north-star-metrics

north-star-metrics is a skill for Claude Code from impactbrussels/FounderOS. It costs 113 tokens per session (1,309 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A planning guide for choosing one main business metric. A north-star metric is the number that best shows whether customers are receiving value.

In plain words
What is it for?
Choose a north-star metric, identify the smaller numbers that influence it, and select the one metric to focus on at the current stage.
Why use it?
It helps founders avoid tracking large dashboards full of numbers that do not guide decisions, including vanity metrics that look good without showing real progress.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the founderos plugin — 23 skills, 3 agents shipped together

Good fit Choose a north-star metric, identify the smaller numbers that influence it, and select the one metric to focus on at the current stage.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/impactbrussels/founderos/north-star-metrics
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 impactbrussels/FounderOS --skill north-star-metrics
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/impactbrussels/FounderOS

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install founderos, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 23 skills, 3 agents.

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 north-star-metrics

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/north-star-metrics/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/north-star-metrics)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/north-star-metrics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/north-star-metrics/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 north-star-metrics

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/north-star-metrics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/north-star-metrics.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 113 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,309 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 $0.00113 $0.01309
Opus 5 $0.00056 $0.00655
Sonnet 5 $0.00023 $0.00262
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00131

Measured 10d ago against content hash 9b7ded88efb3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

north-star-metrics 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.

skills/north-star-metrics/SKILL.md · 94 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 94 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

North-Star Metrics

First-time founders either track nothing or track everything - both leave them steering blind. A dashboard with forty numbers is a dashboard with zero decisions. This skill cuts through it: one north-star metric that genuinely captures the value [STARTUP_NAME] delivers to [ICP], the handful of input metrics that actually move it, and the one focus metric that matters right now at your stage. Everything else is noise until it isn't.

The method

Built on the Founder OS scaffold (High tier). Full frameworks, tables and examples in references/metrics.md.

Step 1 - Find the metric that captures delivered value

Your north star is the single number that best reflects the value customers actually get - so when it goes up, the customer is better off and so is the business. Ask:

  • What does [ICP] do when [STARTUP_NAME] is genuinely working for them?
  • Which number rises because they got value, not because of a one-off push? A good north star ties the customer's win to your business's win. Use the by-type examples in the reference as illustrations - pick the spirit, not the template.

Step 2 - Separate it from vanity metrics

A vanity metric goes up and to the right and tells you nothing you can act on. Test each candidate:

  • Does it reflect value delivered, or just activity? (signups ≠ value; active usage might be)
  • Can it go down, and would that mean something real? (a metric that only rises is suspect)
  • Does it drive a decision? If a number wouldn't change what you do, stop tracking it. The vanity-vs-real table in the reference makes the cut.

Step 3 - Map the 2-4 input metrics that move it

A north star is a lagging outcome - you can't optimise it directly. Build a short input-metric tree: the 2-4 levers that, when they move, move the north star. Each input should be something a team can actually influence this quarter (e.g. acquisition, activation, retention, frequency, or referral - whichever genuinely drives your north star). Keep it to a handful; the tree is for focus, not completeness.

Read the full file on GitHub · 94 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 · 94 lines · 113 tokens per session scan A 9b7ded88efb3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

north-star-metrics is a skill published in the GitHub repository impactbrussels/FounderOS (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 113 tokens to every session and 1,309 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 2026-08-31.