Journey Idea

Journey: Idea brainstorm

Stage 1 of the guided journey. Turn a vague idea into a written brief with capability tags.

When to use

• Dispatched by journey when current_stage: idea.
• Directly via /butterbase-skills:idea.

Inputs

None required. Optionally reads any existing 01-idea.md to resume.

Procedure — questioning discipline

Follow the cross-cutting rules from the spec:

• One question at a time. Never batch.
• Multiple-choice preferred, with 2–4 concrete options.
• Concrete, not abstract.
• Recommend when a Butterbase primitive is obvious.
• Tag inline. When a feature surfaces, append the capability tag immediately (→ manage_schema, → deploy_function, → manage_storage, → manage_oauth, → manage_rag_content, → manage_realtime, → manage_durable_objects, → manage_ai, → create_agent).
• Write as you go. After each answered question, append the decision to 01-idea.md so progress survives a crash.

Walk through these questions in order. Do not skip — but adapt the wording.

1. "In one sentence, what is the painful thing your user does today that this replaces?"
2. "Who is the first user? ① solo creator ② small team ③ end customers of a business ④ Other"
3. "What is the first action they take in the app?"
4. "If we could ship only ONE screen, which one?"
5. "Do two different users see different data when they log in? (yes → user-scoped data → manage_rls; no → shared → simpler)"
6. "Are there files/images involved? (yes → manage_storage; no → skip)"
7. "Does anything happen on a schedule or in response to an external event? (yes → deploy_function cron/webhook; no → skip)"
8. "Is there a knowledge base / search-over-documents feature? (yes → manage_rag_content; no → skip)"
9. "Does the UI need live updates or presence? (yes → manage_realtime; no → skip)"
10. "Any chat rooms / multiplayer / per-user-actor state? (yes → manage_durable_objects; no → skip)"
11. "Any LLM features (chat, embeddings, summarisation)? (yes → manage_ai; no → skip)"
12. "Any multi-step LLM+tool workflows the user triggers (e.g. 'summarise my orders', 'auto-tag a doc', 'research and reply')? (yes → create_agent; no → skip)". If yes, also ask: "Will the agent need external MCP servers (e.g. GitHub, Slack, custom MCP)?" and "Visibility: ① only the developer ② any logged-in user ③ unauthenticated public — note: public + write tools requires explicit safety acknowledgement."
13. "Are you planning to publish this app as a public template others can clone? (yes / unlisted-public / no)". Set publish_as_template: <yes|unlisted|no> in 00-state.md front-matter. Public templates require a README with clone instructions and butterbase repo push to sync the source tree — flag this so plan and the publish stage know to plan for it.

If hackathon_mode: true in 00-state.md: after question 4, also ask:

• "Hackathon deadline (ISO date/time)?" — write to 00-state.md front-matter.
• After each subsequent feature ask "Can this ship in time, or move to a 'post-hackathon' section?"

01-idea.md format

# Idea

**One-liner:** <user's answer to Q1>

**First user:** <Q2>
**First action:** <Q3>
**One screen:** <Q4>

## Must-haves
- <feature> → <capability tag>
- ...

## Post-hackathon (nice-to-have)
- ...

## Capability map
| Capability | Used? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| manage_schema | yes | core data model |
| manage_rls | yes | user-scoped data |
| manage_oauth | yes | Google sign-in |
| manage_storage | no | no files |
| deploy_function | yes | daily-digest cron |
| manage_ai | no | |
| manage_rag_content | no | |
| manage_realtime | no | |
| manage_durable_objects | no | |
| create_agent | no | |
| publish_as_template | no | set true if user plans to share this app publicly |

Toolchain note

At the end of the idea write-up, also note in one line that the build will use:

• @butterbase/sdk for any frontend / Node app code
• @butterbase/cli for the local dev loop (scaffolding, logs, key generation)
• The MCP tools (this plugin) for orchestrating provisioning, deployments, integrations

This sets expectations before plan makes specific package choices.

Outputs

• Writes docs/butterbase/01-idea.md.
• Ticks - [x] idea and bumps current_stage: plan, last_updated in 00-state.md.

Anti-patterns

• ❌ "Tell me more about your app." Use the concrete questions above.
• ❌ Asking 3 questions at once.
• ❌ Accepting "all of the above" in hackathon mode — force prioritisation.
• ❌ Moving on before writing 01-idea.md to disk.