---
title: "How ProductOS Works: The Five-Stage Product Pipeline"
description: "ProductOS structures product development as five stages: Ideate, Discover, Define, Design, Develop, each run by specialized AI agents sharing one context. See how the pipeline works."
url: https://productos.dev/how-it-works
---

How it works

# Five stages. One shared context.

ProductOS structures product development the way the industry defines the product development lifecycle: discovery, definition, design, and development, with ideation up front. Each stage is run by specialized AI agents, and every stage reads what the previous one produced.

[Ideate](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/ideate) [Discover](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/discover) [Define](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/define) [Design](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/design) [Develop](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/develop)

[01 Ideate PDLC: Ideation Ideate is the pipeline stage that turns a raw idea into a sharp, testable product concept: the problem, the target user, and the assumptions that must hold before anything gets built. Run by Ideation Agent Inside the Ideate stage](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/ideate) [02 Discover PDLC: Discovery Discover is the product discovery stage: structured research into the market, competitors, and users that decides whether the problem is worth solving before you invest in building. Run by Research Agent Inside the Discover stage](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/discover) [03 Define PDLC: Definition Define is the definition stage: research and concept become a structured product requirements document with scope, user stories, and success metrics, the source of truth every later stage reads. Run by PRD Agent Architect Agent Inside the Define stage](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/define) [04 Design PDLC: Design Design is the stage where the defined product becomes user flows, screen specifications, and a production-ready design system, so what gets built looks intentional rather than generated. Run by Design Agent Design System Agent Inside the Design stage](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/design) [05 Develop PDLC: Development Develop is the development stage: the specified, designed product becomes a real codebase in a live cloud sandbox, tested in a real browser and deployable to production on your own domain. Run by Fullstack Builder QA Agent Deploy Agent Inside the Develop stage](https://productos.dev/how-it-works/develop)

QA and deployment are on-demand actions you can trigger at any point in Develop, run by the [QA Agent](https://productos.dev/agents/qa-agent) and [Deploy Agent](https://productos.dev/agents/deploy-agent).

## See the pipeline run on your idea.

Describe it once. The agents take it from concept to shipped product, without losing context between stages.

[Start on Free](https://beta.productos.dev/sign-up?utm%5Fsource=productos.dev/how-it-works) [Meet the agents](https://productos.dev/agents)