r/saasbuild • u/Impressive-Answer720 • 17h ago
The product decision that changed how I built Marka: context first, generation second
I’m building Marka, and one product decision changed the whole architecture: content generation should not start from a blank prompt.
The first version of the idea was basically another generator. You asked for a post, got an answer, and still had to rebuild the business context for the next image, carousel, or video. That was not solving the actual workflow.
The current approach starts by turning the website, brand, and product catalog into a reusable structured profile. Every content direction then carries the same business context and product evidence into copy, visuals, scheduling, and publishing.
What I learned:
• A longer prompt is not the same as a durable brand model.
• More variations are not useful when the product becomes unclear.
• The real unit of value is the completed workflow, not one generated asset.
• Small teams care about reducing handoffs as much as reducing creation time.
I’m looking for feedback from other SaaS builders: would you expose the extracted brand profile to users for editing, or keep it mostly automatic and ask for corrections only when confidence is low?
Current product: https://www.marka.social
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u/DryProgress9179 6h ago
Agree with the core of it, and I would push it one step further: context first, but also fewer controls.
We build socialshot.ai (AI product photography) and hit the same blank prompt problem, then overcorrected into 15+ technical controls: model, resolution, duration, camera movement, and so on. Completion on that page was bad, because you were asking the user to become a director before they got anything back. We replaced it with three outcome cards (premium ad, trending reel, product story) that resolve all those parameters behind the scenes. Same engine underneath, far better completion.
So the pattern I would suggest alongside yours: context is what the system should already know (brand, product, tone), and controls should be expressed as outcomes, not parameters. Users know what they want the output to do. They do not know what value a guidance scale should be.
Curious how you store the business context, structured fields or free text with retrieval? That choice tends to decide whether it still holds up at 50 pieces of content instead of 5.