Agent skill · product strategy · deanpeters
recommendation-canvas
Evaluate an AI product idea across outcomes, hypotheses, risks, and positioning. Use when deciding whether an AI solution deserves investment or recommendation.
Why this skill is useful
Provides a structured framework for evaluating AI product ideas, which helps the AI generate strategic recommendations that consider multiple business and customer factors.
What it needs
About 8k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-07-17. 6,302 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Purpose Evaluate and propose AI product solutions using a structured canvas that assesses business outcomes, customer outcomes, problem framing, solution hypotheses, positioning, risks, and value justification. Use this to build a comprehensive, defensible recommendation for stakeholders and decision-makers—especially when proposing AI-powered features or products that carry higher uncertainty and risk. This is not a feature spec—it's a strategic proposal that articulates why this AI solution is worth building, what assumptions need validating, and how you'll measure success. Input Works best with: The AI product or feature idea being evaluated. Also useful: Target customer, expected business outcome, known risks, and who the recommendation must convince. Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask. Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The skill asks for the idea and the decision-maker, then works through the canvas boxes. Example invocation: Recommendation canvas: AI-suggested reorder quantities for warehouse managers — VP Ops wants a go/no-go next month. Key Concepts The Recommendation Canvas Framework Created for Dean Peters' Productside "AI Innovation for Product Managers" class, the canvas synthesizes multiple PM frameworks into one strategic view: Core Components: 1. Business Outcome: What's in it for the business? 2. Product Outcome: What's in it for the customer? 3. Problem Statement: Persona-centric problem framing 4. Solution Hypothesis: If/then hypothesis with experiments 5. Positioning Statement: Value prop and differentiation 6. Assumptions & Unknowns: What could invalidate this? 7. PESTEL Risks: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal 8. Value Justification: Why this is worth doing 9. Success Metrics: SMART metrics to measure impact 10. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills deanpeters/recommendation-canvas