project-onboarding

project-onboarding is a skill for Claude Code from BechsteinDigital/claude-shiploop. It costs 57 tokens per session (695 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured interview for turning a new project or product idea into an approved project brief. It covers the problem, intended users, scope, constraints, and rules for later autonomous work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting a project, including from a vague app idea, to define the smallest shippable version, non-goals, technical limits, and when human approval is required.
Why use it?
It prevents important decisions from being left unclear before automated development begins and gives the project a shared written starting point.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: effort in frontmatter. Also seen: model in frontmatter; names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Part of the claude-shiploop plugin — 8 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when starting a project, including from a vague app idea, to define the smallest shippable version, non-goals, technical limits, and when human approval is required.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bechsteindigital/claude-shiploop/project-onboarding
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add BechsteinDigital/claude-shiploop --skill project-onboarding
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/BechsteinDigital/claude-shiploop

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-shiploop, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 8 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for project-onboarding

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bechsteindigital/claude-shiploop/project-onboarding/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bechsteindigital/claude-shiploop/project-onboarding)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bechsteindigital/claude-shiploop/project-onboarding"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bechsteindigital/claude-shiploop/project-onboarding/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for project-onboarding

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bechsteindigital/claude-shiploop/project-onboarding"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bechsteindigital/claude-shiploop/project-onboarding.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 57 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 695 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00057 $0.00695
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00347
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00139
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00069

Measured 10d ago against content hash 7222449fdf50, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

project-onboarding scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

project-onboarding/SKILL.md · 59 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 59 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Project Onboarding (Pitch Interview)

Goal

Extract all information from a pitch until autonomous work is possible — captured as an approved project/BRIEF.md. This is the last opportunity to ask the user questions; afterwards autonomous-setup takes over without follow-ups.

Process

1. Mirror the pitch

Reflect the idea back in 2–3 of your own sentences (core idea, assumed user, assumed problem). Only start the interview once the user has confirmed or corrected the reflection.

2. Interview in rounds

Ask questions with AskUserQuestion (max. 4 per round), one topic block per round, rounds build on each other. Question catalog: references/interview-guide.md — adapt round and wording to the answers there; don't work through it mechanically.

Order: A Core (problem, user, success) → B Scope (must-have outcomes, non-goals, smallest shippable version) → C Frame (time, cost, tech constraints, platform) → D Autonomy (escalation rules, extension budget, deployment limits).

Rules:

  • After each round, briefly summarize what is now settled.
  • "Don't know" → propose a default yourself and only have it confirmed — never drill deeper.
  • Technical detail questions only if the user is visibly technical; otherwise ask about effect, not technology.
  • No leading questions that grow the scope ("Wouldn't you also like …?"). The interview exists to sharpen the core, not to collect features.
  • Spontaneous feature ideas — whether from the user ("Oh, and X would be cool too!") or the interviewer: acknowledge briefly, note as a candidate for project/IDEAS.md and possibly as a non-goal, don't go deeper, return to the core. Only if the user insists it belongs to the core is it treated as a must-have-outcome candidate.

3. Check the Definition of Ready

Checklist in references/interview-guide.md#definition-of-ready. Every open item → a targeted follow-up round or a marked default. Don't start while any item is neither answered nor covered by a confirmed default.

Read the full file on GitHub · 59 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 59 lines · 57 tokens per session scan A 7222449fdf50

Subscribe to this mod's changes

project-onboarding is a skill published in the GitHub repository BechsteinDigital/claude-shiploop (4 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 57 tokens to every session and 695 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.