May 2026

May wired discovery, planning, and delivery into one connected system you can navigate, where feedback traces through to validated bets, experiments, and shipped changes. A new Validation Tree gave structured discovery a real home, the Delivery module reached Alpha, and Nova learned to act across the whole surface. Theme of the month: Close the loop.

In this edition

From Andy

Early in May I deleted the Pipeline. It had been a tidy list of discovery items, and lists are comforting, but the list was hiding the actual shape of the work. An opportunity spawns bets. A bet rests on hypotheses. A hypothesis gets tested by experiments. Experiments produce evidence. That's not a list, that's a tree. So I built the Validation Tree and watched the work finally look like what it is.

That's what the month turned into. April was when Nova became a coworker. May was when the rest of the product caught up to her, and everything turned into something you navigate instead of something you scroll.

Discovery is a tree now. Planning became a canvas where themes drag into Now, Next, and Later. And Delivery, a timeline you pan and zoom, reached Alpha this month. The pieces stopped being separate pages. A feedback item can be traced through to a bet, to an experiment, to the change that shipped, to the learning that came back. The loop you always draw on a whiteboard is in the product now.

The honest part: connecting things is harder than building them. Each surface was fine on its own. Making them speak the same visual language, share the same control bar, link in both directions, that's where the month actually went. Less glamorous than a new feature. More useful.

Four release weeks. One module to Alpha. A lot of edges drawn between things that used to sit apart.

Worth it.

— Andy

Discovery finally looks like a tree

For most of Outcomet's life, discovery lived in a thing called the Pipeline. It worked, but it was a list, and a list flattens the one thing that matters in product discovery: that ideas have structure. The Validation Tree replaces the Pipeline with an interactive, full-bleed graph of exactly that shape, Opportunities > Bets > Hypotheses > Experiments > Evidence, with radial progress on each node and slide-out detail sheets when you click in. Nodes are draggable, so you can rearrange the evidence flow to match how the thinking actually moved.

Underneath the tree, experiments got a real workflow. The Experiments Kanban moves work across five validation stages, Backlog > Designed > Running > Analyzing > Concluded, with drag-and-drop status updates and richer cards (objectives, method and type badges, cost and duration estimates, learning counters). Bets, hypotheses, and experiments link many-to-many, so you can model the messy reality where one experiment informs several bets at once.

And because a blank experiment form is its own kind of friction, there's now a Methods Library: 31 template methods with previews and target-layer badges. Pick a method, edit it in a split-pane preview, and it drops straight into the tree and the Kanban. Structured discovery used to be something you did in a separate tool, or didn't do at all. Now it's a first-class part of the same graph that holds your feedback and your roadmap.

Plan on a canvas, ship on a timeline

Planning got a canvas. The board prototype is gone, replaced by a freeform Planning canvas where feedback themes are draggable nodes you arrange into strategic chains across Now, Next, and Later horizons. Move a theme and its horizon metadata updates itself. A dynamic Today root keeps the focus from drifting, and shared view state means a collaborative planning session stays in sync instead of resetting on every reload.

Delivery moved onto a graph too, and reached Alpha this month. The Changes view is now a horizontal timeline that connects shipped work to the capabilities, themes, and learnings it touched, with pan, zoom, and navigation by day, week, or month. Work Items arrived alongside it as a separate planning artifact, issue-like records that link to Changes, Themes, and Capabilities, so a change can show the work that drove it. Learning cards sit inline under linked themes with evidence and recommended next steps, so acting on an outcome doesn't mean leaving the graph.

Freeform Planning canvas with draggable themes and Now / Next / Later horizons that update theme metadata automatically
Dynamic Today root and persistent shared view state for collaborative planning
Graph-first Changes timeline linking shipped work to capabilities, themes, and learnings, with day/week/month navigation
Work Items: issue-like planning artifacts linked to Changes, Themes, and Capabilities, with a "Driven by Work Items" context on change details
Inline learning cards with evidence and recommended next steps under linked themes
GitHub and Jira issues and work items render markdown, and imports respect app permissions, reporting gaps without failing already-imported items
AI-assisted Theme Suggestions map a broader set of open feedback into candidate themes and auto-attach the underlying feedback

Nova works the whole loop

April gave Nova a name and a face. May gave her reach. She can now inspect and act across the full product surface, capabilities, feedback, themes, changes, pillars, opportunities, bets, experiments, and signals, inside a single scoped workflow. From a conversation you can create, update, approve, reject, and reopen feedback right down to individual chunks, and create, update, link, or delete change records. Linking a theme to a capability and back happens in chat, so triage doesn't mean leaving the conversation to go click around.

The plumbing caught up too. Multi-turn context and prior tool results are preserved, large tool outputs get compacted so follow-ups stay clean, and finished tool cards survive a chat reload. The agent roster is discoverable now, with specialist profiles for Nova, Polaris, Vega, and Nexus, and the radial launcher lets you pick Polaris directly.

