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Strategic Init - AI-Powered Product Planning

Version: 0.22.0+ Last Updated: 2025-11-17 Feature: Strategic Init with Phase 0-6 (Vision → Architecture)

Overview​

SpecWeave's Strategic Init is an AI-powered product planning system that guides you from vision to production-ready architecture in 6 phases. Instead of guessing, you get data-driven recommendations based on market analysis, compliance requirements, and scale projections.

What You Get:

  • 🧠 AI-powered vision analysis (market, competitors, viral potential)
  • 🔒 Automatic compliance detection (HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, etc.)
  • 👥 Intelligent team recommendations (role sizing based on compliance + scale)
  • 📦 GitHub template repository discovery and selection
  • 🏗️ Architecture decision engine (serverless vs traditional with cost estimates)
  • 📋 Auto-generated project list (compliance + feature-aware)

Time Saved: 20-40 hours of market research + architecture planning

When to Use Strategic Init​

Perfect For:

  • ✅ New product ideas - Need market validation and architecture decisions
  • ✅ Regulated industries - Healthcare, fintech, e-commerce (automatic compliance detection)
  • ✅ Bootstrapped startups - Optimize for low cost, high viral potential
  • ✅ Enterprise products - Need compliance, audit trails, traditional infrastructure

Not Needed For:

  • ❌ Proof-of-concepts - Use specweave init --skip-research for quick setup
  • ❌ Internal tools - Compliance and market analysis aren't relevant

The 6 Phases Explained​

Phase 0: Vision Analysis 🧠​

Input: Your product vision (1-2 sentences)

AI Analysis:

  • Keyword extraction: Identifies key concepts (e.g., "real-time collaboration", "healthcare", "HIPAA")
  • Market detection: Categorizes product (productivity-saas, healthcare, fintech, gaming, ai-ml, etc.)
  • Competitor analysis: Identifies similar products with strengths/weaknesses
  • Viral potential score: Rates opportunity (1-10) based on market dynamics
  • Follow-up questions: Generates dynamic questions for deeper understanding

Example:

Input: "A HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform for remote patient monitoring"

AI Output:
- Market: healthcare
- Keywords: telehealth, remote monitoring, HIPAA, patient data
- Competitors: Doxy.me, VSee, Amwell
- Viral Potential: 7/10 (healthcare + compliance = sticky but regulated)
- Follow-up: "Will you integrate with EHR systems like Epic/Cerner?"

Files Created:

  • .specweave/research/market-research-report.md - Full analysis with competitor matrix

Phase 1: Compliance Detection 🔒​

Input: Vision keywords + market category

AI Analysis:

  • Compliance requirements: Automatically detects HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, FDA, COPPA, FERPA
  • Geographic requirements: Multi-region compliance (US, EU, global)
  • Serverless suitability: Determines if AWS Lambda/Firebase can meet compliance needs
  • Risk assessment: Flags high-risk keywords (PHI, payment, financial, children's data)

Example:

Vision: "Healthcare telehealth platform"

Detected Compliance:
✅ HIPAA (healthcare + patient data)
✅ GDPR (if EU patients)
⚠️ Serverless NOT recommended (HIPAA requires audit controls)
→ Traditional infrastructure with AWS EC2 + RDS + CloudTrail

Output:

  • config.compliance array in .specweave/config.yml
  • Architecture constraints (traditional vs serverless)

Phase 2: Team Recommendations 👥​

Input: Viral potential + compliance requirements + budget

AI Recommendations:

  • Core roles: Backend, frontend, mobile, DevOps, QA
  • Compliance roles: Security engineer, compliance specialist (for HIPAA/PCI-DSS)
  • Team size: Small (2-5 for MVP), Medium (6-15 for growth), Large (16+ for scale)
  • Bootstrapped optimization: Minimize team size for lean startups

Example:

Inputs:
- Viral Potential: 8/10
- Compliance: HIPAA
- Budget: Bootstrapped

Recommended Team:
1. Backend Engineer (API + compliance)
2. Frontend Engineer (web app)
3. DevOps Engineer (infrastructure + audit logs)
4. Security Engineer (HIPAA compliance, penetration testing)

Total: 4 people (vs 2 for non-compliant product)

Phase 3: Repository Selection 📦​

Input: GitHub username/organization

Features:

  • GitHub template discovery: Scans your GitHub for template repositories
  • Keyword-based filtering: Filter by name (e.g., "react", "serverless", "backend")
  • Combined rules: Prefix + owner, keyword + language
  • Repository preview: Shows language, stars, description before selection
  • Adaptive UX:
    • ≤5 repos → "Select all or manual"
    • 6-20 repos → "Prefix-based selection"
    • 21+ repos → "Pattern-based filtering + keywords"

Example:

Detected Templates (27 total):
- anton-abyzov/serverless-starter (Node.js, 45 ⭐)
- anton-abyzov/react-mobile-template (TypeScript, 23 ⭐)
- anton-abyzov/backend-api-template (Python, 67 ⭐)

Selection Options:
1. Select all (27 repos)
2. Filter by prefix: anton-abyzov/serverless-*
3. Filter by keyword: "serverless" (3 matches)
4. Manual selection: Pick 5-10 repos

Phase 4 & 5: Architecture Decision Engine 🏗️​

Input: Viral potential + compliance + budget + scale projection

Decision Tree:

IF viral_potential >= 8 AND bootstrapped:
  → Serverless (AWS Lambda + Supabase)
  → Cost: $0/month → $500/month at 100K users
  → Auto-scaling, pay-per-use

ELSE IF compliance IN [HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC2]:
  → Traditional (AWS EC2 + RDS + CloudTrail)
  → Cost: $500/month → $5K/month at 100K users
  → Full audit controls, dedicated infrastructure

ELSE IF learning_project:
  → Free Tier (Render + Supabase + Vercel)
  → Cost: $0/month (YAGNI principle)

Cost Estimation:

  • 1K users: $0-$50/month
  • 10K users: $200-$800/month
  • 100K users: $1K-$5K/month
  • 1M users: $10K-$50K/month

Breakdown: Compute, database, storage, bandwidth

Example:

Inputs:
- Viral Potential: 9/10
- Compliance: None
- Budget: Bootstrapped
- Scale: 100K users target

Recommendation: Serverless
✅ AWS Lambda (compute)
✅ API Gateway (REST API)
✅ Supabase (PostgreSQL + Auth + Storage)
✅ CloudFront (CDN)

Estimated Cost at 100K users: $500/month

Phase 6: Project Generation 📋​

Input: Architecture + compliance + vision keywords

Project List Generation:

  • Core projects: Backend API, frontend web, mobile app (if keywords match)
  • Compliance additions: Auth service, data service, audit logs (for HIPAA/PCI-DSS)
  • Feature additions: Payment service (if "payment"), notification service (if "notification"), analytics (if "analytics")

Example:

Vision: "HIPAA-compliant telehealth with mobile app and payments"

Generated Projects:
1. backend-api (Core)
2. frontend-web (Core)
3. mobile-app (Keyword: "mobile")
4. auth-service (HIPAA: Authentication)
5. data-service (HIPAA: PHI handling)
6. audit-logs-service (HIPAA: Audit trail)
7. payment-service (Keyword: "payments")
8. notification-service (Telehealth: Real-time alerts)

Total: 8 projects

Usage​

Basic Usage​

# Run Strategic Init (default)
specweave init

# You'll be prompted for vision in Phase 0

Advanced Usage​

# Provide vision upfront (skip Phase 0 question)
specweave init --vision "A HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform"

# Skip research phases (quick setup)
specweave init --skip-research

# Auto-accept all defaults (CI/CD mode)
specweave init --auto-yes

Brownfield Projects​

# Initialize existing project
cd my-existing-project
specweave init

# SpecWeave detects existing code and adjusts recommendations

Output Files​

After Strategic Init completes, you'll have:

Configuration:

  • .specweave/config.yml - Project config with compliance, team, architecture

Research:

  • .specweave/research/market-research-report.md - Vision analysis, competitors, viral potential

Living Docs (if multi-project mode):

  • .specweave/docs/internal/specs/projects/{project-name}/ - One folder per project

Templates:

  • CLAUDE.md - User-facing context for Claude Code
  • README.md - Project overview
  • .gitignore - SpecWeave-aware ignore patterns

FAQ​

Does Strategic Init cost money?​

No. Phase 0 (Vision Analysis) uses Claude Code's existing LLM access. No additional API costs.

Can I skip phases?​

Yes. Use --skip-research flag. But you'll lose compliance detection, team recommendations, and cost estimates.

Can I re-run Strategic Init?​

Yes. Run specweave init --force to re-initialize. Your existing increments and docs will be preserved (unless you select "Fresh start").

What if I don't have GitHub templates?​

Strategic Init will recommend popular open-source templates based on your architecture (Next.js, Serverless Framework, etc.).