This skill should be used when the user says "pre-mortem", "premortem", "risk analysis", "stress premortem", "failure analysis", "what could go wrong", "pre mortem", "investigate failure", "failure modes", or wants to stress-test a product concept by applying Gary Klein's pre-mortem methodology to identify hypothetical failure root causes, early warning signals, and mitigation strategies. Produces a pre-mortem report with 3 root causes across distinct failure dimensions and recommended concept updates.
72
88%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
—
No eval scenarios have been run
Passed
No known issues
Quality
Discovery
100%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
This is a strong skill description that excels across all dimensions. It provides extensive trigger term coverage with multiple natural variations, clearly states both what the skill does and when to use it, and occupies a distinct niche around pre-mortem analysis. The only minor note is that the description is slightly front-loaded with trigger terms, making it read more like a routing rule than a natural description, but this does not materially harm its effectiveness.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions: 'stress-test a product concept', 'identify hypothetical failure root causes, early warning signals, and mitigation strategies', 'Produces a pre-mortem report with 3 root causes across distinct failure dimensions and recommended concept updates.' | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (applies Gary Klein's pre-mortem methodology to identify failure root causes, early warning signals, and mitigation strategies; produces a report with 3 root causes) and 'when' (explicit trigger terms listed at the start with 'This skill should be used when...'). | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Excellent coverage of natural trigger terms including multiple variations: 'pre-mortem', 'premortem', 'pre mortem', 'risk analysis', 'stress premortem', 'failure analysis', 'what could go wrong', 'investigate failure', 'failure modes'. These are terms users would naturally say. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Highly distinctive niche: Gary Klein's pre-mortem methodology applied to product concepts. The specific trigger terms like 'pre-mortem', 'premortem', and 'failure modes' are unlikely to conflict with other skills, and the methodology reference further narrows the scope. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
77%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
This is a well-crafted skill with excellent actionability and workflow clarity. The multi-step process is clearly sequenced with robust validation checkpoints, retry logic, and error handling. The main weaknesses are moderate verbosity (explanatory framing about pre-mortem methodology that Claude doesn't need) and a somewhat heavy main file that could benefit from offloading some detail to reference files.
Suggestions
Remove or drastically shorten the introductory explanation of pre-mortem methodology (the 'Instead of asking...' paragraph and the numbered process overview) — Claude doesn't need to understand why the technique works, just how to execute it.
Consider moving the detailed agent invocation context block (the --- PRODUCT CONCEPT --- template) and error handling section into reference files to reduce the main skill's token footprint.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The skill is reasonably well-structured but includes some unnecessary explanation (e.g., explaining what a pre-mortem is and why it works, the optimism bias rationale). The data availability table and some of the contextual framing could be tightened. However, most content is functional and task-relevant. | 2 / 3 |
Actionability | The skill provides highly concrete, executable guidance: specific file paths, exact agent invocation context blocks, precise validation criteria (e.g., '4 distinct links, not 2 restated'), explicit retry prompts, a 6-column schema for recommendations, and a complete output summary template. Every step tells Claude exactly what to do. | 3 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The 6-step workflow is clearly sequenced with explicit validation checkpoints (Step 4 quality validation with specific rejection criteria and retry logic), error recovery paths (retry with adversarial instruction, fallback to best available output), and a clear feedback loop. The error handling section covers multiple failure modes with concrete recovery strategies. | 3 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | The skill references external files (premortem-protocol.md, premortem-report-template.md, ensure-config.md) which is good progressive disclosure, but no bundle files were provided to verify these exist. The SKILL.md itself is quite long (~180 lines of substantive content) and some sections like the detailed agent context block and error handling could potentially be split into reference files. The references are clearly signaled but the main file carries a lot of inline detail. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 10 / 12 Passed |
Validation
90%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 10 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
| Criteria | Description | Result |
|---|---|---|
frontmatter_unknown_keys | Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata | Warning |
Total | 10 / 11 Passed | |
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Table of Contents
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