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Publications

A publication is a multi-page workspace for an idea that has enough signal to justify deeper research, design, prototype, validation, and open-question pages.

Why Publications Exist

Some ideas need more than one page. A serious idea can have separate pages for research, design, prototype, validation, and open questions. This makes the work inspectable without turning the store listing into a giant document.

Universal Two-Level Spine

Use this spine for serious idea publications across products, services, communities, tools, content products, marketplaces, local businesses, AI agents, and startups.

  1. Overview
  2. Snapshot
  3. Current thesis
  4. Status
  5. Why this deserves attention
  6. People And Problem
  7. First user or buyer
  8. Problem moment
  9. Current workaround
  10. Urgency or frequency
  11. Context And Evidence
  12. Existing alternatives
  13. Competitors or substitutes
  14. Source trail
  15. Unknowns
  16. Proposed Solution
  17. Core promise
  18. User workflow
  19. Smallest useful version
  20. Out of scope
  21. Risks And Constraints
  22. Trust and safety
  23. Legal or regulatory constraints
  24. Operational or technical constraints
  25. Kill signals
  26. Validation
  27. Riskiest assumption
  28. Cheapest test
  29. Success threshold
  30. Pivot or trash criteria
  31. Prototype Or Pilot
  32. Demo or pilot
  33. Required resources
  34. Manual or fakeable parts
  35. Must be real
  36. Model And Distribution
  37. Sustainability model
  38. Pricing or funding hypothesis
  39. Channels
  40. Partnerships
  41. Evolution
  42. Open questions
  43. Contribution prompts
  44. Next decisions
  45. ProIdeaStore readiness

Should Every Idea Use This Spine?

No. Free ideas should be cheap. Raw ideas can use only the sections that are honest. Use the full spine when the idea has enough signal to justify deeper work. ProIdeaStore candidates should usually have a complete or nearly complete publication.

Lifecycle Stages

  • Raw: a rough prompt or early concept.
  • Shaping: the user, problem, and smallest version are being clarified.
  • Researching: competitors, substitutes, sources, constraints, and evidence are being gathered.
  • Validating: the riskiest assumption is being tested with real behavior.
  • Prototyping: a demo, pilot, manual service, or testable artifact is being built.
  • Launched: something usable exists in public, private, or pilot form.
  • Pivot: the original shape is changing because a sharper wedge or blocker emerged.
  • Parked: the idea is intentionally paused, weak, blocked, or waiting for new evidence.

Publishing Model

The store shows a snippet and links into dynamic chapter pages. The FreeIdeaStore Worker reads the canonical Markdown idea document from platform storage, splits ## headings into chapter URLs, and keeps ### headings as sub-sections inside the chapter.

FreeIdeaStore does not create per-idea GitHub docs, Zensical projects, generated static publication assets, or fallback static pages for free ideas.

Agents should write Markdown through MCP tools such as create_free_idea, add_idea_contribution, propose_idea_refinement, and publish_idea_update. They should not upload pre-rendered HTML for publications.

Zensical Boundary

Zensical is the standard generator for the platform documentation at /docs/. Free idea publications intentionally do not use one Zensical instance per idea because that would create too many generated files and too much publishing overhead.