Daily Prompt Pack: MVP scoping – Kill the features nobody asked for before you build them

Most failed MVPs die from too much scope, not too little. Here is the scoping routine I run with founders before a single line of code gets written.

[Claude]

I am building a waitlist app for indie SaaS tools and I keep adding admin dashboards, analytics and email templates I do not need yet. Given I only have 2 weeks and need to validate whether people will actually join, list every feature I proposed, then mark each one as MUST, SHOULD, or CUT. For each CUT item, say what risk goes unproven if I skip it. Output one table, then a single 3-bullet MUST list. Keep it under 300 words.

[ChatGPT]

Act as a skeptical product lead. I have 30 days and one hypothesis: busy founders will pay $9/month for a tool that turns meeting notes into follow-up tasks. Given that single hypothesis, produce a 10-item feature backlog, then rank each item by how directly it tests the pay-to-use decision. Only items that expose the risk of non-payment should remain. Output a table with columns feature, risk exposed, build hours, keep or cut. End with the shortest build order.

[Cursor]

I have a Next.js repo with auth, a billing page, an admin panel and a landing page, but my MVP needs only auth plus one payment flow. Using my existing codebase at ./app, identify every file that supports features outside that scope and produce a refactor plan: which files stay, which get deleted, and which get reduced to stubs. Output the plan as a checklist, then run the deletion safely behind a git branch named mvp-cut.

More daily prompt packs at aicofounderstack.com/tag/prompt-pack.