LEVEL 00
Observer
$0
- Every opportunity, summarised and scored
- The thesis: why it matters now
- A sample of the underlying evidence
- New opportunities every week
Access control
Unlock the complete Cra incident reporting desk connected products investigation
Premium is the difference between a hunch and a decision. For every opportunity you get the verdict, the operating manual, and the build pack, so you commit to your next product in an afternoon instead of losing a quarter to research and dead ends. One flat price. Cancel anytime.
Launch offer · 50% off your first month
LEVEL 01Recommended
Operator
$29/ month
- A clear verdict: build, wait, or avoid
- Exactly what to build, and who pays for it first
- What it really takes: MVP scope, effort, and running cost
- Your first 10 customers, and where to find them
- How it could fail, and the honest reasons to walk away
- A Claude Code build pack, so you start building today, not next month
50% off your first month · $14.50 first month, then $29/month
Immediate access · New opportunities weekly · Full archive included · Cancel anytime
What you unlock
A real premium report, in full
This is the actual investigation and Execution Playbook for one live signal, Workflow platform for UK planning consultancies. Every subscriber gets both pages, in this depth, for every opportunity. Scroll each panel to explore it.
The InvestigationVerdict first, then the operating manual
Operator clearance verifiedBuild manual
Decision summaryRead this first
Verdict
Build
Evidence, timing, and buyer clarity line up. Worth committing the next 6 to 12 weeks if you can reach the buyer described below.
Executive summary
A workflow tool for UK planning consultancies that tracks every application's statutory deadline, checks documents against each council's validation checklist, and auto-drafts client status updates.
Build Signals rates this 84 out of 100 at High confidence. The case to start now is strong.
Why this scored highly
- ✓ High conviction, 84 out of 100
- ✓ High-confidence evidence base
- ✓ Corroborated by 3 independent sources
- ✓ Fast path to an MVP
- ✓ A named economic buyer
- ✓ A clear, minimal MVP scope
Biggest risks
- ! Validation rules differ by authority and change, so keeping them current is real ongoing work.
- ! Consultancies are busy and slow to adopt new tools mid-project.
- ! A council portal could add consultancy-friendly features, though that is historically slow.
- ! If you cannot commit to maintaining validation rules as authorities change them, the core value erodes.
Commitment snapshot
- Build time
- 60-90 hrs to a usable single-region MVP
- Technical difficulty
- Medium
- Launch cost
- Under $150 (infra only)
- Monthly running cost
- Under $60 (Supabase + AI usage + hosting)
Recommended founder profile
A technical solo founder or a small founding team
Confidence and evidence
- Signal score
- 84 / 100
- Confidence
- High
- Evidence
- 3 sources
The score supports the verdict. The operating manual below is the evidence behind it.
The operating manual, the work behind the recommendation
Q1
What exactly am I building?
A workflow tool for UK planning consultancies that tracks every application's statutory deadline, checks documents against each council's validation checklist, and auto-drafts client status updates.
Q2
Why is this worth building now?
Councils are moving application intake online but each authority runs its own portal and its own validation checklist, so the fragmentation the consultancy feels is getting worse, not better. AI can now reliably draft planning statements and check documents against an authority's validation requirements, which was manual until this year.
Search interest, trailing 12 months
Modeled index (0-100), validate before relying
Signal breakdown, scoring model
Composite of 84/100 conviction
- Demand98
- Market69
- Competition86
- Timing75
- Buildability77
- Distribution73
Q3
Who is the first customer?
Ideal customer profile
An independent UK town-planning consultancy submitting applications for clients.
Company size
2 to 25 planners
Who signs off (job title)
Director / Principal Planner (owner-operator)
Pain points they feel now
- Tracking statutory deadlines across many councils, each with a different portal and clock.
- Every authority has its own validation checklist; one missing document resets the determination period.
- Client updates are manual, so planners lose hours writing status emails instead of doing planning work.
Q4
How hard is this?
- Build effort
- 60-90 hrs to a usable single-region MVP
- Technical difficulty
- Medium
- Monthly running cost
- Under $60 (Supabase + AI usage + hosting)
Required APIs and services
- Supabase
- Anthropic API
- Stripe
- Cloudflare Workers
Q5
What is the smallest MVP?
Build only this
- + Add an application with its authority and submission date
- + Auto-calculate the statutory determination deadline
- + Authority-specific validation checklist before submission
- + One-click client status update from the current state
Do NOT build yet
- x Direct portal integrations with councils
- x Document storage and version control at launch
- x Billing and time-tracking for the consultancy's own clients
Q6
How do I validate it in 7 days?
- Day 1
List every independent consultancy in one region from the RTPI directory.
- Day 2
Book 6 interviews about deadline and validation tracking.
- Day 3
Encode the validation checklist for 3 councils in that region.
