You land here when your project doesn’t exist yet. You have an idea, a hypothesis, or an assignment. The next decision is between two bad options everyone knows:
- Open a blank editor and “see what comes out” — vibe coding. Works on day one. Doesn’t work on day thirty.
- Block four weeks writing a perfect PRD without building anything — analysis paralysis. Works in consulting, doesn’t work in product.
PaellaDoc cuts through the middle. You write the PRD with the orchestrator (not in a blank doc, not forever), and when it’s closed enough, a stack template scaffolds the first executable commit.
First step: assisted PRD, not perfect PRD
- Open PaellaDoc → “new project” → describe the idea in two paragraphs, no more. The orchestrator asks 3-5 questions to close the obvious ambiguities.
- Out comes an initial PRD, one epic, 3-5 user stories, and acceptance criteria for each. Not final — it’s a starting point.
- You pick a stack template (SvelteKit + FastAPI local, Next.js + Postgres, Rails + Sidekiq, etc.) and PaellaDoc scaffolds the first commit.
- From there each story runs as a worktree, with its own agent, its own gold gate, its own evidence.
Concrete example
GymRat (over in ./show-and-tell) was built this way. A non-developer, idea in two paragraphs, PaellaDoc → PRD → 1 epic → 5 stories → first commit in SvelteKit + FastAPI. You can download the .paella (203 KB) and walk the entire path, not just the result.
Share here
- Your idea in two paragraphs — raw, not polished. Useful for everyone to see what kind of projects people start with.
- Which story you opened first, and how long it took from initial PRD to first closed worktree.
- If your stack wasn’t in the templates: say so here. Templates grow with the projects that actually get built.
— @jlcases