What it does
Diagnose what kind of stuck your team is in, then get specific, engagement-sourced interventions you can run this week, so you act with a credible plan instead of guessing or pushing harder.
Currently
Live MVP. A free, no-signup diagnostic wizard: pick how you are stuck, narrow the category, check the signals, get 2-5 ranked interventions with effort, risk, impact, and concrete steps, re-scoped by altitude from squad to executive. PDF export, shareable result URLs, and an email gate all work today. The honest gap: the tool is barely instrumented, so MQUO is not yet a number we can steer by. Instrumentation is the next thing in.
Roadmap
/now-next-later-roadmapNow/Next/Later Roadmap- Instrumentation bundle + MQUO dashboard
- Provenance signal on each intervention
- Category-aware CTA
- One-tap share
- Distribution motion (category SEO + weekly content)
- Classifier accuracy pass
- Altitude-aware CTA
- Shareable plan URL
- Case-study proximity on results
- Stuck-again check-in email
- Anonymized benchmark social proof
- Pattern SEO hub
- Embeddable widget
- Diagnose-with-your-team multiplayer
Recently shipped
- Jun 2, 2026Added PDF export, shareable result URLs, and an email gate after the diagnosis, so a plan can leave the tool and a captured email becomes the one durable hook for an episodic product.
- May 19, 2026Laid an analytics baseline, tracking tool completion so I can start to see who finishes a diagnosis instead of guessing.
- Mar 24, 2026Shipped the MVP: the symptom-based diagnostic wizard went live on the public tool pages, symptom in, ranked interventions out.
How it's built
How I built it
Get Unstuck started from a pattern I kept seeing across 30-plus consulting engagements: a team is clearly stalled, everyone can feel it, and nobody can name why. So they run another retro, push a little harder, and solve the comfortable problem instead of the real one. I had a library of 80 interventions harvested from those engagements, each with effort, risk, impact, three concrete steps, and a metric to track. The product question was whether I could turn "I'll know it when I see it" into something a stranger could run in under ten minutes.
The tool itself is a diagnostic wizard. You pick how you're stuck, narrow to a category, check the signals you're seeing, and get 2-5 ranked interventions. An altitude switch re-scopes everything from a squad-level play to an executive move, which matters because most advice quietly assumes you have authority you don't. It's free, no signup, and the whole thing runs client-side with an AI fallback for the freeform path. The companion /unstuck-coach skill picks up where the wizard leaves off.
What the discovery surfaced
Running the full product process on it taught me two things I would have missed by just building. First, this tool has two audiences in one funnel. Priya the Pressed Lead and Sam the Self-Server are the users, they want a move to run on Monday. But Marcus the Maybe-Buyer is the buyer, a founder quietly running the tool as a test of whether I actually understand his situation before he ever books a call. The tool has no direct revenue. Its real job is to make my consulting practice legible and trustworthy. The trap would be forcing Marcus's job, hard CTAs and gated value, ahead of Priya's. Do that and you break the trust that earns the lead in the first place.
Second, the differentiator I was most proud of was invisible. The interventions come from real, named engagements, which is exactly what a generic AI chat can't claim. But on the results page that provenance was implicit, so the advice could read as just another listicle at the precise moment trust is won or lost. The journey map made it stark: the "aha" is recognition, "yeah, that's exactly us," but trust is decided one step later, and the thing that would win it wasn't on the screen.
What's shipped, and what's honest about it
The MVP went live in March, and PDF export, shareable URLs, and a post-value email gate followed. The email gate sits after the diagnosis on purpose, value before the ask, because for an episodic tool that captured email is the only durable hook. What's missing is the unglamorous part: real instrumentation. Every conversion number in my strategy doc is currently an assumption, which means my North Star, Monthly Qualified Unstuck Outcomes, isn't yet a number I can steer by. So the honest next bet isn't a new feature. It's measurement, then making the provenance visible, then getting the tool in front of stuck teams at the moment they search. The existential risk here was never the feature set. It's distribution, and a tool nobody finds at the moment they're stuck.
The strategy behind it
A snapshot of the product process this app was built from. Each artifact comes from a k8 skill you can run yourself. It reflects the original plan, not the live state above.