- Day 4
Build a single-application deadline tracker with a validation checklist.
- Day 5
Demo it to 3 consultancies and capture reactions.
- Day 6
Add automatic client status updates from the tracker.
- Day 7
Convert one consultancy to a paid pilot.
Q7
How do I acquire the first 10 customers?
Communities where buyers already gather
- RTPI regional networks
- LinkedIn planning groups
- Planning consultancy forums
Direct outreach
DM 15 independent consultancy directors a week, referencing a recent local scheme they worked on.
SEO
Target 'planning application deadline tracker' and 'validation checklist [council]' long-tail terms.
Paid channels
Skip paid until 5 consultancies convert; the buyer is reachable directly.
Content that pulls the right buyer
- 'Every English council's validation checklist, compared'
- A free statutory-deadline calculator to capture emails
Q8
What could kill this business?
Biggest risks
- Validation rules differ by authority and change, so keeping them current is real ongoing work.
- Consultancies are busy and slow to adopt new tools mid-project.
- A council portal could add consultancy-friendly features, though that is historically slow.
Competition
Incumbent planning software targets local authorities (the receiver), not consultancies (the sender). Generic project tools like Asana do not understand statutory clocks or validation rules, so consultancies fall back to spreadsheets.
Regulatory concerns
You are handling application data, not personal or safety-critical data, so scope is light, but keep client data isolated per consultancy.
Honest reasons NOT to build it
- x If you cannot commit to maintaining validation rules as authorities change them, the core value erodes.
- x If you have no route into the RTPI community, cold adoption is slow.
Q9
Claude Code Build Pack
Architecture
A multi-tenant SaaS: consultancies sign in, add applications, and the system computes deadlines and runs validation checklists. A server function calls Claude to draft client updates.
Database entities
- consultancies
- applications
- authorities
- validation_rules
- status_updates
API endpoints
- POST /applications
- GET /applications
- POST /applications/:id/validate
- POST /applications/:id/update
Recommended stack
- TanStack Start
- Supabase (Postgres + Auth + RLS)
- Anthropic API
- Stripe
- Cloudflare Workers
Initial prompt, paste into Claude Code
Build a multi-tenant workflow app for UK planning consultancies. A consultancy adds an application with its authority and submission date; compute the statutory determination deadline (8 weeks default, 13 for major) and show a validation checklist for that authority. Use TanStack Start, Supabase with row-level security per consultancy, and Stripe. Ship the add-track-validate loop first.
Q10
Decision summary
Build this if
You can reach independent UK consultancies through RTPI or LinkedIn and encode one region's validation rules.
Avoid this if
You cannot commit to maintaining validation rules, or you have no route into the planning community.
- Time to MVP
- 2 to 3 weeks for a single-region MVP
- Launch budget
- Under $150 (infra only)
- First paying customer
- A paid pilot within 2 to 4 weeks
Decided to build this? Skip the blank page.
The Execution Playbook turns this investigation into an implementation guide: the exact stack, the architecture, a copy-and-paste Claude build sequence, the build order, real early customers, a validation plan, a launch checklist, and a 30-day plan. So you know exactly what to do tonight.
🚀 Begin BuildingLive example · Scroll to explore
The Execution PlaybookEverything you need to start building tonight
Investigation Complete
Market validated Customers identified Competition analysed Technical approach chosen
Execution Playbook
Mantra: Every early decision has already been made for you
Your First Move
Workflow platform for UK planning consultancies
Create the repository and run Build Prompt 1. Do not build payment, OCR, or enterprise features until you have completed three customer interviews.
We have already made these decisions for you
✓ React 19 + TanStack Start✓ Tailwind CSS v4✓ Supabase (Postgres & Auth)✓ Stripe Subscriptions✓ Claude Code Autopilot
Scaffold Command
npx create-tanstack-start@latest my-app- Estimated MVP
- 2 to 3 weeks for a single-region MVP
- First Validation
- Tomorrow
- Ideal First Customer
- Directors of independent consultancies in one target region.
- Primary Objective
- Ship a single-region deadline-and-validation tracker and convert one consultancy to a paid pilot.
If I were building this myself...
Tonight I would do exactly this:
- 1.Create the repository and run the scaffold command.
- 2.Run Phase 1 Prompt in Claude Code to build the foundation.
- 3.Contact the first three customer targets listed in Section 5.
- 4.Book two customer validation interviews.
- 5.STOP CODING until those two interviews are completed.
01 / Technology stack
The stack we have chosen for you
Decisions, not suggestions. Every choice includes the exact reason it was picked and the alternatives rejected.
Framework
React 19 + TanStack Start
Chosen because: Full-stack SSR in one framework so a solo founder ships app and APIs together.
Database & Auth
Supabase (Postgres, Auth, RLS)
Chosen because: Per-consultancy isolation via row-level security, with auth included.
