MVP shipped in
six weeks.
From scope doc to production: an editorial platform with AI-assisted content workflows. One designer, two engineers, a tight scope, no detours.
Six weeks to validate
or kill the idea.
The client had a hypothesis about how editorial teams want to work with AI, and a window to test it before a competitor noticed. The brief: ship something real, in production, in six weeks. If the data was bad, kill it cleanly.
Most agencies' answer would be 'six weeks isn't enough.' Ours was 'we'll cut scope until it is.'
Cut scope.
Ship the spine.
- i.
Spine, not skeleton
Four user flows, picked from a list of seventeen. Everything else got 'phase 2' on a Notion doc.
- ii.
Buy where possible
Auth, payments, email: buy. Editor, AI workflows, the differentiated bits: build.
- iii.
Ship Friday week 3
Real users, real content, real data. Flag-gated, measured, iterated.
- iv.
Bake the feedback in
Weeks 4–6: only changes the data demanded. Resisted every 'one more thing.'
Live, measured,
and validated.
The hypothesis held. Editorial teams really do want AI in the content flow, but not where the client expected. The data redirected the next three months of roadmap.
More importantly: there was a 'next three months' to plan, instead of a quiet wind-down.
Stack
Frontend
Backend
AI
Bought
We expected an agency. We got a team that argued with our scope and saved us from spending three months building the wrong thing.
Let's talk about
what fits in six weeks.
30-minute discovery call. We'll be honest about whether the scope is doable, and what to cut if it isn't.