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02Case 02 / US Editorial Startup

MVP shipped in
six weeks.

From scope doc to production: an editorial platform with AI-assisted content workflows. One designer, two engineers, a tight scope, no detours.

MVPEditorialAI workflows
6 wk
scope to production
02Context

Six weeks to validate
or kill the idea.

The client had a hypothesis about how editorial teams want to work with AI, and a window to test it before a competitor noticed. The brief: ship something real, in production, in six weeks. If the data was bad, kill it cleanly.

Most agencies' answer would be 'six weeks isn't enough.' Ours was 'we'll cut scope until it is.'

03Approach

Cut scope.
Ship the spine.

  1. i.

    Spine, not skeleton

    Four user flows, picked from a list of seventeen. Everything else got 'phase 2' on a Notion doc.

  2. ii.

    Buy where possible

    Auth, payments, email: buy. Editor, AI workflows, the differentiated bits: build.

  3. iii.

    Ship Friday week 3

    Real users, real content, real data. Flag-gated, measured, iterated.

  4. iv.

    Bake the feedback in

    Weeks 4–6: only changes the data demanded. Resisted every 'one more thing.'

04Outcome

Live, measured,
and validated.

The hypothesis held. Editorial teams really do want AI in the content flow, but not where the client expected. The data redirected the next three months of roadmap.

More importantly: there was a 'next three months' to plan, instead of a quiet wind-down.

i
6 wk
scope to production
ii
200+
early users in first month
iii
70%
of users hit the AI flow
iv
$0
spent on features users didn't want

Stack

Frontend

Next.jsReactTypeScript

Backend

NodePostgreSQL

AI

OpenAIStructured outputs

Bought

ClerkStripeResend
We expected an agency. We got a team that argued with our scope and saved us from spending three months building the wrong thing.
A.W.
A.W.
Founder · US editorial platform
05Got a tight window?

Let's talk about
what fits in six weeks.

30-minute discovery call. We'll be honest about whether the scope is doable, and what to cut if it isn't.