AI Provider
Claude (Anthropic API)
Chosen because: Reliable plain-English client updates from structured application state.
Payments
Stripe
Chosen because: Subscription billing and a customer portal without building either.
Hosting
Cloudflare Workers
Chosen because: Cheap global deploys while pre-revenue.
02 / System architecture
How this product actually works
Visual data pipeline blueprint. Understand the architecture in five seconds.
System Data Flow Blueprint
Presentation
React 19 / TanStack UI
➔
API & Auth
Server Functions & RLS
➔
Data & Logic
Supabase Postgres DB
➔
AI Engine
Claude Anthropic API
L1
L1 / Presentation Layer
Server-rendered React pages: buyer landing page, pricing, and protected core workflow dashboard.
L2
L2 / API Router & Server Functions
POST /applications, GET /applications, POST /applications/:id/validate, POST /applications/:id/update
L3
L3 / Database & RLS Gate
Postgres tables (consultancies, applications, authorities, validation_rules, status_updates) protected by Supabase row-level security.
L4
L4 / External APIs
Anthropic API (client updates), Stripe (billing).
L5
L5 / AI Execution Engine
Server-side Claude API orchestration powering the automated analysis workflow.
L6
L6 / Revenue Gateway
Stripe signature-verified webhooks and hosted customer portal for instant subscription billing.
03 / Claude build sequence
Paste these into Claude Code, in order
Structured engineering phases. Execute each phase prompt in sequence to assemble your MVP.
- P1
Phase 1: Scaffold and auth
Phase Goal: A signed-in, multi-tenant shell.
Scaffold a TanStack Start app with Supabase email auth and a protected dashboard. Add a consultancies table and row-level security so each consultancy only sees its own data. NON-INTERACTIVE DIRECTIVE: Build this completely without asking questions. Run npm run build upon completion to verify zero compilation errors.
Expected Outcome: Working auth with per-consultancy isolation.
- P2
Phase 2: Applications and deadlines
Phase Goal: The core tracking loop.
Add an applications table (authority, submission date, type). On create, compute the statutory determination deadline: 8 weeks for minor, 13 weeks for major. Show a dashboard of live applications sorted by deadline. NON-INTERACTIVE DIRECTIVE: Build this completely without asking questions. Run npm run build upon completion to verify zero compilation errors.
Expected Outcome: A deadline-sorted application list.
- P3
Phase 3: Validation checklists
Phase Goal: Prevent invalidations.
Add authorities and validation_rules tables. For a given application, render the authority's validation checklist and block 'ready to submit' until every required item is checked. NON-INTERACTIVE DIRECTIVE: Build this completely without asking questions. Run npm run build upon completion to verify zero compilation errors.
Expected Outcome: An authority-specific pre-submission checklist.
- P4
Phase 4: AI client updates
Phase Goal: Automate status emails.
Add a server function that calls Claude to draft a plain-English client status update from an application's current state and deadline. Never expose the API key to the browser. NON-INTERACTIVE DIRECTIVE: Build this completely without asking questions. Run npm run build upon completion to verify zero compilation errors.
Expected Outcome: One-click drafted client updates.
- P5
Phase 5: Billing and deploy
Phase Goal: Live and payable.
Add Stripe subscription billing gating the dashboard, plus error logging and a production deploy to Cloudflare Workers. NON-INTERACTIVE DIRECTIVE: Build this completely without asking questions. Run npm run build upon completion to verify zero compilation errors.
Expected Outcome: A subscribed consultancy using the product in production.
04 / Build order
What to build, and why in this order
Order is a decision. Each step earns its place before the next begins.
- 1
Applications + statutory deadline calculator
The core value; nothing matters until deadlines are tracked automatically.
- 2
Authority validation checklists
The feature that prevents invalidations, the sharpest pain.
- 3
AI client updates
Saves planner hours once tracking is trusted.
- 4
Billing
Add the moment a consultancy says yes to a pilot.
Do NOT build yet
- xDirect council portal integrations
- xDocument version control
- xThe consultancy's own client billing
05 / First five customer targets
First Five Customer Targets
Actionable launch plan targets with verified buying intent, hiring posts, and copyable outreach scripts.
#1
Buying intent: RFP / Procurement NoticeCouncil tenders for planning application management support
Verified Customer Evidence / Hiring Post
Contracts Finder: Public bodies are paying for exactly this coordination work, proving budget exists.
Validates real commercial demand and budget allocation in this niche.
Recommended Direct Outreach Script
"Hi, regarding your RFP procurement notice for "Council tenders for planning application management support": we have developed a dedicated software product meeting these exact requirements. We can provide an active instance for evaluation immediately."
#2
Buying intent: Freelance Brief / BountyFreelance briefs for planning application admin and tracking
Verified Customer Evidence / Hiring Post
Upwork: Consultancies already pay freelancers to track applications by hand.
