Question 1

What is ProductCompanion?

Accepted Answer

ProductCompanion is an AI product coach for product builders. It guides you through a structured 4-stage product planning process—Discovery, User Journey, SMART Goals, and Service Map—helping you validate your idea, map the customer experience, set measurable goals, and plan your service stack before building.

Question 2

Who is ProductCompanion designed for?

Accepted Answer

ProductCompanion is built for product builders who want structure and clarity in product development. Whether you are exploring your first idea or planning your next product, it helps you organize your thinking, capture decisions, and move faster from concept to actionable plan.

Question 3

How do I get started with ProductCompanion?

Accepted Answer

Sign up for a free account, create your first product, and start a conversation with your AI coach. The AI will guide you through the Discovery phase with structured questions about your problem, target customers, and solution. As you answer, key decisions are automatically captured in your product map.

Question 4

What is AI-guided discovery?

Accepted Answer

AI-guided discovery is a conversational process where our AI coach asks probing questions to help you validate your product idea. Powered by Claude, the AI guides you through 11 checkpoints in the Discovery phase alone—covering problem definition, persona identification, competition analysis, solution differentiation, and more.

Question 5

What information does ProductCompanion capture?

Accepted Answer

ProductCompanion automatically captures vital information in 7 categories: problem statements, target personas, solution details, validation feedback, business model, success metrics, and MVP scope. Each piece of information is tagged with confidence levels (confirmed or draft) and linked to the conversation where it was discussed.

Question 6

What is a product map?

Accepted Answer

A product map is a visual organization of all your captured product decisions. It displays your problem statement, target persona, solution, validation results, business model, and scope in one structured view. Think of it as a living document that grows as you progress through product discovery.

Question 7

What is the Canvas Health Check?

Accepted Answer

The Canvas Health Check is an AI-powered analysis that reviews your entire product map for internal consistency. It detects contradictions between categories (e.g., your pricing doesn't match your target persona's budget), identifies gaps in your thinking, and highlights areas of strength. You get a health score from 0-100 and actionable recommendations to improve your business canvas.

Question 8

What are the visual diagrams in ProductCompanion?

Accepted Answer

ProductCompanion includes three visual outputs: Product Map displays all your captured decisions organized by category. Service Map shows all third-party services needed with costs and criticality ratings. User Journey Map visualizes the complete user experience across 7 lifecycle stages with emotional curve tracking.

Question 9

What is the Service Map feature?

Accepted Answer

The Service Map helps you plan all the services your product needs—from authentication providers to payment processors to hosting services. It shows criticality ratings (critical, important, nice-to-have), estimated monthly costs, and status tracking (researching, decided, integrated) to help you prioritize and budget.

Question 10

What is the User Journey Map?

Accepted Answer

The User Journey Map visualizes every touchpoint between users and your product across 7 lifecycle stages: awareness, consideration, decision, onboarding, usage, retention, and advocacy. It tracks emotional highs and lows, identifies pain points, and spots opportunities to improve the user experience.

Question 11

What are the 4 planning stages?

Accepted Answer

ProductCompanion guides you through 4 planning stages: Discovery (validate your idea with AI-guided conversations — 11 checkpoints), User Journey (map how users discover, try, and use your product across 7 lifecycle stages), SMART Goals (define measurable goals with clear timelines — 3 checkpoints), and Service Map (plan all external services your product needs — 4 checkpoints).

Question 12

What are checkpoints in ProductCompanion?

Accepted Answer

Checkpoints are milestones that mark your progress through each stage. The Discovery phase includes 11 checkpoints: problem defined, target persona identified, competition analyzed, solution defined, validation complete, scope defined, acquisition planned, business model defined, costs estimated, success metrics set, and timeline set.

Question 13

How does ProductCompanion help validate my startup idea?

Accepted Answer

ProductCompanion helps you validate your idea by guiding you through structured discovery conversations. The AI challenges you to define your problem clearly, identify a specific target customer (not everyone), differentiate your solution from existing alternatives, and set measurable success and failure criteria.

Question 14

What AI model powers ProductCompanion?

Accepted Answer

ProductCompanion is powered by Claude, Anthropic's advanced AI model. We use Claude Sonnet for fast, intelligent responses. The AI acts as a product coach, challenging your assumptions constructively while guiding you through structured discovery.

Question 15

Is my product information secure?

Accepted Answer

Yes, your data is secure. ProductCompanion uses Supabase with row-level security (RLS), meaning you can only access your own products and conversations. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest. We never share your product information with third parties.

Question 16

Can I export my product data?

Accepted Answer

Export functionality is planned for a future release. Currently, you can view all your captured vital information and checkpoints in the product map view. Your data remains accessible as long as you have an account.

Question 17

How much does ProductCompanion cost?

Accepted Answer

ProductCompanion offers a generous Free plan with 50 AI messages per month, 1 product, and all stages included. The Pro plan adds up to 5 products, 500 AI messages per month, cross-stage analysis, consistency checks, and unlimited sharable links. A Teams plan with collaboration features is coming soon.

Question 18

What are the usage limits?

Accepted Answer

Free plan users get 50 AI messages per month and 1 product. Pro users get 500 messages per month and up to 5 products. Message limits reset at the start of each month. Free users also get 1 sharable link per product, while Pro users have unlimited links.

Question 19

What is the difference between Free and Pro AI?

Accepted Answer

The Free plan includes stage-focused AI coaching that guides you through one topic at a time. The Pro plan adds cross-stage analysis — the AI actively connects information across all your captured categories, flags inconsistencies, and provides holistic recommendations. Pro also includes the Consistency Check feature that analyzes your entire business canvas for contradictions and gaps.

Question 20

Can I get a refund if I change my mind?

Accepted Answer

Due to the digital nature of the service and instant access upon payment, subscriptions are non-refundable after you start using the Pro features. We strongly recommend trying the Free plan first (50 AI messages/month) to ensure ProductCompanion fits your workflow. EU customers: By subscribing and starting to use Pro features, you waive your 14-day withdrawal right as disclosed during checkout.

Question 21

How do I cancel my subscription?

Accepted Answer

You can cancel your Pro subscription anytime from your Billing settings. After cancellation, you keep access to Pro features until the end of your current billing period. No further charges will occur. Your data remains accessible, but you will be limited to Free plan features after the period ends.

Question 22

What happens to my data if I downgrade?

Accepted Answer

If you downgrade from Pro to Free, your data is preserved. However, you will only be able to access 1 product (your most recent) and will be limited to 50 AI messages per month. Pro-only features like cross-stage analysis will be unavailable until you upgrade again.

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