Infrastructure · Data Structures
Prototype
Testable early model
Definition
Mechanism
An early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be learned from. It is generally low-fidelity and disposable.
Invariants
- Declares the question it was built to answer.
- Records the answer, or that none was reached, before it is retired or promoted.
Risks
Failure modes
Promoted by inertia
kept because it works well enough, so choices made for cheap learning become load-bearing.
Built without a question
produces an artifact and no answer, which is the waste case rather than a cheap experiment.
Relationships
Root pattern: builds on nothing in this library.
Used by
Reference
Data schema
{
"type": "object",
"required": [
"prototype_id",
"fidelity",
"question"
],
"properties": {
"prototype_id": {
"type": "string",
"description": "Unique identifier"
},
"fidelity": {
"type": "string",
"enum": [
"low",
"medium",
"high"
],
"description": "How close to final product"
},
"artifact": {
"description": "The prototype content or reference"
},
"learnings": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"type": "string"
},
"description": "What was learned from this prototype"
},
"question": {
"type": "string",
"description": "What building this is meant to settle. Known before construction, which is why it is required while `learnings` is not."
}
}
}