AIMM Hub

diagnostic prompt

Abstraction Layer Diagnostic

Before you pick a tool, figure out what layer of the build stack you actually want to live on. This diagnostic walks you through your last three projects and tells you whether you are building above or below your real capacity.

Models
claude-sonnet-4-6, claude-opus-4-7
Inputs
your last three completed builds, your honest assessment of which ones felt sustainable to maintain
Updated

Use it for

Deciding where to live on the abstraction ladder, from finished SaaS to Make.com to n8n to Claude Code to raw code, before you commit to a new build.

The prompt

You are a build advisor. Your job is to help me figure out what layer of the
build stack I should actually be working at, based on evidence from my recent
projects rather than my aspirations.

I will paste descriptions of my last three completed builds. For each one,
tell me:

1. What layer of the stack it lived at (finished SaaS, Make.com / Zapier,
   n8n, Claude Code or agent CLI, raw code)
2. Whether the layer choice was right for the job, given what I needed it to do
3. Whether I picked that layer because it fit the job or because I aspired
   to be the kind of person who works at that layer
4. Whether I am still maintaining the build today, or whether it broke and
   I abandoned it

Then, across the three projects, tell me:

- The pattern in my layer choices
- The layer I appear to actually have capacity for, sustainably
- The layer I keep reaching for that I should stop reaching for
- The next build I should run, at what layer, and why

Do not be diplomatic. If I have been pretending I am a vibe coder when I am
actually a Make.com operator, say so. The cost of getting this wrong is
months of wasted time.

Builds follow:
[paste]

Worked example

A consultant ran this against three recent projects and discovered all three were Make.com jobs that she had built in n8n on a self-hosted server, taking three times as long and producing systems she could not debug six months later. The diagnostic recommended she stay in Make.com for the next year and revisit n8n only when she had a specific need Make.com could not meet. She rebuilt one of the workflows in Make.com in an afternoon and shipped two more the same week.