startup-pivoting

startup-pivoting is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from cnfeat/top-pm-skills. It costs 44 tokens per session (692 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for deciding whether a startup should change direction and how much that change should involve. It examines changes to the problem, target customer, product, or market position.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review what has been tried, judge whether the current approach is exhausted, and compare possible startup pivots.
Why use it?
It helps founders assess weak traction without relying only on emotion or making changes that are too small to solve the underlying problem.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to review what has been tried, judge whether the current approach is exhausted, and compare possible startup pivots.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cnfeat/top-pm-skills/startup-pivoting
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 cnfeat/top-pm-skills --skill startup-pivoting
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cnfeat/top-pm-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 startup-pivoting

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cnfeat/top-pm-skills/startup-pivoting/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cnfeat/top-pm-skills/startup-pivoting)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cnfeat/top-pm-skills/startup-pivoting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cnfeat/top-pm-skills/startup-pivoting/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 startup-pivoting

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cnfeat/top-pm-skills/startup-pivoting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cnfeat/top-pm-skills/startup-pivoting.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 44 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 692 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 $0.00044 $0.00692
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00346
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00138
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00069

Measured 9d ago against content hash 8af98a133c20, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

startup-pivoting 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 9d 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.

参考skill/lenny-skills-main (2)/lenny-skills-main/skills/startup-pivoting/SKILL.md · 60 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 60 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Startup Pivoting

Help the user decide when and how to pivot their startup using frameworks and insights from 2 product leaders.

How to Help

When the user asks for help with pivoting:

  1. Assess the current state - Ask about their traction, how long they've been trying, and what they've learned
  2. Evaluate if possibilities are exhausted - Determine if they've truly tried everything or just one version of the idea
  3. Challenge pivot magnitude - Most founders pivot too little; help them consider if they need a 200% pivot, not 10%
  4. Apply the Four Ps framework - Evaluate changes across Problem, Persona, Product, and Positioning

Core Principles

Have you exhausted the possibilities?

Stewart Butterfield: "The decision is about have you exhausted the possibilities?" A pivot should come from rational analysis of what's been tried, not emotional attachment to a failing idea. Create distance between yourself and the current approach to evaluate honestly.

Most pivots are too small

Todd Jackson: "Most founders do a 10% pivot, and what they need to be doing is a 200% pivot." When stuck in pre-PMF, small adjustments rarely break through. Consider whether you need to fundamentally change your approach rather than tweak the existing one.

Use the Four Ps framework

Evaluate pivots across four dimensions: Problem (are you solving the right problem?), Persona (are you targeting the right customer?), Product (is your solution the right approach?), and Positioning (are you framing this correctly?). Often the issue is not one but a combination.

Maintain rational distance

Emotional attachment to an idea can prevent founders from seeing clearly. The best pivot decisions come from treating your company like an outside investor would evaluate it.

Questions to Help Users

  • "What have you tried so far, and what did you learn from each attempt?"
  • "If you were an outside investor looking at this company, what would you conclude?"
  • "Is this a tweak to your current approach or a fundamental rethink?"
  • "Which of the Four Ps (Problem, Persona, Product, Positioning) might be wrong?"
  • "What would a 200% pivot look like compared to what you're considering?"
  • "Have you truly exhausted the possibilities, or just gotten tired of trying?"

Read the full file on GitHub · 60 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. 9d ago First seen · 60 lines · 44 tokens per session scan A 8af98a133c20

Subscribe to this mod's changes

startup-pivoting is a skill published in the GitHub repository cnfeat/top-pm-skills (48 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 44 tokens to every session and 692 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-09-03.

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