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Maya has been a PM for three years. Churn is up four points this quarter, and nobody can say why.
Maya has been a PM for three years. Churn is up four points this quarter, and nobody can say why.

Maya has been a PM for three years. Churn is up four points this quarter, and nobody can say why.

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Free to read · no account needed

Product judgment, one illustrated story at a time.

Thirteen frames, seven minutes, one real product decision. Somewhere in the middle you make the call — then the story tells you what actually happened.

7 minper lesson
14frames
1real decision
26published

How a lesson runs

The meter follows the story, frame by frame. Your call is the one move on it that is yours.
The setup climbing
the read looks good, and the meter says so
The evidence falling
the numbers disagree, and it drops below the line
You make the call +8 / -4
the one move on the meter that is yours
What happened recovering
and your call rides along with it to the end
Browse by shape
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The nine volumes

Humans → products → metrics → strategy
01Understanding Humans Before Products26
02Understanding Products
03Building Products
04Measuring Products
05Growth, Retention & Monetization
06Organizations & Leadership
07Business, Finance & Strategy
08AI & Future of Product
09Master Product Leader

Questions

What people ask before they read the first one.
What is The Product Manager’s Codex?

A free product management curriculum in which every lesson is a short illustrated story. A lesson runs about thirteen comic-style frames and seven minutes: a product situation is set up, the evidence complicates it, and partway through you make the call yourself — then the story tells you what actually happened.

Is it free, and do I need an account?

Every published lesson is free to read and no account is required. There is no paywall, no sign-up wall and no email gate; a lesson opens straight from a link.

Who is it for?

Anyone making product decisions — new product managers, engineers and designers moving into product, and experienced PMs who want the underlying judgment named rather than the frameworks recited. Lessons are graded from foundations through to practitioner depth.

What does a lesson actually teach?

One transferable idea, arrived at through a decision rather than stated up front. The story puts you in a situation where the obvious read is wrong, asks for your call, and then names the principle or framework the situation was built to demonstrate — survivorship bias, jobs to be done, opportunity cost and so on.

How long does a lesson take?

About seven minutes. Lessons are self-contained, so they can be read in any order, and your position in one is remembered if you leave partway.

Who writes it?

Pavan Chaudhari, a product manager. The curriculum is written by hand lesson by lesson; the artwork is generated once and reused, which is why the same four characters recur throughout.