---
description: "Maintain docs/ux/foundation.md (personas, Jobs to Be Done, customer journeys, user stories): apply when defining who the users are and why they use the product, during product discovery, or when scenarios need a WHY layer to trace to"
alwaysApply: false
---

# ux-foundation — The WHY Layer

`docs/ux/foundation.md` holds the chain scenarios trace to: **Personas
(P-NN) → Jobs to Be Done (JTBD-NN) → Customer journeys (JRN-NN) → User
stories (ST-NNN)**. IDs sequential, never reused; dropped entries kept, not
deleted.

## Formats (ux-contract v4)

- **Persona `P-NN`:** 1–3 sentences, grounded in data/observation,
  recognizable by a real user.
- **JTBD `JTBD-NN`:** `When <situation>, I want to <motivation>, so I can
  <outcome>` + personas + type (functional|emotional|social) + forces
  (push/pull/anxiety/habit) + success metric (user outcome, never a
  feature).
- **Journey `JRN-NN`** (persona × job): stage table — `# | Stage | User
  action | Touchpoint | Emotion (1-5) | Pain | Opportunity`; end-to-end
  (before/during/after product); opportunity priority = Frequency ×
  Severity × Solvability.
- **Story `ST-NNN`:** `As <persona>, I want <capability>, so that
  <benefit>` + Traces (JTBD, JRN/stage) + Given/When/Then acceptance
  criteria + priority (must|should|could) + status
  (proposed|validated|delivered|dropped). Quality bar: INVEST.

## Workflows

- **Init (interview):** greenfield — ask one question at a time: who uses
  it; what situation triggers the job; what outcome = success; walk the
  path end-to-end; derive stories from pains and outcomes.
- **Init (reverse):** existing product — reverse-engineer jobs/personas
  from the UI and scenarios; tag entries observed vs inferred; flag
  features serving no job and jobs with no support.
- **Update:** locate by ID, update, mark dropped (never delete), then
  cascade: list scenarios tracing to changed IDs and update them in the
  same change.
- **Validate:** integrity (IDs, references), quality (no features in JTBD,
  INVEST, observable criteria), coverage (persona→job→journey→story chain
  complete; must/should stories have scenarios).

Two more sections this file owns, filled when they apply: **Monetization**
(model + value metric + free boundary + purchase surface + money moments +
acquisition coherence — each money moment becomes a first-class flow, and a
web/web2app purchase surface makes the web funnel and the paid handoff flows
of this product too) and **Design
tooling** (the Figma on/off choice, default on, plus the project's Figma file
URL — asked once per project). Everything else about the visual layer, the
design system and the style pack, lives in `docs/ux/screens.md`.

Evidence beats opinion: mark unvalidated guesses as assumptions
(desirability/viability/feasibility/usability) and test risky ones before
building on them.