second-curve

second-curve is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from deciqAI/knowledge-skills. It costs 110 tokens per session (1,957 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A business strategy framework in which a company begins a new growth path before its current one reaches decline. The “second curve” is a second S-shaped business cycle started while the first still provides resources.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when growth is slowing, competitors are entering nearby markets, or leadership must decide how much to invest in the existing business versus a new one.
Why use it?
It helps leaders avoid waiting until the core business is already shrinking before investing in a replacement or adjacent offering.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it when growth is slowing, competitors are entering nearby markets, or leadership must decide how much to invest in the existing business versus a new one.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/second-curve
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 deciqAI/knowledge-skills --skill second-curve
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/deciqAI/knowledge-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 second-curve

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/second-curve/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/second-curve)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/second-curve"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/second-curve/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 second-curve

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/second-curve"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/deciqai/knowledge-skills/second-curve.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 110 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,957 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 $0.00110 $0.01957
Opus 5 $0.00055 $0.00979
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00391
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00196

Measured 9d ago against content hash 4a8f43de66fb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

second-curve 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.

second-curve/SKILL.md · 122 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 122 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

The Second Curve

Overview

Every business follows an S-curve: slow start, steep growth, peak, then decline. Companies that endure start a second S-curve before the first peaks. Named by Charles Handy in The Empty Raincoat (1994): the optimal start is during late-growth or early-maturity — when the first curve still funds investment but the team can still see the need. The canonical case is Intel's 1985 pivot from memory to microprocessors; the second curve (microprocessors, started 1971) was real before the first was abandoned.

Composes with s-curve-technology-adoption, feedback-loops, first-principles, founder-mindset.

When to Use

  • Business growing steadily 2-5 years and metrics still look good — this is when the discipline applies most
  • Growth recently decelerated but not yet negative — early maturity signal
  • A competitor launched a meaningfully different product in adjacent space
  • AI-native startups are attacking your core; you're weighing AI capex / AI-native reinvestment against your legacy (seat/license) cash cow
  • Leadership debating "double down vs explore" for capital allocation
  • Someone says: "second curve," "S-curve transition," "diversification timing," "the Innovator's Dilemma"

Not when: < 2 years post-PMF; pre-PMF; any second-curve spend would kill the first curve.

Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)

  • Engine mode: user has a concrete case → run The Process directly.
  • Coach mode: user is unfamiliar → guide step by step.

In Coach mode, respond one step at a time. Each [WAIT] is a hard stop — output only that step's question, then stop.

  1. One-line: every business is on an S-curve; start the second while the first still climbs — earlier feels reckless, later is structurally too late.
  2. Check fit: pre-PMF or very early → not yet. Confirm post-PMF with a growing first curve.
  3. Elicit their real situation: what business, where on the curve, what second-curve candidates exist?

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

  1. Run The Process one step at a time: diagnose first-curve position → identify candidates → time the start.

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

  1. Close by naming the specific 90-day move and what identity shift it requires.

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

Read the full file on GitHub · 122 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files 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 · 122 lines · 110 tokens per session scan A 4a8f43de66fb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

second-curve is a skill published in the GitHub repository deciqAI/knowledge-skills (10 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 110 tokens to every session and 1,957 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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