{"slug": "the-moat-machine-i-wrote-about-product-strategy-in-2022-in-2026-i-built-the-ai", "title": "The Moat Machine: I Wrote About Product Strategy in 2022. In 2026 I Built the AI Plugin That Runs It.", "summary": "A developer built PM Superpowers, a Claude Code and Cursor plugin that runs product strategy frameworks interactively rather than generating documents. The tool, which includes a strategic-moat skill covering eight moat types and a six-step /strategy session grounded in Rumelt's Why/What/How, grew out of a 2022 UX Collective article on the same framework. The developer positions it as a strategy-thinking aid rather than a PRD generator, aiming to help teams answer questions like \"what's our moat?\" in minutes.", "body_md": "In December 2022 I published a UX Collective article on a systematic way to\n\ndevelop and socialize product strategy. Six steps. Rumelt’s strategy kernel.\n\nVRIO for pillars. A path from diagnosis to communication.\n\nIt got 52 claps. I was happy about that.\n\nThen I went back to work and spent the next three years doing product strategy\n\nexactly the way I always had: a Google Doc, a lot of tabs, and somewhere\n\nbetween four and eight hours I didn’t really have.\n\nNot because I didn’t know the frameworks. I knew them well enough to write\n\nabout them. The problem was never knowledge. It was execution.\n\nMost AI-for-PM tools stop at generating a PRD. They help you write faster, not\n\nthink straighter. That sounds helpful until you’re in a leadership review and\n\nsomeone asks the question that turns a polished doc into wet paper:\n\n**“What’s our moat?”**\n\nIf your answer is an adjective — sticky, delightful, AI-powered — you don’t\n\nhave a strategy. You have a slide.\n\nThe hard part of product strategy isn’t drafting. It’s the work that makes a\n\ndraft survive that room:\n\nDone properly, this takes hours. Done quickly, it produces analysis that\n\nwouldn’t survive a single hard question. So most of the time, it doesn’t get\n\ndone at all — and the roadmap keeps shipping features that don’t compound into\n\nadvantage.\n\nThere had to be a better way in 2026.\n\nThe 2022 piece —\n\n[The systematic approach to developing and socializing product strategy](https://uxdesign.cc/product-strategy-framework-a4d49bf5b265) —\n\nwas a field guide. Useful on paper. Still slow in practice. Knowing Rumelt’s\n\nWhy / What / How doesn’t magically create an afternoon where you can run VRIO\n\nwithout interruptions.\n\nIn 2026 I shipped what that article implied: an interactive AI workflow that\n\n*runs* the frameworks instead of summarizing them in another essay.\n\nWrite-up:\n\n[I wrote about product strategy in 6 steps in 2022. I just built an AI that runs it.](https://aniganti.medium.com/i-wrote-about-product-strategy-in-6-steps-in-2022-i-just-built-an-ai-that-runs-it-4c6375527a5c)\n\nRepo: [aniganti/pm-superpowers](https://github.com/aniganti/pm-superpowers)\n\n**PM Superpowers** is a Claude Code / Cursor plugin: skills, one sub-agent, and\n\na shared library of named strategy frameworks. It triggers in conversation —\n\nyou don’t copy-paste a mega-prompt from a Notion doc you’ll forget to open.\n\nIt is **not** a PRD generator. That distinction matters. Faster docs are easy.\n\nDefensible strategy is scarce.\n\nIn practice it feels like a strategy-minded chief of staff who’s read VRIO,\n\naggregation theory, and every pre-mortem post-mortem — and asks the next hard\n\nquestion instead of dumping a wall of text. The AI doesn’t freestyle a\n\nplausible-sounding essay; it interviews you along the framework’s actual\n\ndimensions.\n\nBrand hook, said plainly: **answer “what’s our moat?” in minutes.**\n\nThe `strategic-moat` skill walks you through eight moat types, asks for\n\nevidence (not vibes), rates strength, and surfaces deepening opportunities.\n\nYou’re pushed to say what product behavior, data, or user dynamics support\n\neach rating — and where the moat is thin.\n\nYou leave with a moat profile you can defend: strongest moats, weakest moats,\n\ndeepening moves, and a defensibility verdict grounded in *your* product, not a\n\ngeneric essay about “network effects in tech.”\n\nThat’s the moat machine. Not a slogan — a session you can run before the next\n\nstrategy review.\n\n`/strategy` — the six-step session\n`/strategy` is the orchestrator from the 2022 framework, now interactive:\n\nGrounded in Rumelt’s Why / What / How. The AI interviews you; you don’t\n\nfreestyle into a slide deck and call it strategy. Artifacts land in structured\n\ndocs you can revisit — not chat scroll you’ll never find again.\n\nStandalone `vrio-analysis` applies the decision tree to concrete capabilities:\n\nMost teams skip a gate and still call it a pillar. The skill makes skipping\n\nawkward — which is the point.\n\nMoat analysis without competitive intel is fan fiction.\n\nThe `competitive-researcher` sub-agent gathers competitive intelligence via\n\nweb research so `competitive-landscape` isn’t “please paste everything you\n\nknow about competitors.” You review the synthesis; you don’t become a tab\n\nfarmer. That landscape then feeds VRIO and moat instead of living in a\n\nseparate deck nobody opens.\n\nRecommended full strategy pipeline:", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-moat-machine-i-wrote-about-product-strategy-in-2022-in-2026-i-built-the-ai", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/5hredder/the-moat-machine-i-wrote-about-product-strategy-in-2022-in-2026-i-built-the-ai-plugin-that-runs-35a8", "published_at": "2026-09-17 13:15:38+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-17 13:23:08.977833+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-tools", "ai-products", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["PM Superpowers", "Claude Code", "Cursor", "Rumelt", "UX Collective", "GitHub", "aniganti"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-moat-machine-i-wrote-about-product-strategy-in-2022-in-2026-i-built-the-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-moat-machine-i-wrote-about-product-strategy-in-2022-in-2026-i-built-the-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-moat-machine-i-wrote-about-product-strategy-in-2022-in-2026-i-built-the-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-moat-machine-i-wrote-about-product-strategy-in-2022-in-2026-i-built-the-ai.jsonld"}}