start-here

start-here is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from impactbrussels/FounderOS. It costs 102 tokens per session (1,201 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A starting-point guide for founders building a company. It asks about the idea, customers, evidence, risks, and current problems to identify the right stage and next step.

In plain words
What is it for?
Work out where a startup is in its development, identify its riskiest assumption, and choose the next relevant area of work.
Why use it?
It helps prevent founders from spending time on later-stage work, such as polishing a brand, before confirming that customers have a real problem.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/impactbrussels/founderos/start-here
Any agent
npx skills add impactbrussels/FounderOS --skill start-here
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/impactbrussels/FounderOS

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 start-here

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/start-here.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/start-here)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/start-here"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/impactbrussels/founderos/start-here.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 102 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,201 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00102 $0.01201
Opus 5 $0.00051 $0.00600
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.00240
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00120

Measured 3d ago against content hash 4ea3dbf235fd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

start-here 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 3d 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/start-here/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Start Here - the Founder OS front door

First-time founders rarely fail for lack of effort. They fail by working on the wrong thing for the stage they're at - polishing a logo before they've confirmed anyone has the problem. This skill diagnoses where the founder actually is and routes them to the right next step.

The method

Built on the Founder OS scaffold (High tier - this is a decision about where to spend scarce time).

Step 1 - Locate the founder (ask, don't assume)

Ask these one at a time. Stop as soon as you can confidently place them.

  1. "In one sentence, what are you building and who is it for?" → captures [ONE_LINER] + [ICP].
  2. "Have you talked to real potential customers about the problem yet - and what did they say?" → the single best signal of stage.
  3. "What's the most painful or scary thing about your startup right now?" → reveals the [RISKIEST_ASSUMPTION] and the binding [CONSTRAINT].

If the founder is vague on #1, that is the diagnosis - start at Idea & Validation.

Step 2 - Place them on the journey

If the founder… They are at Route them to
has an idea but hasn't confirmed the problem is real/painful Idea & Validation validate-ideacustomer-interviews
has talked to customers, problem is real, unsure what to build Build / MVP scope-mvp
has something built, no clear users/traction Launch & GTM positioning-and-gtmlaunch-planfind-first-customers
has early users, wants more paying customers Launch & GTM find-first-customersrunway-and-unit-economics
needs money to keep going / scale Fundraise pitch-deckinvestor-pipeline
is forming the company / adding a co-founder / first hire Operate & Scale legal-and-incorporation · cofounder-and-equity · first-hire
is running but stretched thin / losing the plot Operate & Scale the loops/ cadences (standup, weekly review)

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 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. 3d ago First seen · 89 lines · 102 tokens per session scan A 4ea3dbf235fd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

start-here is a skill published in the GitHub repository impactbrussels/FounderOS (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 102 tokens to every session and 1,201 once invoked, about $0.0005 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.

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