Induction: Project Setup

Induction happens once when starting a new project. By the end of these three steps, your project has a product vision, technical decisions, and a prioritized roadmap.

Step 1: Create the PRD

Define what you're building, who it's for, and what success looks like.

The AI follows a 4-phase process:

1. Template analysis: studies the 13-section PRD template
2. Hypothesis-driven questions: asks structured questions about users, pain points, features, and KPIs
3. Document generation: produces the PRD following the template
4. Iterative review: submits for your review and refines based on feedback

The PRD becomes the source of truth for every subsequent step. All planning and implementation traces back to it.

Step 2: Bootstrap the Project

Generate technical standards, configure quality gates, and set up your PM tool.

The AI guides you through five decision areas:

• Project categorization: Pet/PoC, Startup, or Enterprise (determines rigor level)
• Architecture pattern: monolith, microservices, serverless, etc.
• Tech stack: language, framework, testing, database, with version pinning
• Infrastructure: deployment, CI/CD, hosting
• Way of working: methodology (Scrum/Kanban), branching strategy, quality gates

Each decision produces an adoption file. Bootstrap composes several capability skills internally (/pair-capability-assess-architecture, /pair-capability-assess-stack, etc.): you don't need to invoke them individually.

Where Classification Is Switched On

Risk classification is configured at bootstrap, in .pair/adoption/tech/risk-matrix.md (the tag projection, an optional criticality table, optional per-tier overrides) and, for tier-aware gates, in way-of-working.md. Without the file, KB defaults apply and no tags are emitted: nothing fails. How to set it up: Classify stories and use risk tags; the process it feeds: the risk-driven thread.

For existing projects: start here instead of Step 1. Bootstrap reads your codebase and proposes adoption files from what it finds (Adopt pair in an existing repository).

Step 3: Plan Initiatives

Extract strategic objectives from the PRD and prioritize them.

Initiatives are the highest-level work items: each represents a strategic objective spanning 6-8 sprints:

• P0 (Must-Have): core value proposition, without these the product doesn't ship
• P1 (Important): significant business value, planned for early delivery
• P2 (Nice-to-Have): desirable but deferrable

The AI extracts objectives directly from your PRD sections (goals, features, success metrics) and proposes the prioritization. You validate and adjust.

What You Have After Induction

.pair/
├── adoption/
│   ├── product/
│   │   └── PRD.md                 ← Product vision and requirements
│   └── tech/
│       ├── architecture.md        ← Architecture decisions
│       ├── tech-stack.md          ← Technology choices with versions
│       ├── way-of-working.md      ← Methodology and quality gates
│       └── infrastructure.md      ← Deployment and CI/CD

PM Tool:
├── Initiative (P0): ...
├── Initiative (P0): ...
├── Initiative (P1): ...
└── Initiative (P2): ...

Every AI session from this point forward reads these files. Decisions never drift.

Next: Strategic planning, break initiatives into epics.