Nova inspects and acts across the full product surface (capabilities, feedback, themes, changes, pillars, opportunities, bets, experiments, signals) in one scoped workflow
Create, update, approve, reject, and reopen feedback and individual chunks straight from chat
Create, update, link, and delete change records from chat, plus in-chat theme-to-capability linking
Theme lifecycle control: Nova can update a theme's status and disposition when instructed
Conversation continuity: preserved multi-turn context, compacted large tool outputs, and tool cards that persist across reloads
Discoverable specialist profiles (Nova, Polaris, Vega, Nexus) with per-agent customization and Polaris selectable in the launcher

The workspace connects outward

Two of May's additions point outside the product. Contacts is a new module, Companies, Contacts, and Campaigns, with the lists, filters, and detail views you already know from everywhere else. The point isn't to be a sales CRM. Contacts and companies carry source labels (a LinkedIn hit, say) and feedback counts, so the people behind your feedback live in the same graph as the feedback itself. A JSON import flow with preview counts, dedup, and protection for user-edited fields makes bringing them in safe, and new contacts auto-resolve to existing companies by normalized domain so you don't end up with three versions of the same account.

Signals reached outward too. ora.ai joined as a source: configure multiple domains, sync daily or manually, and see per-domain health and ora.ai scores rendered right on Signals graphs and detail panels. Signals also picked up delivery-backed metrics for Changes, so the totals, in-progress, and completed work you track in delivery now show up as history you can read over time.

New Contacts module (Companies, Contacts, Campaigns) with lists, filtering, detail views, source labels, and feedback counts
Safe JSON contact import with preview counts, queued progress, deduplication, and preserved user edits
Contacts auto-resolve to existing companies via normalized domain matching to prevent duplicates
ora.ai integration in Signals: multi-domain config, daily or manual sync, and per-domain health and scores in graphs and panels
Delivery-backed Signals metrics for Changes (totals, in-progress, completed, active integrations) as readable history

By the numbers

4 release weeks
1 net-new module: Contacts
1 module graduation: Delivery to Alpha
1 new Signals source: ora.ai
31 experiment templates in the Methods Library
4 agents on the roster: Nova, Polaris, Vega, Nexus

Also shipped

Opportunity Maps: Wardley maps reworked into explicit Opportunity maps, with map selection up front, switching from the primary filter bar, and direct drag-and-drop placement of bets and capabilities on the canvas.
One graph control bar: unified controls across Capabilities, Changes, and Feedback for spacing, color, edge opacity, and layout, with per-graph customization and JSON export of visual settings for reuse elsewhere.
Harmonized graph visuals: consistent colors, edges, and node treatments across Feedback, Capabilities, Strategy, and Delivery, plus new orbit and tree modes for feedback graphs and readable hero/composite/atomic label controls.
Single Rich Text Editor and Story Drawer: one resizable editor across the app and a right-hand drawer to inspect a story's status, synopsis, artifacts, and rollout schedule without leaving the catalog.
Billing foundation: subscriptions, trials, and plan management are in place, with paid subscriptions appearing on the billing page immediately.
Usage Widget: compact breakdowns of model input and output, cache reads and writes, approximate tool payload sizes, and more accurate per-section cost calculations for Agent Work.
Simplified feedback lifecycle: statuses are now Open, Rejected, or Closed (legacy processed items treated as Open), with S0-S3 severity badges and sentiment rollups for faster triage.
Chunk-level feedback detail: chunks show parent context, readable severity and sentiment, rendered Markdown on linked feedback, and one-click navigation between chunk and parent.
Capability detail, health-first: Health KPIs surface up front, with emoji markers and standardized relationship sections for clearer scanning and ownership.
Unified linked-item UX: standardized link, create, open, unlink, and edit controls plus animated stack navigation across Capability, Theme, Feedback, and Chunk details, with display preferences that persist across reloads.
Validation Tree polish: centered on load, preserved pan and zoom, left-click opens details, and safe Unlink actions replace destructive deletes. The Bets panel got a compact floating layout with collapsible opportunity groups and persisted selection.
Changelog Viewer: surfaces manually refined release notes when available, with historical monthly digests browsable for reference.
Brand polish: Merriweather for page headings, standardized header and action button styling, and the primary command label standardized to "Deploy Member."
Deploy Member preview: deploying an agent now previews what it will do before you confirm, and the Crew roster lists only currently deployed agents.
Reliability and cost: resilient saved planning settings and graph coordinates, a lower-latency default preset for the feedback capability graph, faster change lookup, and a Safari private-mode state-persistence fix.

Looking ahead

May connected the stages. June is about making those connections earn their keep, turning the evidence that flows back from experiments and delivery into decisions you can act on without leaving the graph. Expect the Discovery layer to keep maturing toward its own Alpha, Nova to get sharper at the analytical work, and more sources feeding Signals.

If you want a walkthrough of the Validation Tree, the new Planning canvas, or Delivery Alpha, reply here and I'll set up a quick demo.