The product

Built around choosing well.

A decision framework for the people deciding what to build, and a workspace for the teams building it. Walden holds the whole rhythm — shaping, betting, building — in one place.

Shape

Ideas in their
raw form.

Shaping starts on the canvas — fat marker sketches, breadboards, and a frame for each candidate solution. Explore a few directions, abandon the dead ends, and carry what survives into a pitch — Problem, Appetite, Solution, Rabbit Holes, No-Gos — so the hard thinking and the deciding are done before anyone commits a team.

Account creation

Small Batch·1 week

Problem

A new user has no way to create an account. Anyone who wants in has to be provisioned by hand — the product has no front door.

Assign

Solution

Two flows off the same front door. Home gets a Get started button. Flow one is classic account creation: username, email, and password, then a confirmation screen. Flow two is magic auth: enter an email, receive a sign-in link, land on the same confirmation. Both end with a signed-in user.

Rabbit Holes

Email deliverability is where magic links die — use the existing transactional sender, don't stand up new infrastructure. Password rules: pick sensible defaults and move on, no configurable policy. One confirmation screen for both flows, not two.

No-Gos

· Social logins (Google, GitHub).
· SSO / SAML.
· Self-service password reset.
· Profile setup during signup.

Note (if passing)

Bet

Run the
betting table.

This is where leaders decide. Each cycle, shaped pitches come to the table, and the question is simple: which of these ideas is worth giving a team? Place your bets — a team, an appetite, a hard stop. Losers aren’t queued anywhere — Walden has no backlog to feed — so every cycle starts from a clean table.

Build

The team takes
it from here.

Teams in Walden manage themselves. They kick off together, break the bet into scopes, and get one vertical slice working end to end early. Live hill charts show where every scope actually stands — no standups, no status theater, no one asking for updates.

And when the appetite runs out, the circuit breaker trips: ship what’s done, or stop. Unfinished work doesn’t roll into the next cycle.

And the tools around the work.

Documents, the canvas, channels, and tasks live with the pitch — so a cycle never sends you hunting across five other apps.

Magic link — API spec

Sign-in links go out by email. No passwords in the first slice — the link signs the user straight in.

POST /auth/magic-link

→ 202 queued

Links expire after 15 minutes
Bounced sends post to #account-creation

Documents

Rich text for specs and decisions — headings, tables, code blocks, images.

auth servicerate limit?webapidbworkerqueuepolling

Canvas

The shaping surface — fat marker sketches, flows, and breadboards.

Figuring it outMaking it happen

Password sign-up

Magic link

Hill charts

Every scope sits where the team places it — see where work actually stands at a glance.

account-creation

Cody · 11:42

First sign-in link just landed in a real inbox 🎉

🎉2

2 replies

Channels

Pitch-specific conversations with threads and reactions — right beside the work.

Get started screen with email field

Send the magic sign-in link

Resend from the waiting screen

Tasks

Personal task lists linked to scopes. Track your own work without standups.

Make things deliberately.

Shape what’s worth building. Bet on it. Finish it.

Start your first cycle See pricing

Your first six weeks are free.