Defining an MVP That Actually Matters: When Product Vision Meets Engineering Reality

I shared the vision and mission behind PermaTechHub in PermaTechHub: Building a Marketplace That Mirrors Its Values—a platform for second-hand tech rooted in sustainability, community, and longevity. With the “why” now clear, it’s time to roll up my sleeves and tackle the “how.” But as anyone who’s ever tried to turn a big idea into a real product knows, defining the MVP features is where things get interesting. “Minimum viable” sounds simple—until you actually try to draw the line.

This post is about that process: the conversations, questions, and decisions that turned a big idea into a manageable first iteration. If you’ve ever stared at a backlog wondering where to start, or felt paralyzed by the gap between vision and reality, this one’s for you.

The Problem with “Just Build an MVP”

When I first sat down to scope PermaTechHub, I knew I wanted to avoid the classic trap: building a demo project that’s either too trivial to be interesting or so ambitious that it never ships. The product vision is huge—marketplace functionality, repair hubs, knowledge bases, community features, AI-assisted moderation. But trying to build all of that at once is a recipe for burnout and scope creep.

So I asked myself: what’s the smallest set of features that still demonstrates real backend engineering, solves a meaningful problem, and leaves room to grow? And more importantly, what can I actually build solo in a reasonable timeframe?

The answer wasn’t obvious. I needed to work through it—asking questions, weighing tradeoffs, and thinking out loud with AI as a sounding board.

Starting with User Stories

I started by drafting a comprehensive set of user stories, covering everything from authentication to listings, messaging, moderation, and observability. The goal was to ensure that the MVP would touch on all the key pillars of a marketplace system—not just CRUD operations, but the workflows, security, and complexity that make a platform real.

But as I wrote, I kept bumping into questions: Do I need password reset in the first iteration? Should I support image uploads right away? What about AI-assisted moderation—is that table stakes now, or something I can defer?

Each question forced me to weigh value against effort, and to think about what would actually teach me the most. Password reset? Important for users, but not critical for an MVP where I can handle account recovery manually. Image uploads? Nice to have, but a huge time sink—better to start with image URLs and add native uploads later. AI moderation? Absolutely a priority for the future, but manual moderation is faster to implement and enough to prove the system works.

Every decision was a tradeoff, and every tradeoff made the scope a little clearer.

The API-First Realization

One of the biggest realizations came when I was discussing the out-of-scope items. I’d written “MVP is web-only,” meaning no native mobile apps—but then I realized I hadn’t even committed to building a web frontend yet. My plan has always been to focus on a solid REST API first, with Postman collections or .http files for testing, and then build a basic app client afterward.

That clarification changed everything. It meant I could defer all frontend work, focus entirely on backend logic and workflows, and still have a fully functional, testable product. It also meant I needed to be explicit about what “MVP” really means in this context: not a polished, user-facing app, but a robust API that demonstrates real engineering discipline.

This is the kind of detail that’s easy to overlook when you’re thinking big-picture, but it makes all the difference when you start planning sprints.

Splitting Features for Incremental Delivery

Another key insight came from breaking down user stories into smaller, more focused features. For example, I originally had a single story: “As a user, I want to view my own listings and messages in a personal dashboard.” But that’s really two features—viewing listings and viewing messages—each with its own value and implementation complexity.

Splitting them gave me more flexibility in planning. I could deliver the ability to view your own listings first, then add messaging later, rather than treating them as a monolithic chunk. This approach also makes it easier to communicate progress and prioritize based on what’s most valuable.

The same logic applied to seller and buyer features in the marketplace listings section. Sellers need to create, edit, and manage their listings; buyers need to browse, search, and view details. These are distinct roles with different workflows, so organizing them separately made the stories clearer and easier to translate into requirements.

Asking the Right Questions

Throughout this process, I kept asking questions—sometimes to myself, sometimes to AI, sometimes just to make sure I wasn’t missing something obvious. Do I really need this feature? What am I trying to prove with this MVP? What can I defer without losing the core value?

One question that stuck with me: When does an MVP become the real product? The answer, I realized, is that the MVP is the real product—just the first, intentionally limited version. Once it’s live and users are interacting with it, it’s no longer a demo or a prototype. It’s the foundation you’ll iterate on, informed by real feedback and real use cases.

That reframing helped me let go of the idea that the MVP had to be “complete.” It just had to be good enough to learn from, and solid enough to build on.

What’s Out of Scope (and Why)

Defining what’s out of scope turned out to be just as important as defining what’s in. I created a clear list of exclusions—payments, reviews, real-time features, internationalization, native image uploads, frontend UI, and AI-assisted moderation—but I also made sure to explain why each was excluded and when it might be added.

For example, AI-assisted moderation is something I absolutely want to tackle in the first post-MVP iterations, and the system will be designed with that in mind. But for the MVP, manual moderation is faster to implement and still demonstrates the core workflows. By documenting this, I’m setting expectations and signaling that I’m thinking ahead, even if I’m not building everything at once.

This kind of clarity is valuable not just for planning, but for communicating with stakeholders who might wonder why certain features are missing.

Covering All the Bases

One final lesson: even when you think you’ve covered everything, it’s worth double-checking. I reviewed the non-functional requirements section to make sure I wasn’t leaving out anything critical—security, scalability, testability, observability, API usability. Each of these is easy to overlook in the rush to define features, but they’re what separate a solid MVP from a fragile demo.

By making these priorities explicit, I’m reminding myself (and anyone who reads this document) that the goal isn’t just to ship features—it’s to build something maintainable, extensible, and production-ready.

What’s Next

With the MVP features defined, the next step is to turn these user stories into detailed functional and non-functional requirements. That will involve breaking down each story into constraints, BDD acceptance criteria (in Given/When/Then format), use cases for different scenarios, and dependency mapping to sequence the work properly. The goal is to create a comprehensive blueprint that makes implementation smoother, helps avoid surprises, and ensures nothing critical gets overlooked.

But for now, I’m calling this a win. I started with a sprawling product vision and ended up with a clear, focused scope that I can actually build. It’s ambitious enough to demonstrate real engineering, but achievable enough to ship in a reasonable timeframe. And most importantly, it’s aligned with the values that made me want to build this in the first place.

If you’re working on your own MVP—or just trying to figure out where to start on a big idea—I hope this helps. The key is to ask good questions, make deliberate tradeoffs, and remember that “minimum” doesn’t mean “trivial.” It means focused, intentional, and ready to grow.

Now, back to building.