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Getting Started

Creating a project

Go from a fuzzy idea to a scoped story map with intent start and intent scope, entirely from the terminal.

The guided flow: intent start → intent scope

If you don't have a project on intentdocs.com yet, two commands take you from a one-line problem statement to a scoped story map — no web UI required.

intent start

intent start

A guided, conversational flow for a brand-new idea:

  1. Prompts you for the problem you're trying to solve.
  2. Generates three discovery questions to sharpen the idea (streamed from the API).
  3. Prompts you for answers (you can skip any of them).
  4. Synthesizes a pitch, a target user, and three name suggestions.
  5. You pick a suggested name or type your own.
  6. Creates the project on intentdocs.com.
  7. Optionally publishes it to the public Explore page.
  8. Optionally hands off straight into intent scope.

If you hit your plan's project limit, intent start tells you and points at intentdocs.com/pricing.

intent scope [projectId]

intent scope                # prompts for a project ID
intent scope <projectId>    # scope a project created by `intent start`

Turns a pitch into a real story map:

  1. Prompts for the user journey, personas, MVP scope, and technical constraints.
  2. Generates a full blueprint (hypothesis, personas, stories, build order) — streamed.
  3. Looks up (or creates) the story map for the project and generates a sync token.
  4. Writes .intent/config.json and downloads INTENT.md — the same handoff intent init performs for an existing project.
  5. Optionally writes MOCKUP_PROMPT.md, a template prompt for your AI coding tool to generate an HTML mockup from.
  6. Optionally initializes a git repository.
  7. Optionally runs intent setup to configure Claude Code or Cursor.

After intent scope finishes, your project directory is connected exactly as if you'd run intent init against an existing story map — see Connecting a repo for what that means and what to do next.

Starting from a template instead

intent templates            # list available story map templates
intent templates <name>     # preview a specific template's activities

Starting from an existing PRD or spec

If you already have a PRD, spec doc, or written requirements, skip the guided flow and import it directly — see intent import in the CLI reference.