The first call with a developer, as a tool
Most product ideas arrive as a wishlist. The most useful hour in a project is the one that cuts it down, before anyone writes code. Scope does that hour in the open, and shows its working.
The problem
Someone with an idea writes to a developer: sign-up, payments, a dashboard, an app for iPhone and Android, chat. They get back either a price for all of it or a request for a call. Neither tells them what they actually need first, or why the first version takes as long as it does.
The tools that exist make it worse. Agency calculators ask for an email and return a price for everything ticked. Chat assistants agree with every feature. Nobody says “not yet”, and “not yet” is where the time and money are.
What Scope believes
- Cut first, estimate second. The smallest version that answers the real question is the product.
- Ranges with odds, never a single number. An honest range that narrows as you cut is worth more than a confident wrong figure.
- Every pushback names a cheaper way to learn the same thing. “Not yet” without an alternative is just a refusal.
- Ask for nothing. No email, no account, no storage. The plan lives in the link.
- Show the working. Every range and rule is on the method page.
Scope’s own cut
Scope was planned the way it plans: this is what made v1, and what did not.
v1
- Six product shapes, five questions, one per screen
- A catalogue of pieces with ranges and pushback
- v1, later and not doing, swaps, your own pieces
- Estimate with odds of a date
- The brief: print, Markdown, link
Later
- Describe the idea in your own words and have the questions filled in
- Plans for a team of more than one developer
Not doing
- Prices or day rates
- An email gate
- Accounts and saved plans
What Scope records
Nothing you type is stored: the plan is the link. Scope counts anonymous steps, such as a plan opened or a brief taken, to learn where people get stuck. No cookies, and no identifier that outlives the page.
Who made it
Scope is free, made by Rami Ashqar. The ranges are his judgment, published on the method page so you can disagree with them.