Is your v1 the right size?
Find out in five minutes.
Run your project idea through seven questions. Pick a lane. Name the graceful fallback. Copy a draft AGENTS.md ready to commit. Same tool the cohort uses on Day 1.
Describe your idea
Tell us what you're building and who it's for.
Pick your lane
Which path is closest to what you're building?
The reality check
Answer yes or no. Be honest.
Your result
Red flags to avoid
v1 vs. v2 framing: most things on the older red-flag list are now one-afternoon adds in 2026 (Clerk for auth, Stripe Checkout for payments, Expo for native). The discipline is sequencing, not avoidance. The list below is what stays out of v1 because it's genuinely hard or out-of-scope for a 4-week cohort.
Not red flags anymore in 2026. Clerk + Supabase Auth + Stripe Checkout each ship in one afternoon. The discipline is to sequence: v1 ships single-user, v2 adds these. Mock the checkout in v1 if pricing matters for the demo.
Each integration is its own auth, rate limit, and edge-case spiral. One source, one destination. Add the third in Week 3 or after the cohort.
Persistent connections, scaling complexity, debugging hell. Polling on a 30-second interval is fine for v1. Add real-time later if needed.
Even with Expo + EAS, the deploy story changes (TestFlight, code signing). Plan an extra week if it's genuinely required. Mobile-responsive web first. Native in v2.
Two-sided liquidity, reviews, escrow, fraud, moderation, algorithms. Out of scope for a 4-week build. Pick a side. Build the buyer tool or the seller tool, not both.
Both halves usually require a B2B SaaS to make work. You won't finish. Narrow to one specific use case. Cut 80% of the surface area before approving.
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