northstarlisted

# northstar — What this product is for One page. It exists so that every later argument — which feature first, how bad is this bug, is this trade-off acceptable — has something to be argued *against* other than preference. Its most load-bearing output is a single line: **the quality property this project owns.** That line lands in `.steering/product.md` as `- Owns:`, and the reviewer reads it to decide whether a swallowed error is a Blocker or a nit. A project that has not answered it gets a reviewer working from taste. ## Where it goes `<docs>/NORTH_STAR.md` — and the `- Owns:` line it derives goes into `.steering/product.md`. `<docs>` is the `- Docs:` line in `.steering/tech.md`, which defaults to `docs/`. In a multi-repo product it points at the shared documentation repository instead, so product-level truth has one home rather than one per repo. ## Steps 1. **Name the metric.** One number that goes up when the product is working. Not a proxy the team can game, and not revenue unless revenue is genuinely the thing. 2. **Name the levers** — the three to five inputs that actually move it. Give each a stable id in whatever prefix this project uses, so a spec can cite the lever it serves. The harness does not impose a vocabulary; pick one and keep it. 3. **Name the quality laws**, in priority order. Two or three. The order matters more than the words: it is what settles a conflict between them, and conflicts are the only time anyone reads this. 4. **Name the non-negotia