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dogfooding skill

/skills/dogfooding

This skill helps you implement dogfooding programs that make internal product use natural, measurable, and aligned with user pain points.

npx playbooks add skill refoundai/lenny-skills --skill dogfooding

Review the files below or copy the command above to add this skill to your agents.

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SKILL.md
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---
name: dogfooding
description: Help users implement effective dogfooding practices. Use when someone is trying to get their team to use their own product, designing internal usage programs, or building user empathy through personal product use.
---

# Dogfooding

Help the user implement effective dogfooding practices using frameworks from 2 product leaders who have built cultures of intense internal product usage.

## How to Help

When the user asks for help with dogfooding:

1. **Assess current state** - Determine how much the team currently uses their own product
2. **Identify the gap** - Find where team members lack firsthand experience with user pain points
3. **Design the program** - Help create systems that make dogfooding natural and required
4. **Measure impact** - Track how dogfooding improves product decisions

## Core Principles

### Require team members to become users
Maya Prohovnik: "I am constantly yelling at my product team who do not have podcasts and being like, I really don't think that you can build the right things. If they talk to users all the time, they see the data, but all of them, once they finally start doing their podcast, they're like, I get it." Force the entire team to become creators/users to deeply understand user pain points.

### Use the tool intensely every day
Michael Truell: "From the very start, our product development process was really about dogfooding, and using the tool intensely every day. And we never wanted to ship anything that wasn't useful to us." 'Intense' daily use provides the realism needed to build useful features, especially for AI products.

## Questions to Help Users

- "How often does each team member actually use the product as a real user?"
- "What's preventing your team from being heavy users of your own product?"
- "What would it take to make internal usage feel natural rather than forced?"
- "Are you learning different things from dogfooding vs. customer feedback?"
- "How quickly do you feel the pain of bugs or friction when using your own product?"

## Common Mistakes to Flag

- **Superficial testing** - Using the product only in demo mode, not for real work
- **Delegating to QA** - Relying on testers instead of requiring team members to be real users
- **Ignoring non-obvious use cases** - Only testing the happy path rather than edge cases
- **Not acting on findings** - Dogfooding without a process to fix discovered issues
- **Excluding non-product roles** - Only having engineers dogfood when designers and PMs should too

## Deep Dive

For all 2 insights from 2 guests, see `references/guest-insights.md`

## Related Skills

- Writing North Star Metrics
- Defining Product Vision
- Prioritizing Roadmap
- Setting OKRs & Goals

Overview

This skill helps teams implement effective dogfooding practices so employees use the product like real customers. It focuses on building daily internal usage, uncovering real pain points, and turning findings into prioritized fixes. Use it to create measurable, repeatable programs that improve product quality and user empathy.

How this skill works

I guide you through assessing current internal usage, identifying gaps between team behavior and real user workflows, and designing a program that makes dogfooding natural and mandatory. The skill defines simple rituals, accountability mechanisms, and metrics to measure impact, then helps convert discoveries into actionable backlog items. It emphasizes cross-functional participation and continuous feedback loops.

When to use it

  • You want the team to experience your product’s core workflows daily
  • Designing an internal program to increase firsthand user empathy
  • Preparing to release a major feature and validating it with staff first
  • You’re getting repeated bugs or UX complaints that don’t surface in QA
  • Building culture where product decisions come from lived experience

Best practices

  • Require everyone (PMs, designers, support, execs) to use the product in a real context, not demos
  • Set a simple cadence: daily or weekly usage goals tied to role-relevant tasks
  • Make dogfooding part of onboarding and performance check-ins
  • Log findings with a lightweight template: scenario, pain, frequency, suggested fix
  • Turn discoveries into prioritized tickets and track resolution impact

Example use cases

  • Create a 30-day onboarding dogfood plan that routes new hires through core features
  • Run a weeklong internal hackathon where teams use the product for real work and surface issues
  • Add a daily ‘‘product use’’ checklist for support and sales to reproduce customer flows
  • Pre-launch sanity check: require cross-functional reps to perform key scenarios and report blockers
  • Measure time-to-detect and time-to-fix issues discovered via internal usage to demonstrate ROI

FAQ

How do I stop dogfooding from feeling forced?

Make usage role-relevant, lightweight, and tied to real work. Give teams clear, short tasks that produce value for them and the organization so it becomes natural.

What metrics show dogfooding is working?

Track frequency of internal use, number of issues discovered, percent of dogfood findings turned into prioritized tickets, and subsequent reduction in similar customer complaints.