An MVP is not a smaller version of the slide. It is the smallest thing that takes a real action: book a slot, issue an invoice, save a row a human will trust next Monday.
I start from the constraint, not the stack. Who is the one role? What is the one flow? What is allowed to stay manual behind the UI? If those three answers are fuzzy, we are not estimating — we are decorating uncertainty.
Default web stack for me in 2026 is boring on purpose: Next.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL when we have rows that must survive, Tailwind, deploy on a host I can explain. I will not add a mesh of services, a design-system rewrite, or an AI chatbot so the deck has a buzzword.
What I refuse before the first users: a second persona, a migration plan, real-time unless the action is real-time, and a CMS for three pages. Those come after the first loop closes — when someone actually came back.
If you send me a brief, send the action and the constraint. I will reply with the smallest version I would ship, and a short list of what I would not build yet. That list is the estimate.