results reviews & incident learning

Measure: Compare evidence quality, review effort and time to a useful decision with the current workflow.

### Ship a customer-facing agent

Outcome: A bounded customer task delivered through a clear experience with evaluation and a controlled rollout.

Books in order: Customer outcomes → PRDs & acceptance criteria → AI interaction & user control → Context & output contracts → Customer-facing product agent → Tools, APIs, MCP & CLIs → Evaluation cases & baselines → Release & progressive rollout → Observability, quality & cost → Results reviews & incident learning

Measure: Measure correct task completion, recoverable failures, customer value and cost per accepted outcome.

### Improve product activation

Outcome: An evidence-backed change that helps intended users reach the first meaningful value milestone.

Books in order: Outcome metrics & guardrails → Interviews & field research → Behavioural evidence → Onboarding & activation → Prototyping & usability → Experiments & causal evidence → Release & progressive rollout → Engagement & retention → Results reviews & incident learning

Measure: Measure activation by an agreed cohort and time window, with retention and experience guardrails.

### Design the product operating model

Outcome: A shared model of outcome ownership, decision rights, team interfaces and recurring review decisions.

Books in order: Purpose & mission → Strategic choices → Team topology & product trio → Decision rights → Roles & mandates → Planning & review cadences → Opportunity portfolio → Product & strategy brain → Results reviews & incident learning

Measure: Review decision quality, handoff failures and progress against customer outcomes.