Crucible

An opinionated idea crucible. Drop in a raw business concept and it stress-tests it like a hostile investment committee — then tells you to pursue, reshape, or kill it.

Generation is the on-ramp. Judgment is the point. Most "AI idea generators" spray plausible-sounding ideas at you; Crucible is built to destroy the weak ones with an evidence-backed VC memo, and only let the strong ones through.

How it works

Ideas move through three stages, each driven by an editable AI framework in frameworks/:

1. Generate — frameworks/generator.md turns a niche into a sharp raw prospect (ICP, wedge, why-now, moat intuition). Anti-convergence rules push it away from the obvious "AI assistant for X."
2. Validate — frameworks/validator.md writes an investment memo: hard kill tests, three-tier evidence labeling (VERIFIED / INFERRED / ASSUMPTION TO TEST), a structured score, and an honest PURSUE / RESHAPE / KILL verdict.
3. Spec — frameworks/spec-builder.md converts a validated plan into an agent-ready technical implementation spec for the MVP wedge.

Ideas are plain markdown files under ideas/ (prospects/, validated/, specs/), so your whole pipeline is greppable, diffable, and yours.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/robbdimitrov/crucible.git
cd crucible
npm install
cp .env.example .env   # add your GEMINI_API_KEY
npm run dev

Get a Gemini API key at aistudio.google.com/apikey. Then open the app, hit Dig for Ideas, and start putting concepts through the crucible.

The frameworks are the product

The web app is a comfortable shell. The real value is in frameworks/ — three carefully tuned prompts that encode a strict, moat-aware, evidence-disciplined way of evaluating businesses. Tweak them, sharpen them for your domain, and the whole pipeline changes behavior. PRs that improve them are very welcome.

Bring your own model

Crucible uses Google's Gemini via @google/genai by default. The model is configurable with GEMINI_MODEL, and the AI calls are isolated in src/routes/+page.server.ts — swapping in another provider is a small, contained change.

Privacy

Your ideas stay on your machine. ideas/ is gitignored (except the folder markers), so nothing you generate is ever committed by accident.

Tech

SvelteKit 2 · Svelte 5 · Tailwind 4 / daisyUI · @google/genai. No backend, no database, no accounts — single-player by design.

Scripts

npm run dev      # dev server
npm run build    # production build
npm run preview  # preview the build
npm test         # run unit tests (vitest)
npm run lint     # eslint
npm run check    # svelte-check

License

Licensed under the MIT License.