Definitions
What each status label actually means
Software completion, public deployment, customer validation, and profitability are four separate things. We label them separately on purpose, rather than letting "it works on my machine" quietly imply "customers want this."
| Label | What it means | What it does NOT mean |
|---|---|---|
| Research | We're investigating whether this is a real problem worth solving. | Nothing has been built. |
| In build | Active development of a minimum useful version. | Not tested, not reviewed, not ready to use. |
| Locally tested | Automated tests pass and it's been manually exercised locally. | Not customer-validated. Not deployed. |
| Human review required | Something (brand, legal, security, or design) needs a person to look at it before proceeding. | Not blocked forever — a specific, named gate is open. |
| Staged, not deployed | A deployment package exists and has been checked, but nothing has been made publicly live. | Not accessible to the public yet. |
| Public pilot | Live, with a small, deliberate audience, gathering real feedback. | Not yet proven at scale or profitable. |
| Validated | Real customers, real usage or purchases, with evidence we can point to. | Still not a guarantee of long-term success. |
| Retired | No longer actively developed or supported — stated plainly, not quietly abandoned. | — |
Why we separate these
It's easy to build something in an afternoon and feel like a business exists. It doesn't, until real customers have said so with their attention, feedback, or money. Keeping these stages honestly separate is how we avoid fooling ourselves as much as anyone else.