cold-start-strategy

cold-start-strategy is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from kostja94/marketing-skills. It costs 166 tokens per session (1,824 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A practical guide to getting the first users for a new product when nobody knows about it yet. It focuses on solving the “cold start” problem: building initial activity from zero.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan early-user outreach, launch activities, and first-user acquisition for an AI, SaaS, or other new product.
Why use it?
It helps founders choose realistic ways to reach early users instead of waiting for growth to happen on its own.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to plan early-user outreach, launch activities, and first-user acquisition for an AI, SaaS, or other new product.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kostja94/marketing-skills/cold-start
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 kostja94/marketing-skills --skill cold-start
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kostja94/marketing-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 cold-start-strategy

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kostja94/marketing-skills/cold-start/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kostja94/marketing-skills/cold-start)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kostja94/marketing-skills/cold-start"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kostja94/marketing-skills/cold-start/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 cold-start-strategy

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kostja94/marketing-skills/cold-start"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kostja94/marketing-skills/cold-start.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 166 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,824 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 $0.00166 $0.01824
Opus 5 $0.00083 $0.00912
Sonnet 5 $0.00033 $0.00365
Haiku 4.5 $0.00017 $0.00182

Measured 7d ago against content hash e432913ecb86, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cold-start-strategy 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 7d 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

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/strategies/launch/cold-start/SKILL.md · 123 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 123 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Strategies: Cold Start

Guides cold start strategy for AI/SaaS products: getting first users and traction when you have zero. The cold start problem is overcoming the chicken-and-egg barrier; most startups fail due to poor distribution, not product quality. For indie hacker context (first 100 users, Build in Public, Pieter Levels tactics), see indie-hacker-strategy.

When invoking: On first use, if helpful, open with 1–2 sentences on what this skill covers and why it matters, then provide the main output. On subsequent use or when the user asks to skip, go directly to the main output.

Initial Assessment

Check for project context first: If .claude/project-context.md or .cursor/project-context.md exists, read it for product, audience, and positioning.

Identify:

  1. Product type: AI tool, SaaS, app, B2B, B2C
  2. Target audience: Where they spend time
  3. Budget: Zero, minimal ($500–1K), or moderate
  4. Timeline: Pre-launch, launch week, post-launch

Cold Start Channels

Channel Audience Use Notes
Product Hunt Indie makers, early adopters Launch-day buzz; community upvotes ~3% conversion; traffic spike; see product-hunt-launch
AppSumo / LTD Deal seekers, early adopters Lifetime deal for fast revenue, validation Quick cash; price-sensitive users; see discount-marketing-strategy for LTD structure, trade-offs
Reddit Subreddit-specific r/AlphaAndBetaUsers, r/roastmystartup, r/devops, r/SaaS 80/20 rule; 5+ months for traction; lead with story
Indie Hackers Indie makers, founders Sustained engagement; authentic journey ~23% conversion; 4–6 months; see indie-hacker-strategy for tactics
Hacker News Tech, startups Show HN launch Luck + timing; front page = traffic spike
Directory submission AI tools, product launch Taaft, G2, niche directories Validate PMF; seed users; see directory-submission
Founder-led outbound B2B, high ACV Cold email, LinkedIn; 10–15 personalized outreaches/day Pre-$5K MRR; only reliable path when ACV >$500/mo
Community engagement Target users Forums, LinkedIn groups, Discord 45–90 days; contribute value first

Read the full file on GitHub · 123 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. 7d ago First seen · 123 lines · 166 tokens per session scan A e432913ecb86

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cold-start-strategy is a skill published in the GitHub repository kostja94/marketing-skills (963 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 166 tokens to every session and 1,824 once invoked, about $0.0008 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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