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Prototype vs MVP6 min read

How finished should an MVP be before development starts?

The rule of thumb for MVP scope, and the trap of building too much — or too little.

An MVP isn't a half-built product. It's a complete product with a deliberately narrow scope. The 'minimum' in MVP describes feature breadth, not quality.

The right level of finish

  • One core workflow, fully working, including the unhappy paths.
  • Auth, permissions, and data persistence — production-grade.
  • Enough polish that users don't blame the tool for their friction.
  • Instrumentation to learn from real usage.

What to leave out

Adjacent workflows, nice-to-have integrations, admin tooling, and anything you can manually do for the first 50 users. We help teams set this scope during PRD creation and technical scoping.

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