idea-validator

idea-validator is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills. It costs 52 tokens per session (2,853 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An idea-testing framework that turns a business or product idea into specific assumptions and small experiments. It checks the problem, audience, route to customers, risks, and viability before major investment.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to assess a new product, service, or business idea, identify its biggest risks, and plan the smallest useful test. It is suited to solo founders, creators, and innovators.
Why use it?
It helps avoid building an idea based only on personal enthusiasm or untested guesses. You get a structured way to find serious problems early.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Good fit Use it to assess a new product, service, or business idea, identify its biggest risks, and plan the smallest useful test. It is suited to solo founders, creators, and innovators.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/idea-validator
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 cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills --skill idea-validator
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-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 idea-validator

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/idea-validator/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/idea-validator)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/idea-validator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/idea-validator/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 idea-validator

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/idea-validator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills/idea-validator.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,853 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00052 $0.02853
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.01426
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00571
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00285

Measured 9d ago against content hash 9cf55b425c70, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

idea-validator 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.

categories/creative-personal-development/idea-validator/SKILL.md · 254 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 254 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Idea Validator

What It Does

Turns raw ideas into testable hypotheses. Instead of falling in love with an idea and building it in a vacuum, this skill runs it through a validation gauntlet — surfacing assumptions, identifying risks, and designing the smallest possible test to learn whether the idea has legs before you commit significant resources.


The Validation Funnel

                 ┌─────────────┐
                 │  RAW IDEA   │
                 └──────┬──────┘
                        │
                 ┌──────▼──────┐
                 │  CANVAS IT  │  ← Problem, Solution, Audience, Channel
                 └──────┬──────┘
                        │
                 ┌──────▼──────┐
                 │ CHECKLIST   │  ← 20-point viability screen
                 └──────┬──────┘
                        │
                 ┌──────▼──────┐
                 │ RISK MAP    │  ← What could kill this?
                 └──────┬──────┘
                        │
                 ┌──────▼──────┐
                 │ TEST DESIGN │  ← Smallest experiment that teaches most
                 └──────┬──────┘
                        │
                 ┌──────▼──────┐
                 │ GO / PIVOT  │
                 │   / KILL    │
                 └─────────────┘

The 20-Point Validation Checklist

Rate each factor as ✅ Strong / ⚠️ Moderate / ❌ Weak

Problem & Need

  • 1. Is this a real problem? Not a "nice to have" — would people pay to solve it?
  • 2. Is the problem widespread? Does enough of your target audience have it?
  • 3. Is the problem urgent? Are people actively searching for solutions right now?
  • 4. Are people already trying to solve it? What workarounds exist?
  • 5. Is the problem getting worse? Trend tailwinds?

Solution & Product

  • 6. Can you solve this better than existing alternatives? 2-10× better?
  • 7. Is there a clear "must-have" feature set? Or is the scope fuzzy?
  • 8. Can you build a minimum version in < 4 weeks? Speed to test matters
  • 9. Does the solution have a clear "why now?" Timing advantage?
  • 10. Is it legally/ethically clear? Any regulatory risks?

Read the full file on GitHub · 254 lines

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 · 254 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A 9cf55b425c70

Subscribe to this mod's changes

idea-validator is a skill published in the GitHub repository cosmicstack-labs/mercury-agent-skills (471 stars, last pushed 14d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 2,853 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 2026-08-30.

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