> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.founder-sherpa.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The 5-Step Discovery Journey

> Follow the structured customer discovery cycle from defining personas to generating insights.

The Discovery Journey is the core methodology in Founder Sherpa. It's a repeatable 5-step cycle displayed as an interactive checklist on every project's Overview tab, guiding you through each phase with clear progress tracking and actionable next steps.

## The five steps

<Steps>
  <Step title="Define Personas">
    Identify the customer segments you want to research. Each persona represents a type of person you believe experiences the problem you're investigating.

    **Actions:** Create personas with a name, role type, and optional descriptors (description, demographics, goals).

    <Card title="Learn more about Personas" icon="user" href="/docs/features/personas" />
  </Step>

  <Step title="Define Hypotheses">
    For each persona, formulate testable hypotheses — assumptions you want to validate through interviews. These might be about pain points, behaviors, willingness to pay, or workflow patterns.

    **Actions:** Add hypotheses to specific personas. Use the AI quality checker to strengthen your hypothesis statements.

    <Card title="Learn more about Hypotheses" icon="lightbulb" href="/docs/features/hypotheses" />
  </Step>

  <Step title="Find People">
    Identify real people who match your personas and are willing to be interviewed. Use the AI suggestions to help brainstorm where to find interviewees.

    **Actions:** Build your interviewee list and prepare for outreach.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Interview">
    Conduct customer interviews and record what you learn. This step offers three paths:

    * **Prepare** — Create an [interview guide](/docs/features/interview-guides) with selected hypotheses and curated questions
    * **Record** — Add interview evidence directly, linking it to hypotheses and questions
    * **Upload** — Import a [transcript](/docs/features/transcript-import) and let AI extract structured evidence

    <Card title="Learn more about Interviews" icon="microphone" href="/docs/features/interviews" />
  </Step>

  <Step title="Refine & Repeat">
    Analyze your accumulated evidence to identify patterns, validate or invalidate hypotheses, and decide what to investigate next.

    **Actions:** Run batch analysis across all evidence, review AI-generated insights, and iterate on your personas and hypotheses based on what you've learned.

    <Card title="Learn more about AI Features" icon="sparkles" href="/docs/features/ai-features" />
  </Step>
</Steps>

## How the checklist works

The Discovery Journey appears as an interactive checklist on every project's Overview tab. It works like a setup guide, showing you exactly where you are and what to do next.

* **Progress bar** — a thin bar at the top shows how many of the 5 steps you've completed (e.g., "3 of 5 steps")
* **Accordion cards** — each step is a collapsible card. The current step auto-expands with a description, sub-tasks, and action buttons. You can expand any step to review or preview it.
* **Sub-tasks** — steps show granular progress. For example, "Define Hypotheses" lists each persona with its hypothesis count, so you can see which personas still need attention.
* **Action buttons** — each step has a primary call-to-action (e.g., "Add Persona", "Record Interview") that opens the relevant modal or navigates to the right page.

## The iterative cycle

Customer discovery is not linear. After completing all 5 steps, the checklist enters **cycle mode**:

* A "Cycle 2" badge appears, signaling you're in a new iteration
* Steps 1–4 remain complete with updated count badges
* Step 5 ("Refine & Repeat") shows a nudge when new interviews have been recorded since your last AI analysis — prompting you to re-validate your hypotheses

Each cycle through the journey sharpens your understanding of the customer problem. The checklist keeps you oriented without resetting your progress.