Module 3, Lesson 9: Scoping the GTM Project in YouTrack

In this lesson, I'm putting that fresh Claude Desktop + YouTrack connection to work. We take the market research and GTM document we created all the way back in Module 2, point Claude at them, and let it scope out the entire go-to-market project — Epics, milestones, sub-tasks, context, due dates and all — directly in YouTrack.

Before We Start

Here's what I'd expect you to have under your belt before this lesson:

From previous lessons:

• Claude Desktop is connected to YouTrack via the MCP config we set up in Module 3, Lesson 8 — you've tested the connection and it works
• You have a GTM project already created in YouTrack with a project ID (mine is NGTM — yours will be whatever you named it)
• Your market research document and GTM document exist in your Obsidian vault (or wherever you stored them) — these are the two inputs Claude needs
• You know how to find your YouTrack project ID (it shows up right on the project page)

Tools / setup you'll need:

• Claude Desktop — local version, Co-Work tab open
• YouTrack — free tier, your GTM project already created
• Your Obsidian vault (or equivalent) accessible with the market research and GTM docs inside

By the end of this lesson, you'll:

• Have a fully scoped GTM project in YouTrack with Epics, milestones, and child tasks
• Understand how to use the clarification loop to make sure Claude understands your intention before it creates anything
• Know how to review what Claude created and where to clean things up manually

About This Lesson

Duration: ~11 minutes video
Skill Level: Intermediate
What You'll Build: A fully structured GTM Agile board in YouTrack — Epics, milestones, and sub-tasks drawn from your real market research and GTM documents

This is one of those moments where everything we've been building toward snaps together. All those documents we generated in Module 2? They're not just reference material sitting in a folder. They're the raw input that populates your actual project board. This lesson is short in video time but punchy in output — by the end you'll have your GTM completely mapped out as trackable work.

Watch the Lesson

What We're Covering

Here's what I'm walking you through in this lesson:

• The prompt pattern — why I ask Claude to ask me questions before it creates anything, and how that saves you from a mess
• Answering Claude's clarifying questions — the specific decisions you'll need to make (structure, assignment, dates)
• Reviewing the output — what a well-scoped GTM board looks like and what still needs a human touch
• The wrap-up — where this leaves you at the end of Module 3

1. Let's Set the Scene (~0:00)

I've already confirmed that Claude Desktop connects to YouTrack — we did that in Lesson 8. Now it's time to actually use it.

What I want to do here is take two documents — my market research and my GTM document — and use them as the source of truth for scoping out a complete GTM project in YouTrack. Not a rough list of tasks, but a properly structured board with Epics, milestones, and sub-tasks that a small team can actually pick up and run with.

I do this in the Co-Work tab, not in a standard chat. That distinction matters — Co-Work is where Claude can use your MCP connections and contents of your folders to take actions (like writing to YouTrack), whereas Chat is for conversation only.

2. The Core Idea

2.1 Why Ask Claude Questions First

Here's a pattern I use a lot that I want you to borrow: I end my prompt with "before you write, ask me all the questions you have for clarification."

That one line does a lot. It forces Claude to surface its assumptions before it acts on them. And when you see the questions it comes back with, you immediately know whether it understood your intention or whether it's about to go off in the wrong direction.

The first time I ran this prompt in the video, Claude came back and asked about splitting things across two separate projects — which wasn't what I wanted at all. Because I'd asked it to clarify first, I caught that before it created a bunch of issues in the wrong place. I just updated the prompt, ran it again, and the second round of questions was much better.

2.2 How This Connects to Module 3, Lesson 7 - Building Out the Project

In Lesson 7 we used Claude Code to scope out the dev project in YouTrack. Same idea here — except now we're using Claude Desktop (via Co-Work), and we're scoping the GTM work instead of the development work. Two projects, same approach. By the end of this lesson, both sides of your work — product and go-to-market — are tracked.

3. The Prompt (~1:05)

Here's the prompt I use. Drop this into your Co-Work tab, swap in your product name and project ID, and you're off.

Review the following in my folder:
- App - [Your Product Name] - Market Research
- App - [Your Product Name] - GTM

Using the YouTrack tool, create all the relevant issues in my GTM project, [YOUR-PROJECT-ID].
This project will contain all my key GTM tasks. I'm a team of [1 or 2].

