working-backwards

working-backwards is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus. It costs 18 tokens per session (1,872 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A method for describing a future product from the customer’s point of view and planning its launch backward from a target date. It uses a PR/FAQ—a future press release and list of answers to likely questions—to clarify the idea.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to draft a customer-focused product narrative, compare possible directions, and create a launch plan with marketing and operational tasks.
Why use it?
It exposes unclear customer value, dependencies, stakeholders, and risks before detailed requirements are written. Working backward from the launch date makes missing work easier to spot.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to draft a customer-focused product narrative, compare possible directions, and create a launch plan with marketing and operational tasks.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/working-backwards
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 liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus --skill working-backwards
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus

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 working-backwards

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/working-backwards/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/working-backwards)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/working-backwards"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/working-backwards/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 working-backwards

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/working-backwards"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/working-backwards.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 18 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,872 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 $0.00018 $0.01872
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00936
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00374
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00187

Measured 9d ago against content hash ac84441d4ecf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

working-backwards 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.

skills/working-backwards/SKILL.md · 137 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 137 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Working Backwards (PR/FAQ + Backcasting)

Scope

Covers

  • Turning a product idea into a customer-centric future press release + FAQ (PR/FAQ)
  • Creating 2–3 divergent PR options to avoid solution lock-in
  • Backcasting a launch: a concrete GTM + operational “machinery” plan from target date back to today
  • Surfacing stakeholders, dependencies, constraints, and risks early

When to use

  • “Write a PR/FAQ for…”
  • “Working backwards from the customer…”
  • “Create a future press release / press release from the future”
  • “Backcast a launch plan / working backwards timeline”
  • “We need alignment on what we’re building before writing a PRD”

When NOT to use

  • You don’t yet understand the problem and need discovery framing (use problem-definition)
  • You already have narrative alignment and need detailed requirements (use writing-prds)
  • You need a build-ready engineering/design spec (use writing-specs-designs)
  • You’re prioritizing among many initiatives (use prioritizing-roadmap)
  • You only need marketing copy for an already-built product (use launch-marketing)
  • You’re doing early-stage idea validation without a clear customer problem (use startup-ideation)
  • You need a long-term product vision or mission statement (use defining-product-vision)

Inputs

Minimum required

  • Product/context + target customer/user segment
  • Problem statement (or symptoms) + why now
  • Candidate solution idea(s) (can be vague; options are welcome)
  • Constraints: timeline/launch target, platform, policy/legal, dependencies
  • Success metrics (1–3) + guardrails (2–5)

Missing-info strategy

  • Ask up to 5 questions from references/INTAKE.md.
  • If answers remain missing, proceed with clearly labeled assumptions and provide 2–3 options (PR variants, scope, rollout).

Outputs (deliverables)

Produce a Working Backwards Pack in Markdown (in-chat; or as files if the user requests):

  1. Context snapshot
  2. PR options: 2–3 divergent future press releases (1 page each)
  3. Selected PR: refined future press release
  4. FAQ: customer + internal (business/ops/technical/legal) FAQs
  5. Backcasting plan: milestones to launch (owners, dates, dependencies)
  6. Stakeholder + “machinery” plan: approvals, comms, rollout, support readiness
  7. Success metrics + guardrails (+ instrumentation notes)
  8. Risks / Open questions / Next steps (always included)

Read the full file on GitHub · 137 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. 9d ago First seen · 137 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A ac84441d4ecf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

working-backwards is a skill published in the GitHub repository liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus (52 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 1,872 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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