{"head":{"title":"What Is a Proof of Concept (PoC) in Software? | OceanLab","description":"A proof of concept is a small, throwaway build that tests if one risky idea can work at all. How it differs from a prototype and an MVP, and mistakes.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/glossary/proof-of-concept"},"crumbs":[{"name":"Home","path":"/"},{"name":"Glossary","path":"/glossary"},{"name":"proof of concept","path":"/glossary/proof-of-concept"}],"slug":"proof-of-concept","term":"Proof of concept (PoC)","aka":["PoC","spike","technical spike"],"category":"Running a build","short":"A small, often throwaway build that tests whether one risky technical idea can work at all.","body":[["A proof of concept answers one question: can this be done? It might test whether a model can read a messy invoice, whether two systems can sync fast enough, or whether a device's Bluetooth link holds up in a warehouse."],["It is not a ",{"href":"/glossary/clickable-prototype","text":"clickable prototype"},", which tests whether people understand a design, and not an ",{"href":"/glossary/mvp","text":"MVP"},", which real users use. A PoC usually has no proper interface, no security and no tests, and that is fine because it is not meant to ship."]],"why":["Some projects hinge on one uncertain technical piece. Spending a week or two on a PoC before committing the full budget tells you whether that piece works, how hard it is, and what it costs to run, while it is still cheap to change plan."],"example":["An insurer wants AI to pull claim details from scanned forms. A two-week PoC runs 200 real forms through two models and measures how often each field is right. One field type fails often, so the plan adds a ",{"href":"/glossary/human-in-the-loop","text":"human-in-the-loop"}," review step before the full build."],"inBuild":["A PoC fits inside discovery, before the first milestone. Its result decides whether the hard part is built as planned, built a different way, or dropped."],"mistakes":[["Shipping the PoC code to production because it worked. It was not built to last."],["Testing with clean sample data instead of the messy real data the system will see."],["Not deciding beforehand what result counts as success."]],"related":[{"href":"/glossary/clickable-prototype","label":"Clickable prototype","detail":"A set of linked screens you can click through, built to test a design before the real software exists."},{"href":"/glossary/mvp","label":"MVP (minimum viable product)","detail":"The smallest version of a product that real users can use, built to test whether the core idea works."},{"href":"/glossary/discovery-phase","label":"Discovery phase","detail":"The short stretch before a build where the team works out the problem, the users, the scope and the rough cost."},{"href":"/glossary/llm-evals","label":"LLM evals (evaluations)","detail":"Repeatable tests that score how well a model, prompt or AI feature does a specific task."}],"tools":[{"href":"/tools/build-vs-buy","label":"Build vs buy","detail":"Free tool"}],"links":[{"href":"/ai-automation","label":"AI automation","detail":"How OceanLab automates company workflows with AI."},{"href":"/software","label":"Software by industry","detail":"Systems we build per industry, with guides and tools."},{"href":"/build","label":"Build guides","detail":"How common systems are built, step by step."}],"sources":[],"legal":false,"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"}