Solution ladder

Garden · not yet reviewed Emerging: new and still settling

A way to choose how to solve a problem by climbing from the simplest option (paper, a document or sheet, a prompt) toward an agent or an app, and stopping at the lowest rung that works.

Also called: lowest rung that works · right-sizing the tool · paper before app

Connections

Understand first

Ideas this one builds on.

• Smallest useful version (garden)

Related

Often used together or easily confused.

• Agents (garden)
• Automation (garden)
• Delegating to AI (garden)
• Vibe coding (garden)

Skills that use it

• /brainstorm (garden)
• /build-brief (garden)
• /stuck-or-pivot (garden)

Resources that teach it

• The Eight Levels of AI Adoption (garden)
• Not all AI agents are created equal (garden)
• A guide to AI prototyping for product managers (garden)
• The non-technical PM's guide to building with Cursor (Lenny's Podcast, with Zevi Arnovitz) (garden)

Competency

• Frame the outcome
• Make it repeatable

Find solution ladder on the commons map ↗

You may know it from

• design paper prototyping Sketch the screens on paper and test them with people before anyone builds anything.
• medicine minimum effective dose Use the smallest intervention that achieves the result; more adds risk without adding benefit.
• AI product management three kinds of agent: fixed steps, a reasoning agent, several agents working together Hamza Farooq and Jaya Rajwani advise starting with fixed step-by-step automation for the quickest measurable return (res-other-lenny-ai-agent-categories).
• nontechnical building moving to a bigger tool only when you outgrow the last one Zevi Arnovitz moved from a chat project to Bolt to Cursor only when each stopped being enough (res-other-lenny-nontechnical-pm-cursor).

In plain words

When AI can build almost anything, you still have to decide what to build. The solution ladder helps you decide. Picture the options as rungs, from simplest to most complex:

1. Paper or a conversation.
2. A simple document or spreadsheet.
3. A prompt, saved and reused.
4. An agent or automation that runs steps for you.
5. An app other people use.

Start at the bottom and climb only when the rung below can’t do the job. Each step up costs more to build, check, maintain and hand over.

The ladder also works in reverse. If a project has grown painful, ask whether stepping down a rung would serve people just as well.

Example

A team wants “an app to track event sponsorship.” Climbing the ladder, they find a shared spreadsheet plus a saved prompt that drafts follow-up emails covers everything they need. They revisit in six months; they still haven’t needed the app.

How it connects

• Builds on the smallest useful version: decide what’s needed, then the lowest rung that delivers it.
• Higher rungs are automation, agents and vibe coding.
• Choosing the rung is part of steering the whole project.

Try it

Think of a tool you wish you had and write down which rung you think it needs. Then describe the problem to AI and ask it to argue for the lowest rung that could work.

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Read this card as plain Markdown: /concepts/con-solution-ladder.md. Know a parallel from your own field, or a product that implements this? Add it.