proto-persona

proto-persona is a skill for Claude Code from derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin. It costs 32 tokens per session (2,738 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of proto-persona, MIT.

A first-draft customer profile built from existing research, market information, team knowledge, and clearly marked assumptions. It describes a likely target user before deeper research validates the details.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps create an initial persona, align product or design teams, guide early design choices, and identify questions for future user research.
Why use it?
It gives a team a shared working view of its users when information is incomplete. This helps guide early decisions while showing which assumptions still need checking.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the pm plugin — 9 skills, 6 commands shipped together

Good fit It helps create an initial persona, align product or design teams, guide early design choices, and identify questions for future user research.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/proto-persona
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 derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin --skill proto-persona
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install pm, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 9 skills, 6 commands.

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 proto-persona

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/proto-persona.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/proto-persona)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/proto-persona"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/proto-persona.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,738 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 95% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00032 $0.02738
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.01369
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00548
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00274

Measured 8d ago against content hash 0937ef48256e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

proto-persona 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 8d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

95% identical to proto-persona — 3 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/pm/pm-workflow/skills/proto-persona/SKILL.md · 330 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 330 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Purpose

Create an initial, assumption-based persona profile that synthesizes available user research, market data, and stakeholder knowledge into a working hypothesis about your target user. Use this to align teams early in product development, guide initial design decisions, and identify gaps in understanding that require validation through research.

This is not a validated persona—it's a "proto" (prototype) persona that evolves as you learn more. Think of it as a structured placeholder that prevents design-by-committee while acknowledging you don't have all the answers yet.

Key Concepts

What is a Proto-Persona?

A proto-persona is a lightweight, hypothesis-driven persona created from:

  • Existing research: User interviews, surveys, analytics (if available)
  • Market data: Industry reports, competitor analysis, demographic trends
  • Stakeholder knowledge: Sales, support, and team insights
  • Informed assumptions: Best guesses that need validation

Proto vs. Validated Persona

Proto-Persona Validated Persona
Created in hours/days Created over weeks/months
Based on assumptions + limited research Based on extensive user research
Used to align teams early Used to guide detailed design
Evolves rapidly Stable over time
Good enough to start High confidence

Why Use Proto-Personas?

  • Speed: Align teams quickly without waiting for months of research
  • Focus: Provides a shared reference point for "who we're building for"
  • Hypothesis framing: Makes assumptions explicit, which can then be validated
  • Prevents generic design: "Design for everyone" = design for no one

Anti-Patterns (What This Is NOT)

  • Not validated research: Don't treat it as fact—it's a hypothesis
  • Not a replacement for user research: Use it to guide research, not avoid it
  • Not demographic data alone: Age and location don't explain behavior
  • Not permanent: Proto-personas should evolve as you learn

Read the full file on GitHub · 330 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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. 8d ago First seen · 330 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A 0937ef48256e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

proto-persona is a skill published in the GitHub repository derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 2,738 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 95% identical to proto-persona, differing in 3 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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