Here is additional context:
- Add all the context each issue needs for the team to complete the task
- When needed, pull additional context / latest info with the web search tool

Before you write, ask me all the questions you have for clarification.

A few things to fill in before you run it:

• [Your Product Name] — match this exactly to how your files are named in Obsidian (or wherever you store them)
• [YOUR-PROJECT-ID] — find this on your YouTrack project page. Mine is NGTM. Yours will be whatever short ID YouTrack assigned or you set when creating the project
• [1 or 2] — your team size. Claude uses this to make decisions about assignment and workload distribution

4. Answering Claude's Clarifying Questions (~2:21)

Once you run the prompt, Claude will come back with a set of questions. Here's what mine asked, and how I answered:

Scope: full plan or just the first few weeks?

Claude asked whether I wanted it to scope out the full GTM plan or just the near-term tasks. I went with the full plan. The point of this exercise is to get everything on the board so nothing falls through the cracks — I can always break it into sprints later.

Structure: flat list, or Epics + milestones + child tasks?

I always go with Epics, milestones, and child tasks. A flat issue list might feel simpler, but it gets unmanageable fast. Grouping tasks under Epics gives you a clear sense of what each channel or initiative looks like as a whole before you zoom in.

Assignment: assign to team members, or leave unassigned?

Claude asked whether to assign issues to the two team members. I left everything unassigned — I'd rather do a manual review pass and assign things deliberately than have Claude make calls it doesn't have enough context for. Dates and ownership are the two things I almost always handle myself after the initial generation.

Due dates: set them or leave blank?

I told Claude to add due dates starting from the following week (today was March 12, 2026, so that meant March 16 as the starting point). One thing I want to flag here: Claude gets dates wrong fairly often. I treat any dates it sets as a rough draft — a starting point I'll edit manually once I've reviewed the full board. If you have firm dates in mind, go ahead and give them explicitly. If not, just let it estimate and clean them up afterwards.

5. What Claude Creates (~6:15)

After you answer the questions and let Claude run, it'll work through your documents, pull web context where relevant, and start creating issues in YouTrack. You'll see it asking for permission each time it calls the YouTrack tool — keep clicking Allow.

When it finishes, Claude will give you a summary. Mine came back with 13 Epics/milestones and 30+ child tasks — the full GTM plan, scoped, structured, and written with enough context that someone picking up a task for the first time could actually understand what to do.

Here's what each issue looks like when you open it:

• Description — what this Epic or task is about, tied back to your market research and GTM strategy
• Competitive context — for channel-level Epics, Claude pulls in what competitors are doing in that space so you know what you're up against
• Sub-tasks — concrete actions with enough detail to get started (e.g. "Use Ubersuggest to build a 10-article content cluster around [keyword category]")
• Due date — rough estimate you'll want to review
• Status and time tracking fields — left blank for you to fill in as work progresses

The amount of context per issue is what makes this useful. This isn't just a list of task names — it's a brief for each piece of work.

6. Reviewing the Output in YouTrack (~7:39)

Once it's done, head into YouTrack and refresh. Here's how I check the work:

1. Go to your GTM project and open the issue list — you'll see all the Epics collapsed
2. Click into one Epic to see its description and child tasks — check the context makes sense for your product
3. Switch to the Agile board view (Agile Boards in the sidebar) — this gives you the Kanban-style layout and lets you see how Claude has grouped things

You'll likely find that some tasks are grouped sensibly and others need a bit of tidying. That's normal and expected — Claude does the heavy lifting, you do the editorial pass. The Agile board view is the best place to do that cleanup because you can see everything at once.

7. Try It Yourself

Exercise 1: Run the Prompt

What to do: Take the prompt template from Section 3, fill in your product name, project ID, and team size, and run it in your Co-Work tab. Don't skip the "ask me questions" line.

A nudge if you're stuck: If Claude doesn't seem to be finding your documents, double-check that the document names in your prompt match exactly what's in Obsidian (or your note tool). Case and spacing matter.

How you'll know it's working: Claude comes back with clarifying questions rather than immediately creating issues.

