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Cheat Sheet/jtbd

/jtbd

Run a structured Jobs-to-be-Done analysis to surface the underlying outcomes users are hiring your product to achieve — not the features they say they want.

When to use it

Run this after /research when you want to ground the PRD in real user motivations rather than your own assumptions about what people need. The command walks you through the JTBD framework: the desired outcome (what users want in their life or work), the current solutions and workarounds they’re already using, the pain points those workarounds carry, and the underserved needs that point at a real opportunity.

If docs/MARKET-RESEARCH.md already exists from /research, this command reads it at the start and pre-fills competitor weaknesses as candidate pain points — you confirm or correct rather than typing from scratch. Without the research file the command still works; it just asks you to supply the competitive context by hand. The output lands in docs/JOBS-TO-BE-DONE.md and feeds /positioning and /bootstrap-product.

Don’t use this for feature-level decisions (“should we add bulk export?”) — that’s what /evaluate-feature is for. JTBD operates at the level of “what job is the whole product being hired to do,” not “what specific thing should we ship next week.”

How it fits

Research feeds JTBD with competitor signal; JTBD produces the job-statement layer that positioning and the PRD then build on.

What it does (quick)

  • Reads docs/MARKET-RESEARCH.md if present and pre-fills competitor pain points as JTBD candidates
  • Walks the JTBD questionnaire: desired outcome → current solutions → pain points → underserved needs
  • Synthesizes findings into docs/JOBS-TO-BE-DONE.md with the core job statement, pain-point taxonomy, and underserved-need prioritization
  • Flags opportunities where current solutions cluster around the same workaround — usually the sharpest underserved-need signal
  • /research — predecessor; supplies competitor analysis as starting context
  • /positioning — successor; uses underserved needs as positioning value themes
  • /bootstrap-product — the PRD’s user-motivation section reads this file directly

Canonical spec: .claude/commands/jtbd.md

Last updated on
/research/positioning