Requirements — Part 2: Scope, MVP & Defining Done

maang.io AI-Native Builder Series

What is this?

Picture two friends who decide to throw a dinner party next Friday. Friend A says: "Let's do one main dish, a salad, and store-bought ice cream. Six people. Done." Friend B says: "Ooh, and homemade bread! And a cheese board. And cocktails. And let's make it twelve people. And a themed playlist. And handmade place cards." By Friday, Friend A is relaxed with a finished meal. Friend B is in tears at 11pm with raw dough, no place cards, and a kitchen on fire — because the party that started as "dinner for six" quietly grew into a wedding for twelve, and there was never time to actually finish any of it.

That slow, invisible growth — where a clear, finishable plan keeps absorbing "just one more thing" until it's impossible — is the single most common way first projects die. The fix isn't working harder or being smarter. It's drawing a line around what you'll build, deliberately, before you start, and defending that line. That line is called scope, and learning to control it is the difference between students who ship StreakUp and students who have an impressive half-finished pile of code in September.

The one-line idea: decide the smallest version of your app that's actually worth using, build exactly that, and know precisely what "finished" means — before you write a line of code.

Last chapter you wrote StreakUp's full requirements list. This chapter is about a hard, freeing truth: you are not going to build all of it for version one — and that's exactly right.