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Preseed Workflow

Transform your rough idea into comprehensive documentation before writing a single line of code.

Overview#

The Preseed workflow is the foundational first step in building any product. It takes a rough idea and systematically transforms it into structured documentation that serves as the foundation for everything that follows.

Preseed → Seed → Launch → Growth → Scale

Most projects fail not because of bad code, but because of unclear foundations:

  • Problem not validated
  • Audience undefined
  • Market unknown
  • Business model unclear
  • Requirements scattered

Preseed solves this by generating all foundational documents from minimal input.

What You'll Create#

By completing the Preseed workflow, you'll have:

DocumentPurposeTime Invested
Vision DocumentProblem/solution foundationEssential
Target AudiencePersonas and ICP definitionEssential
Market AnalysisTAM/SAM/SOM sizingRecommended
Competitive AnalysisLandscape and positioningRecommended
Business ModelRevenue model and pricingEssential
Product RequirementsUser stories and MVP scopeEssential
Technical SpecArchitecture decisionsOptional
RoadmapDevelopment phasesRecommended

Quick Start#

Recommended: Use the smart entry point:

# Smart entry point - detects your context and guides you bootspring preseed start

This will:

  • Check for files in your drop zone
  • Offer to analyze existing materials
  • Guide you to the appropriate next step

Alternative approaches:

1# Full interactive wizard 2bootspring preseed init 3 4# Quick mode (minimal questions) 5bootspring preseed init --quick 6 7# Investor-focused preset 8bootspring preseed init --preset=investor

The Drop Zone#

Don't know where to start? Use the drop zone:

1# Set up context folders 2bootspring preseed setup 3 4# Drop any files you have 5cp ~/pitch-deck.pdf .bootspring/preseed/context/drop/ 6cp ~/notes.md .bootspring/preseed/context/drop/ 7 8# Let AI analyze them 9bootspring preseed start 10# Select: "Analyze your drop zone files"

The drop zone accepts any file type - PDFs, notes, screenshots, spreadsheets. Bootspring generates an AI-ready prompt that categorizes and extracts relevant information.

Learn more about the Drop Zone

Workflow Phases#

Phase 1: Idea Capture#

Duration: 15-30 minutes

The interactive wizard guides you through 8 structured sections:

  1. Project Identity - Name, tagline, category
  2. Problem Statement - Pain points and timing
  3. Solution Overview - Features and differentiation
  4. Target Audience - Segments and personas
  5. Market Opportunity - TAM/SAM/SOM
  6. Competitive Landscape - Direct and indirect competitors
  7. Business Model - Revenue streams and pricing
  8. Product Vision - MVP features and roadmap

Phase 1 Guide

Phase 2: Document Generation#

Duration: Automatic

Once you complete the wizard, Bootspring generates all documents:

.bootspring/ └── preseed/ ├── PRESEED_CONFIG.json # Source of truth ├── VISION.md # Generated ├── AUDIENCE.md # Generated ├── MARKET.md # Generated ├── COMPETITORS.md # Generated ├── BUSINESS_MODEL.md # Generated ├── PRD.md # Generated ├── TECHNICAL_SPEC.md # Generated └── ROADMAP.md # Generated

Phase 2 Guide

Phase 3: Refinement#

Duration: 1-2 hours

Review and refine your generated documents:

1# Update specific values 2bootspring preseed update identity.name "New Name" 3 4# Regenerate documents after changes 5bootspring preseed sync 6 7# Regenerate a single document 8bootspring preseed generate --doc=prd

Phase 3 Guide

Phase 4: Validation#

Duration: 1-2 days

Validate your assumptions with real users before building:

  • Share documents with potential users
  • Conduct problem interviews
  • Test pricing assumptions
  • Refine based on feedback

Phase 4 Guide

Document Presets#

Choose the right preset for your needs:

PresetDocumentsBest For
essential4Quick validation, internal projects
startup7Standard startup (default)
full8Comprehensive documentation
technical4Developer tools, API products
investor6Fundraising preparation

Preset Contents#

essential: vision, audience, business-model, prd startup: vision, audience, market, competitors, business-model, prd, roadmap full: all 8 documents technical: vision, prd, technical-spec, roadmap investor: vision, audience, market, competitors, business-model, roadmap

Living Documents#

Preseed creates "living documents" that evolve with your understanding:

  1. Config-driven: All data stored in PRESEED_CONFIG.json
  2. Regeneratable: Run preseed sync anytime
  3. Version tracked: Git-friendly format
  4. AI-friendly: Structured for Claude Code integration

Update Flow#

1# Edit the config directly 2code .bootspring/preseed/PRESEED_CONFIG.json 3 4# Or use the CLI 5bootspring preseed update business.pricing.basic 19 6 7# Regenerate all documents 8bootspring preseed sync

Integration with Seed#

Preseed flows seamlessly into the Seed workflow:

1# Complete preseed first 2bootspring preseed init 3 4# Seed uses preseed data as defaults 5bootspring seed init # Pre-populated from preseed 6 7# Generate MVP structure 8bootspring seed scaffold # Uses PRD from preseed

