Quick Start

This guide walks you through your first Cody Product Builder project end-to-end. You’ll start with an idea, run through the Plan phase, ship your first version with the Build phase, and end with a working release-notes.md.

Before you begin

Make sure Cody Product Builder is installed in your AI coding environment. See Installation if you haven’t done that yet.

This guide assumes a brand-new project (no existing code). For an existing codebase, see the :cody refresh command, which auto-detects brownfield projects.

1. Activate the skill

Open your AI coding environment in a new (or empty) project folder.

Activate Cody Product Builder either by typing the activation command (for example, /cody-product-builder in Claude Code) or by describing what you want in plain language (“I want to build a new product”). Cody shows its activation banner and a prompt suggesting next steps.

2. Run the Plan phase

Type:

:cody plan

Cody asks What do you want to create? and then walks you through a Q&A to fully understand the idea. If you get stuck, type help me and Cody offers example answers. To cut the Q&A short, type no more.

When you’re done, Cody summarizes its understanding back to you and asks for explicit approval. Confirm or refine until you’re happy with it.

Cody then creates three documents in cody-projects/product-builder/plan/:

Document	Purpose
discovery.md	The unfiltered idea plus the Q&A you just had.
prd.md	The “what and why”: goals, users, features, success criteria.
plan.md	The “how and when”: architecture, components, milestones.

You review each one, suggest edits, and tell Cody to continue. The Plan phase ends with a banner letting you know it’s done.

For more detail, see The Plan Phase.

3. Start the Build phase

Type:

:cody build

The first time you run this, Cody creates the feature backlog (feature-backlog.md) from your plan. The backlog is the master list of everything that gets built, organized into versions, with a free-form Backlog section for unscoped ideas.

Review the backlog, then Cody asks what you want to do:

1. Create a new version
2. Work on an existing version
3. Work on a patch (quick fix or small enhancement)

Pick option 1 to create your first version.

4. Ship your first version

Cody walks you through creating a new version. For each version, it generates three documents in cody-projects/product-builder/build/v<version>-<name>/:

Document	Purpose
design.md	Technical implementation guidance and open questions.
tasklist.md	A detailed breakdown of tasks.
retrospective.md	Lessons learned, captured at the end.

Work through the task list with Cody. When the version ships, Cody updates release-notes.md and bumps the version in cody.json.

The default starting version is v0.1.0. For naming conventions, see Versions & Patches.

5. Keep going

From here, the loop is:

• Add a version with :cody build → option 1.
• Continue a version with :cody build → option 2.
• Ship a quick fix with :cody build → option 3 (patch).
• Capture an idea mid-flow with :cody idea <description>. It lands in the backlog.
• Try something risky with :cody prototype. Throwaway, self-contained.
• Resume in a new AI session by activating Cody, then running :cody refresh to rebuild context.

That’s the full workflow. Type :cody help any time to see the command list.