# NodeBench Product Doctrine v2 — Restaurant Design System

## Core Principle

NodeBench is a founder intelligence restaurant, not a software control plane. The menu is clarity, the specials are next steps, every visit leaves you with something useful to take away.

## Storefront Promise (one line)

**Know what company you're building, what you're missing, and what to do next.**

## Menu (outcomes, not features)

| Menu Item | What the founder gets |
|-----------|----------------------|
| Analyze my startup idea | Company truth, hidden requirements, next 3 moves |
| What changed this week | Contradictions, stale packets, urgent signals |
| What investors/banks care about | Readiness scan, diligence gaps, credibility check |
| Compare me to competitors | Side-by-side with real data and citations |
| Build my founder packet | Export-ready memo, delegation packet, Slack one-pager |
| Connect my context | MCP init, Claude Code bridge, live company dashboard |

## 5 Signature Dishes

1. **Founder Weekly Reset** — refresh context, surface contradictions, produce fresh packet
2. **Idea / Company Reality Check** — paste messy context, get structured truth
3. **Hidden Requirements Scan** — what sophisticated outsiders secretly expect
4. **Competitor & Market Brief** — cited, structured, taxonomy-classified
5. **Delegation Packet** — context + evidence + guardrails for agent handoff

## Stage-Based Menus

### New Founder (Day 1)
- What am I building?
- Starter company profile
- Hidden missing basics
- Next 3 moves

### Active Startup (Week 2+)
- What changed
- Diligence gaps
- Investor / banking readiness
- Product / GTM contradictions
- Delegation / implementation packets

### Mature Company (Month 3+)
- Company trajectory
- Workflow optimization
- Ambient monitoring
- Proof of operational maturity
- Public/discoverable profile

## Front of House vs Back of House

### Front of House (what users see)
- Ask box
- Company truth
- Hidden requirements
- Next steps
- Packet
- Export
- Connect context
- Daily specials (what changed)

### Back of House (hidden kitchen)
- MCP server (304 tools)
- Signal taxonomy (12 categories, 30 labels)
- Evidence spans (verification per claim)
- HyperLoop (archive + improvement@k)
- Session memory (action/failure records)
- Routing hints (token-overlap scoring)
- Pipeline v2 (Linkup → Gemini 3.1 → package)
- LangGraph service (Cloud Run)

## House Style

- Calm, premium, direct, human, sharp, founder-attentive
- NOT: noisy, tab-heavy, enterprise admin, over-technical
- Language: "Your company", "What changed", "What's missing", "Next moves", "Ready to send"
- NOT: "Strategy Intake", "Profiler", "Delta", "Workspace Orchestration Layer"

## Daily Specials Board

Surface that changes with each visit:
- What changed since last session
- Today's top contradiction
- New competitor signal
- Packet now stale
- New hidden requirement surfaced
- Recommended next move

## Takeaway Artifacts

Every visit must produce something usable:
- Slack one-pager
- Founder packet
- Investor / banker memo
- Diligence packet
- Delegation packet
- Public company profile draft

## Release Ladder

### Month 1: Clarity
- Mobile-first Ask with company truth
- Hidden requirements / founder credibility
- MCP init/search/explore/index
- Starter packet

### Month 2: Context
- Packet lineage
- Since-your-last-session
- Delegation packet
- Claude Code bridge

### Month 3: Handoff
- Packet-to-implementation flow
- GitHub workflow integration
- Role-based exports

### Month 4: Proof
- Workflow profiling
- Validated shortcut engine
- Benchmark lanes
- Before/after evidence

### Month 5: Compound
- Archive-based improvement loop
- Watchlists and ambient monitoring
- Founder progression scoring
- Vertical diligence packs

## 2-Week Push Rhythm

- Week 1: scope and wire one bottleneck
- Week 2: ship, dogfood, benchmark, collect before/after evidence
- Every release answers: **What painful system bottleneck disappears after this ships?**

## Internal Rule

Every page must answer:
1. What do I know now?
2. What should I do now?
3. What can I send now?

If a page doesn't answer all three, it's not ready to ship.
