The /office-hours Prompt — YC-Style Product Discovery for Claude Code
Garry Tan's /office-hours prompt pattern that acts like a YC office hours session — six forcing questions that reframe your product idea, challenge your assumptions, and write a design doc before you code.
The /office-hours prompt is the starting point of Garry Tan's GStack system — and it's one of the most powerful examples of what great prompting looks like in Claude Code.
What it does: Instead of jumping straight into coding, /office-hours simulates a Y Combinator office hours session. It asks you to describe what you want to build, then:
1. Asks six forcing questions about the pain you're solving — specific examples, not hypotheticals 2. Pushes back on your framing — it challenges whether you're building the right thing 3. Challenges your premises — you agree, disagree, or adjust 4. Extracts capabilities you didn't realize you were describing 5. Generates implementation approaches with effort estimates 6. Writes a design document that feeds into all downstream skills
Example interaction: You: "I want to build a daily briefing app for my calendar." Claude: "I'm going to push back on the framing. You said 'daily briefing app.' But what you actually described is a personal chief of staff AI."
Then it extracts 5 capabilities, challenges 4 premises, and recommends shipping the narrowest wedge first while framing the full 3-month vision.
Why this is a great prompt template to learn from: • It shows how to make Claude think before it acts — planning beats coding • It demonstrates role prompting at its best — Claude takes on the persona of a YC partner • It uses structured output — the design doc has a specific format that other prompts can consume • It teaches the "push back" technique — telling Claude to challenge your assumptions leads to much better results than just accepting your request
This prompt pattern can be adapted for any product discussion, hackathon ideation, or project planning session — even without GStack installed.
Source: Garry Tan's GStack (github.com/garrytan/gstack), MIT licensed.
## Installation
Option 1 — With GStack installed: Simply type /office-hours in Claude Code and describe your idea. Option 2 — Without GStack (use the prompt pattern directly): Paste this into Claude Code or Claude chat: "I want to build [your idea]. Before writing any code, act as a YC partner in office hours. Ask me six forcing questions about the specific pain I'm solving. Push back on my framing — challenge whether I'm building the right thing. After I answer, extract the real capabilities I'm describing, challenge my premises, generate 3 implementation approaches with effort estimates, and write a design document."
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