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Family Elf · Product Management, Design & UX, Strategy

How Family Elf turned a founder-built prototype into a sprint-ready AI app

I joined Family Elf as product lead to turn a vibe-coded prototype into a scoped, documented product that a three-person engineering team could ship sprint by sprint.

84
Features specified
53
Roadmap items
21
Features shipped
Family Elf Skills library grouped into Health & Care and Planning & Schedule
The Skills library: pre-built and custom Skills, grouped by category and searchable.
Client
Family Elf
Services
Product Management, Design & UX, Strategy
Year
2026
Tools
Jira, GitHub, Clerk, Stripe, PostHog
Engagement
Fractional product lead, since June 2026

The company

Family Elf is a non-profit building a private AI helper for families. A household sets up Elves, AI helpers that each carry Skills like meal planning or medication reminders, and groups them into Projects with shared context. Every family member gets a role, from Owner to Child.

The challenge

One founder had vibe-coded most of the app and the marketing site. Auth, the household data model and what a Skill is technically were all undecided, and each one changed the database schema. Features had no rules for edge cases, and the live site sold a pricing plan the team had already dropped.

What I did

  1. Set up how the team works

    I wrote a project setup doc covering 19 tooling and infrastructure choices, each with a recommendation, alternatives and an owner. We landed on Jira, GitHub, Next.js, Clerk, Stripe and PostHog, three environments and a three-day standup rhythm.

  2. Mapped the whole product

    I built a product brief that walks every page, from sign-up to settings, as entry point and outcome. Each feature lists its dependencies, priority, open questions and the engineers' recommendation, so disagreements surfaced on paper.

  3. Sequenced it into a roadmap

    I grouped the brief into eight initiatives, from Auth and Onboarding to Chat and Super Admin, and slotted each feature into Now, Next, Later or Backlog with a MoSCoW priority.

  4. Wrote specs engineers can build from

    I created PRD, requirement and bug templates, then used them for the website redesign and the plans and billing work. Every PRD breaks down into an Epic, stories and front-end and back-end sub-tasks with Given/When/Then criteria.

  5. Priced it like a non-profit

    I designed Free and Starter plans capped by household messages per month, an invite-only founding cohort that stays free, and a cost-per-message guardrail tied to break-even, so the model covers costs without chasing margin.

Family Elf Create a Project dialog with name and instructions fields
Projects add shared context to each Elf's instructions instead of overriding them.

Results

  • 84

    Features specified

    Each with an entry point, outcome and open questions in the product brief

  • 53

    Roadmap items

    Across 8 initiatives, prioritized from Must to Nice-to-Have

  • 21

    Features shipped

    From auth and onboarding to Elves, Skills and Projects

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