chore: run 5-8 problem interviews and recruit 2 design partners for market-fit evidence (W8)

[parthrohit22]

Task

Run 5–8 problem interviews and recruit 2 design partners to produce the first external market-fit evidence for PARTHA. This is product-led research, not code. Record a baseline workflow, time-to-answer, and risk context for each target team's real upcoming change/migration decision.

Rationale

The 2026-07-27 PARTHA audit ranks "no validated recurring customer problem or willingness to pay" as the #1 existential risk (§15, Risk 1) and gives Market-fit evidence a score of 1/10. Issue #215 already records that zero external validation exists. The roadmap's pricing/segmentation is a hypothesis built around features that are not implemented. Before further engineering investment, we must test whether a real team would use PARTHA's intended wedge (evidence-backed change impact for inherited Python/TypeScript services) on a consequential decision and return without prompting.

This is the cheapest, highest-leverage gate: it decides whether to continue at all, and it supplies the real repositories needed for the P0-D two-revision diff spike.

References

• Audit §16 "Immediate — P0 Run 5–8 problem interviews and recruit 2 design partners"; §4 "Market-fit conclusion" (the 7 evidence bars before any market-fit claim); §17 "Stage 1 — prove the wedge with design partners".
• Issue chore(commercial): run a design-partner validation sprint for §28 market-fit evidence (W8) #215 (W8 commercial validation sprint) — this task executes its field work.
• Target segment (from audit §4): teams inheriting or migrating Python/FastAPI and TypeScript services with a named high-risk change pending.

Implementation Notes

• Define a short observation protocol up front: who (role), the pending decision, current process/time, what evidence they'd want, data/security terms.
• Recruit from the audit's sharper segment — NOT "20–500 engineers" as a company-size range (the audit notes that is not a problem segment).
• Capture, with consent: baseline time-to-answer vs their current process, whether they'd pay to retain, and loss/abandonment reasons (the audit explicitly wants negative signals, not just positive interviews).
• Store artifacts in confidential/ (local-only, gitignored) — never commit partner/repo specifics.
• Output feeds P0-D: at least 2 partners must be willing to provide real revision pairs for the diff/impact spike.
• Non-goal: do not build features during this task; the deliverable is evidence + a go/no-go read for the wedge.

Acceptance Criteria

• At least 5 documented problem interviews with the defined protocol; at least 2 teams agree to be design partners bringing a real upcoming change/migration.
• Per-partner baseline recorded: workflow, time-to-answer, risk context, data/security terms understood.
• A written read-out states whether the evidence-backed change-impact wedge is worth building (go/no-go) with the negative-signal section filled in.
• Output explicitly unblocks P0-D by supplying ≥2 real repository revision pairs.
• No confidential partner data committed to the repo.

Priority

P0 - Critical