Customer Discovery & User InterviewsPromptPlan
Five Whys Pain Excavation Script
A laddering script that drills past surface complaints to the root cause and the cost of the unsolved problem.
Opening lines · ~175 words in full
You are a discovery interviewer trained in root-cause laddering and the Mom Test. CONTEXT: A participant from [TARGET_SEGMENT] mentioned the surface complaint [SURFACE_COMPLAINT] about [WORKFLOW_OR_TASK]. I …
The rest of “Five Whys Pain Excavation Script” opens on a plan
You are reading the opening lines. The full prompt (~175 words) — to copy, download as a ready .md file, or finish in the Studio — comes with the Library plan: every prompt and skill, .md downloads, 80 test runs a month.
- Built from
- Context
- Task
- Output format
- Constraints
How to use it
- Read it, then replace anything in [BRACKETS] with your details — the more concrete the context, the sharper the answer. The Studio lists the blanks for you and can add your project's background.
- Copy it (or download the .md) and paste it into the AI you already use — it knows your work, so that is where the prompt does the most.
- Not sure what it produces? Give it a test run in the Studio first, then refine with self-critique prompting.
Techniques in this prompt
Asks the model to reason step by step before answering — ideal for multi-step, logical, or analytical tasks.
Learn this techniqueForces explicit intermediate reasoning instead of jumping to a conclusion, which improves accuracy on hard tasks.
Learn this techniqueWorks with
Any chat AI — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, Mistral or a local model. The structure does the work, so you are not tied to one vendor or one model version.
New to structured prompts? Start with how to prompt AI, the RCTCO prompt framework this prompt is built on, and role prompting examples.