Exercise 2: Review and Clean Up

What to do: Once Claude has created the issues, open three different Epics and read through the descriptions and sub-tasks. Check: does this make sense for your product? Are there obvious gaps or things that don't apply?

What this is practising: The human review step. This is where you add judgment that Claude can't supply — what actually matters for your specific market, timing, and team.

8. You Should Be Able to Build This Now

Here's what you can put together with what we just covered:

• A fully structured GTM project board in YouTrack from your existing research and strategy documents
• A repeatable prompt pattern you can use to scope any project in YouTrack, not just GTM

Check Yourself

• I ran the prompt and got Claude's clarifying questions back before any issues were created
• I answered the questions and Claude created the full issue set in my YouTrack GTM project
• I've reviewed at least three issues and confirmed the context looks right for my product
• I understand which things (dates, assignments) I need to clean up manually

If Something's Not Working

The Short Version

Here's what I want you to walk away with:

• The clarification loop is your safety net: Always ask Claude to ask you questions before it creates anything. It's the fastest way to confirm you're both on the same page.
• Structure beats flat lists: Epics → milestones → child tasks is harder to set up but infinitely easier to manage once you're in execution mode.
• Dates and assignments are yours to own: Claude will estimate them, but treat those as a draft. Review and assign manually.
• What you can do now: Your GTM is scoped and tracked. You know what needs to happen, in what order, and you have a board you can actually work from.

Quick Reference

The Prompt Template

Review the following in my folder:
- App - [Your Product Name] - Market Research
- App - [Your Product Name] - GTM

Using the YouTrack tool, create all the relevant issues in my GTM project, [YOUR-PROJECT-ID].
This project will contain all my key GTM tasks. I'm a team of [1 or 2].

Here is additional context:
- Add all the context each issue needs for the team to complete the task
- When needed, pull additional context / latest info with the web search tool

Before you write, ask me all the questions you have for clarification.

Clarifying Questions — How I Answered Mine

Finding Your YouTrack Project ID

Go to your YouTrack project → the project ID is displayed on the project overview page. It's the short uppercase string (e.g. NGTM, DEV, MYAPP).

Resources

Tools Used

• YouTrack — project management, free tier
• Claude Desktop — Co-Work tab, with YouTrack MCP connected (set up in Module 3, Lesson 8)
• Obsidian — where the market research and GTM documents live (or your equivalent note tool)

Questions I Get Asked

Q: Do I need to use Co-Work, or can I just use the regular Chat tab?

You need Co-Work for this. Regular Chat doesn't have access to your MCP connections — it can't call the YouTrack tool and create issues. Co-Work is where Claude can actually take actions.

Q: Claude created way more issues than I expected. Is that a problem?

Not necessarily. Review them and delete anything that doesn't apply. It's easier to prune a comprehensive list than to start over from a sparse one. Just go through the board, collapse what you don't need now, and archive anything irrelevant.

Q: How do I know I'm ready for the next module?

If you have a dev project board and a GTM project board in YouTrack — both scoped, both populated, both making sense for your specific product — you're ready. That's what Module 3 was building toward. The next step is shipping.

💬 Stuck? Come Talk to Us

Glossary

Co-Work: The tab in Claude Desktop where Claude can use your connected MCP tools to take real actions — write to files, create issues, call APIs. Different from Chat, which is conversation only. (first came up in Module 3, Lesson 8 - Connecting Claude Desktop to YouTrack)

Epic: A high-level work item in YouTrack (and most Agile tools) that groups related tasks under a single goal or initiative. (first came up in Module 3, Lesson 7 - Building Out the Project)

MCP (Model Context Protocol): The system that lets Claude Desktop connect to external tools — YouTrack, Figma, Obsidian, and others — so it can take actions beyond the chat window. (first came up in Module 2, Lesson 4 - Generating the UX/UI Document)

Project ID: The short identifier YouTrack uses to reference a project (e.g. NGTM). Used in API calls and MCP tool integrations to tell Claude which project to write to. (first came up in Module 3, Lesson 6 - Setup Claude Code + YouTrack)

RICE Scoring: A prioritisation framework — Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort — used in Module 3, Lesson 4 to rank features before building the implementation roadmap. (first came up in Module 3, Lesson 4 - Designing RICE)