Jobs to be done
/jtbd-analysisJTBD Analysis| When I… I want to… | Importance | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| When my team is clearly stuck but nobody can say why, I want to diagnose the underlying pattern quickly, so I stop solving the comfortable problem and address the real one. | high | medium |
| When I have named the blocker, I want a specific, proven intervention with concrete steps, so I can act this week instead of debating options. | high | medium |
| When I am accountable for a stalled team, I want to feel my plan is grounded in something real, so I can stop second-guessing and lead the team out. | high | medium |
| When I take an intervention to my team or leadership, I want it to land as deliberate, so I protect my credibility rather than look like I am flailing. | medium | medium |
| When the energy is off but there is no concrete problem to point at, I want a structured way to surface what is weighing on the team, so I catch it before it becomes attrition. | medium | low |
| When I am quietly considering outside help, I want proof that someone has seen my exact pattern before, so I can decide whether reaching out is worth the risk. | high | low |
Persona
/persona-createPersona Create- Get the team moving again before the next stakeholder check-in
- Be right about what is wrong, not just energetic about fixing something
- Keep her credibility intact while doing it
- She can feel the stall but cannot name it, so her fixes do not take
- The advice she finds online is generic and she has read it all before
- No senior coach on speed-dial, and asking publicly feels like admitting she is lost
Persona
/persona-createPersona Create- Decide whether the team's problem is solvable in-house or needs help
- Pressure-test whether a given coach actually gets his pattern
- Avoid a bad hire and a wasted retainer
- Consultant websites all assert expertise; none let him test it
- He cannot tell credible operators from polished talkers
- Reaching out feels like a commitment before he has any signal
Persona
/persona-createPersona Create- Find a specific play to run at his own altitude, the squad level
- Bring it to the team without needing leadership buy-in
- Look helpful and proactive
- Most advice assumes he has authority he does not have
- He needs squad-level moves, not 'align the executives'
- He is time-poor and skeptical of fluff
North Star metric
/north-star-metricNorth Star MetricA monthly count where one qualified outcome is either a session that completes a diagnosis and shows an adoption signal (PDF export, intervention marked helpful, or plan shared), a Team-Helped Outcome, or a 'Work with me' contact attributable to a tool session, a Buyer Outcome. Reported as one number with the two halves always shown beside it.
RICE prioritization
/rice-scoreRICE Score| Feature | Reach | Impact | Conf. | Effort | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Was this helpful? micro-signal | 4200 | 1 | 80% | 0.5 | 6720 |
| Instrumentation + MQUO dashboard | 6000 | 2 | 90% | 2 | 5400 |
| Provenance signal (badges) | 4200 | 1.5 | 70% | 1 | 4410 |
| Contextual (category-aware) CTA | 4200 | 1.5 | 70% | 1 | 4410 |
| One-tap share | 4200 | 1 | 60% | 1 | 2520 |
| Classifier accuracy pass | 6000 | 2 | 60% | 3 | 2400 |
Pre-mortem risks
/pre-mortemPre-mortemInstrumentation slips and Q3 ends still unmeasured, so every later bet stays a guess.
mediumMitigation: Do the instrumentation bundle first, before any feature work, time-boxed to two weeks in early July. Fall back to coarse server-side metrics if adoption signals slip.
Distribution stalls because it depends entirely on Kate's time across a large portfolio.
highMitigation: Time-box a sustainable weekly content cadence, one post plus one SEO page, not a heroic push. Narrow to the highest-intent category pages if cadence breaks.
Classifier inaccuracy on the freeform path quietly erodes trust, since it is the first impression and has no confirmation step.
mediumMitigation: Run an accuracy audit against a labeled set and add a 'not quite? adjust' reroute. Lead users to the structured path when freeform confidence is low.
The tool converts zero attributable buyers, and without instrumentation we partly cannot tell.
mediumMitigation: Add CRM source-tagging and a contextual CTA, then review honestly at end of Q3. If buyers never convert, reframe the tool as a pure credibility asset and stop investing in conversion features.
Classification API cost spikes or the endpoint fails under load, breaking the freeform entry step.
lowMitigation: Keyword classifier already covers the fallback; cache common classifications and rate-limit the endpoint. Degrade gracefully to the structured path if the API is down.
Built with these skills
/jtbd-analysisJTBD Analysis/persona-createPersona Create/competitive-analysisCompetitive Analysis/north-star-metricNorth Star Metric/okr-workshopOKR Workshop/opportunity-solution-treeOpportunity Solution Tree/rice-scoreRICE Score/now-next-later-roadmapNow/Next/Later Roadmap/journey-mapJourney Map/pre-mortemPre-mortem/prd-draftPRD Draft