When does an experiment become a product?
A working prototype is a beginning. Clarity, reliability, and care are what make it worth putting into someone else’s hands.
A prototype can work beautifully for the person who built it. The builder knows which button to avoid, which assumption is hidden, and what to do when something goes wrong. A new user knows none of that.
That gap is where much of the product work begins.
Give it one understandable job
The first question is not how many features the prototype has. It is whether someone can understand what it is for.
A useful product description should name the job, the person it helps, and the reason to use it. It should not need a paragraph of technical vocabulary to justify its existence.
Make the boundaries visible
An experiment can leave an edge unfinished. A product needs to explain the edge.
What works without an account? What happens to the data? What is stored on a device? What requires a connection? What should someone do when the tool cannot complete a task? These questions matter more than another impressive demonstration.
For an AI feature, the boundary also includes permission. A suggestion is different from an action. Drafting something is different from sending it. The interface should not blur those distinctions.
Decide what you are willing to maintain
Putting a product into the world creates an ongoing responsibility to the people who rely on it. That does not mean promising every possible feature or an unrealistic support schedule. It means setting an honest expectation and making it easy to ask for help.
Keep the interesting part
There is a temptation to polish away the original idea while expanding a product. The useful question is whether a change makes the core experience clearer or simply makes the feature list longer.
At WunderSpark, the working standard is not that every experiment must graduate. It is that anything presented as a product should earn the distinction. Small can be complete. Focused can be enough.