The Seed workflow will automatically:

  • Import your PRD for feature generation
  • Use your technical spec for architecture
  • Apply your business model for pricing pages
  • Reference your audience for UX decisions

Example Session#

1$ bootspring preseed init 2 3⚡ Bootspring Preseed Wizard 4Let's build your foundational documents from scratch 5Preset: startup (7 documents) 6 7━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 8Step 1/8: Project Identity 9Basic information about your project 10━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 11 12Project name: TaskFlow 13One-line tagline: AI-powered task management for developers 14Brief description: A task management app that uses AI to prioritize 15 and organize developer workflows 16Category: 17 > 1. SaaS 18 2. E-commerce 19 3. Marketplace 20 4. Developer Tool 21 5. Mobile App 22 ... 23 24━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 25Step 2/8: Problem Statement 26What problem are you solving? 27━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 28 29Problem statement: Developers waste hours daily on task management 30 instead of coding 31 32Pain points (comma-separated): 33 - Context switching kills productivity 34 - Todo apps don't understand developer workflows 35 - Priorities constantly shift without clear signals 36 37Why now? AI can now understand code context and prioritize intelligently 38 39━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 40[... continues through all 8 steps ...] 41 42✓ Preseed initialized 43✓ Generated 7 documents 44 45Generated Documents: 46 + Vision Document: .bootspring/preseed/VISION.md 47 + Target Audience: .bootspring/preseed/AUDIENCE.md 48 + Market Analysis: .bootspring/preseed/MARKET.md 49 + Competitive Analysis: .bootspring/preseed/COMPETITORS.md 50 + Business Model: .bootspring/preseed/BUSINESS_MODEL.md 51 + Product Requirements: .bootspring/preseed/PRD.md 52 + Product Roadmap: .bootspring/preseed/ROADMAP.md 53 54Next steps: 55 1. Review generated documents in .bootspring/preseed/ 56 2. Update any values: bootspring preseed update <path> <value> 57 3. Regenerate: bootspring preseed sync 58 4. When ready: bootspring seed init

Generated Document Examples#

Vision Document (VISION.md)#

1# TaskFlow Vision Document 2 3## Problem Statement 4Developers waste hours daily on task management instead of coding. 5 6### Pain Points 7- Context switching kills productivity 8- Todo apps don't understand developer workflows 9- Priorities constantly shift without clear signals 10 11### Why Now 12AI can now understand code context and prioritize intelligently. 13 14## Solution 15TaskFlow is an AI-powered task management app that understands 16developer workflows and automatically prioritizes based on code 17context, deadlines, and team dependencies. 18 19### Key Features 201. **AI Prioritization** - Automatically ranks tasks by impact 212. **Code Context** - Understands your codebase and PRs 223. **Deep Integrations** - GitHub, Linear, Jira sync 234. **Focus Mode** - Eliminates distractions 24 25### Unique Value Proposition 26The only task manager built specifically for developers that 27uses AI to understand your code and context.

Business Model (BUSINESS_MODEL.md)#

1# TaskFlow Business Model 2 3## Revenue Model 4Subscription-based SaaS 5 6## Pricing Tiers 7 8| Tier | Price | Features | 9|------|-------|----------| 10| Free | $0 | 1 project, basic AI | 11| Pro | $12/mo | Unlimited projects, full AI | 12| Team | $8/user/mo | Team features, SSO | 13 14## Unit Economics 15 16| Metric | Target | 17|--------|--------| 18| CAC | $50 | 19| LTV | $600 | 20| LTV:CAC | 12:1 | 21| Payback | 3 months |

CLI Reference#

See the complete Preseed CLI Reference for all commands and options.

Essential Commands#

1# Initialize preseed 2bootspring preseed init [--preset=<preset>] [--quick] 3 4# Check status 5bootspring preseed status 6 7# Update a value 8bootspring preseed update <path> <value> 9 10# Regenerate documents 11bootspring preseed sync 12 13# Generate single document 14bootspring preseed generate --doc=<type> 15 16# Export configuration 17bootspring preseed export [--format=json|yaml] [--output=file]

Best Practices#

1. Take Your Time on Phase 1#

The wizard questions are designed to extract clarity. Don't rush:

  • Answer honestly, even if uncomfortable
  • "I don't know" is a valid answer that gets addressed later
  • Think from your customer's perspective

2. Review Before Refinement#

Read all generated documents before making changes:

  • See how answers connect across documents
  • Identify inconsistencies to fix
  • Note gaps in your thinking

3. Version Control Your Preseed#

git add .bootspring/preseed/ git commit -m "Initial preseed documentation"

Track changes over time as your understanding evolves.

4. Validate Before Building#

Don't skip Phase 4:

  • Share documents with 5+ potential users
  • Conduct problem interviews
  • Test willingness to pay
  • Iterate on preseed before seed

Phase Guides#

Features#

Related#