Project Breakdown

Overview

Project Breakdown is the first stage of defining your project in AlphaTales. It walks you through a guided, five-step process that extracts and refines the core building blocks of your product idea -- purpose, problem, target users, core features, and goals. By the end, you have a validated foundation that feeds into Market Research, Workflow Alignment, Application Workflow, and feature planning.

The Five Validation Steps

When you open the Project Breakdown page, AlphaTales starts a validation session. The AI analyzes your project description and extracts structured content for each step. You review, edit, and confirm each piece before moving on.

1. Purpose -- What is the main purpose of your application?
2. Problem -- What problem does your application solve?
3. Target Users -- Who are your target users?
4. Core Features -- What are the core features?
5. Goals -- What are your project goals?

Starting a Session

Navigate to your project and select Project Breakdown from the project sidebar. If this is your first visit, a new session is created automatically and the first step begins extracting content right away.

If you previously started the process, your session is restored with all progress intact. Locked steps remain locked, and the current step picks up where you left off.

Working Through Each Step

Each step follows the same pattern:

1. Extraction -- The AI analyzes your project data and proposes content for the step. A loading indicator shows while extraction is in progress.
2. Review -- The extracted content appears on screen. For list-type steps (Target Users, Core Features, Goals), content appears as editable items. For text-type steps (Purpose, Problem), it appears as a paragraph.
3. Edit -- Click the edit button to modify the extracted content. You can rewrite text, add or remove list items, and update wording.
4. Lock & Continue -- Once you are satisfied, click Lock & Continue to confirm the step. Locking saves your content and advances you to the next step.

Tip: You can navigate back to previously locked steps at any time to review their content. Use the step sidebar on the left to jump between steps.

Real-Time Progress and Feedback

As each step processes, you receive real-time feedback. The step sidebar shows the current status of every step: Pending, Processing, Ready to Review, Input Required, or Completed. A progress indicator tracks how many of the five steps you have completed.

After extraction completes, the AI may provide a quality assessment with a confidence score and tone indicator to help you decide whether to edit or lock the content as-is.

Manual Input

If AI extraction is unavailable or you prefer to write your own content, the step switches to manual input mode. Type your content directly into the text field or list editor and lock the step when ready.

Warning: Content is required to lock a step. You cannot lock a step with empty content.

Completing Project Breakdown

Once all five steps are locked, the completion screen appears. It summarizes your progress and confirms that project breakdown is complete.

After completion, you can still click on any step in the sidebar to review its locked content. This is useful when you want to reference your validated content while working on later stages.

Next Steps

After completing project breakdown, move to Market Research where AlphaTales generates deeper research and analysis based on your validated content.