Hey there! Thank you for taking a look at our template for the lean canvas model to start out on your product. Take note that we are three software engineers who independently run a tech podcast, ragTech, and do not represent any organisation beyond our show. This is an opinionated way of planning out your product, not a declared industry standard.
With that said, that means you can feel free to alter the template according to your needs, regardless of whether it is used by a coding agent or not! Much of this has been catered towards agentic software engineering, and the reasons as to why certain things are structured of phrased a certain way are written below.
The lean canvas model, also known by other names such as lean startup canvas or business model canvas, is a popular framework for planning out a product, be it technical or non-technical. It was inspired by a book that we personally highly recommend, called The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Our co-host, Natasha, was introduced to this book and model when she went through Boston University's Innovation Accelerator and was taught to fill the canvas out - then, on an excel sheet.
It serves as a way to holistically provide just-enough context of your product, so that a coding agent may get the information it needs to build out your desired software.
You can clone this repository with:
git clone https://github.com/ragTechDev/lean-canvas-model.git
Make sure to replace the root README.md with your own product's README.md!
Or copy-paste the docs/product folder into your existing codebase.
Alternatively you can use the below prompt with your coding agent:
Set up a lean canvas model for my product inside a docs/product folder in this
repository. Create one markdown file per canvas segment (e.g. problems.md,
solutions.md, unique-value-proposition.md, and so on for the remaining
segments), plus a README.md at docs/product/ that explains how the segments
fit together. Ask me questions about my product one segment at a time so you
can fill each file in progressively, rather than asking for everything at
once.
Follow the steps below, or you can also watch our ragTechDev 'From Vibecoding to Agentic Software Engineering' YouTube tutorial playlist on the how and why behind this methodology.
You can fill up the already provided templates in your own words yourself, or you can also use the provided lean-canvas-coach skill which your coding agent to guide you along. You may trigger the skill in your coding agent using:
/lean-canvas-coach
You can prompt your coding agent to create a product requirements documents (PRD) for you, or use our provided skill to do so.
This is to help your coding agent orientate and navigate to where it needs to get information from progressively.
Coding agents thrive best when they get information exactly as is needed for the task, not more. The more context it holds on to, the more goes into its context window, which may result in less than desired output. In the spirit of progressive disclosure, where information is progressively revealed only when the coding agent needs it, we've structured the lean business model in a way that a coding agent can revisit segments where appropriate across the development process without needing to get irrelevant information from other segments.
Absolutely! In fact you don't even need to have a coding agent to fill this template up.
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