Demonstrates active financial commitment and immediate readiness to acquire a solution.
Recommended Direct Outreach Script
"Hi, I saw your project request regarding "Freelance briefs for planning application admin and tracking". We built a dedicated software tool designed specifically for this requirement that completes the task automatically. Can I share a sample output with you?"
#3
Buying intent: Active Commercial BuyerIndependent consultancies listed by region
Verified Customer Evidence / Hiring Post
RTPI directory: A named, reachable list of the exact buyer, region by region.
Demonstrates active financial commitment and immediate readiness to acquire a solution.
Recommended Direct Outreach Script
"Hi, I saw your project request regarding "Independent consultancies listed by region". We built a dedicated software tool designed specifically for this requirement that completes the task automatically. Can I share a sample output with you?"
How to approach them
Short and specific: 'I built a tracker that computes every application's statutory deadline and runs each council's validation checklist. Want me to set up your live applications this week?' Reach them via LinkedIn DMs, RTPI events, warm intros. Reach out when they post about workload or a local scheme; urgency peaks mid-application. DM 15 independent consultancy directors a week, referencing a recent local scheme they worked on.
06 / Validation before coding
What could prove this idea wrong
More decisions, less explanation. Do not write code until you test the riskiest assumption.
Aggressive Validation Gate
Three consultancies commit to a pilot and one has a live application now.
Target Customer Segment
Directors of independent consultancies in one target region.
Questions to ask
- How do you track statutory deadlines across councils today?
- When did a validation issue last reset a deadline?
- Would an authority-specific checklist before submission be worth paying for?
Assumptions to validate
- Validation rules for one region are knowable and stable.
- Deadline pain is frequent enough to pay for.
If the assumptions are wrong
If validation rules are too volatile, lead with the deadline tracker alone and add validation region by region.
07 / Launch checklist
Before you go live
Focused execution checklist. Must-have launch essentials separated from post-revenue items.
Must Have Before First User
Domain and DNS
Buy the domain and point it at your edge host.
Landing page
One page: the promise, the proof, one call to action.
Payments live
Stripe live mode with active subscription price IDs.
Privacy policy and terms
Generated terms and privacy policy pages live.
Basic Product Analytics
Track key conversion and activation events in PostHog.
Defer Until First Revenue
AI Rate Limit Caps
Set hard usage caps on Anthropic/OpenAI keys to prevent runaways.
Error Logging (Sentry)
Capture server and client runtime errors automatically.
Automated Database Backups
Turn on automated point-in-time Postgres backups.
Uptime & Status Page
Configure uptime ping monitoring and public status route.
08 / 30-day execution plan
What to accomplish each week
Build, validate, launch, acquire. One objective a week.
Week 1Build
Ship the add-track-validate loop for one region.
Deliverables
- Deadline calculator
- 3 councils' validation checklists
- Live application dashboard
Success metric
A real application tracks its deadline and checklist end to end.
Avoid
Trying to cover every English council before the first customer.
Week 2Validate
Confirm the pain and the rules with real consultancies.
Deliverables
- 8 director interviews
- One live application run through the tool
Success metric
A consultancy says it would pay to keep using it.
Avoid
Adding features instead of talking to directors.
Week 3Launch
Open the region and publish the wedge.
Deliverables
- Free deadline calculator to capture emails
- Posts in RTPI and LinkedIn groups
Success metric
Live, with inbound interest from the region.
Avoid
Positioning against council software instead of for consultancies.
Week 4Acquire
Convert directors to paid pilots.
Deliverables
- Direct outreach to the RTPI list
- A pilot invoice
Success metric
One paid pilot within 2 to 4 weeks.
Avoid
Offering a free trial when the pain is worth real money now.
09 / Founder warnings
The three biggest mistakes building this
Drawn from the risks and competition in the investigation. Read these before writing code.
1. Trying to support every council at launch.
Why: Validation rules vary by authority; covering all of them is endless and delays revenue.
Instead: Own one region's rules completely, then expand authority by authority.
2. Building portal integrations early.
Why: Council portals are inconsistent and slow to integrate; it is months of work for little early value.
Instead: Track and validate outside the portals first; integrate only once customers demand it.
3. Selling to councils instead of consultancies.
Why: Councils are the receiver with long procurement; consultancies are the buyer who feels the pain.
Instead: Sell to the consultancy director who owns the budget and the deadline.
Live example · Scroll to explore
Fresh every week
New, fully researched opportunities are added weekly. You are subscribing to a pipeline, not buying a single report.
Cancel in one click
Manage or cancel from your account anytime. No contract, no email, no retention call.
Cheaper than one wasted week
Building the wrong product costs months. Build Signals costs less than an evening of wasted work.