writing-north-star-metrics

writing-north-star-metrics is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus. It costs 19 tokens per session (1,808 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A method for defining a product’s North Star metric: one main measure of the value the product creates. It also maps the supporting measures and safety checks that explain or constrain it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose a top-level success measure, create a driver tree, identify leading indicators, and set guardrails for planning or strategy.
Why use it?
It helps teams stop optimizing unrelated key performance indicators (KPIs) and gives them a shared way to judge decisions. The supporting metrics show what drives progress and what must not be harmed.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to choose a top-level success measure, create a driver tree, identify leading indicators, and set guardrails for planning or strategy.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/writing-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 liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus --skill writing-north-star-metrics
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 writing-north-star-metrics

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/writing-north-star-metrics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus/writing-north-star-metrics.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 19 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,808 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 $0.00019 $0.01808
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00904
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00362
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00181

Measured 9d ago against content hash 9228ff3f30f1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-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 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/writing-north-star-metrics/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.

Writing North Star Metrics

Scope

Covers

  • Defining or refreshing a product/company North Star and North Star Metric
  • Translating a qualitative value model into measurable, decision-useful metrics
  • Creating a simple driver tree: leading input/proxy metrics + guardrails
  • Producing a “North Star Metric Pack” teams can use as a decision tie-breaker

When to use

  • “We need one metric that defines success.”
  • “Teams are optimizing different KPIs.”
  • “We’re setting quarterly OKRs and need leading indicators.”
  • “We’re launching a new strategy and need a metric that aligns decisions.”

When NOT to use

  • You only need OKRs for an already-agreed North Star -> use setting-okrs-goals
  • You need a full analytics taxonomy/event tracking plan from scratch
  • Stakeholders haven’t aligned on the customer value model / mission at all -> use defining-product-vision first
  • You’re choosing a single experiment metric for a one-off test
  • You need to diagnose retention or engagement patterns, not define the top-level metric -> use retention-engagement
  • You need to assess whether you have product-market fit -> use measuring-product-market-fit

Inputs

Minimum required

  • Product/company + primary customer segment
  • The “value moment” (what the customer gets when things go well)
  • Business model + strategic goal (growth, activation, retention, margin, trust, etc.)
  • Time horizon (next quarter vs next year)
  • Measurement constraints (what you can measure today; data latency; known gaps)

Missing-info strategy

  • Ask up to 5 questions from references/INTAKE.md.
  • If still missing, proceed with clearly labeled assumptions and provide 2–3 options.

Outputs (deliverables)

Produce a North Star Metric Pack in Markdown (in-chat; or as files if the user requests):

  1. North Star Narrative (value model, tie-breaker, scope)
  2. Candidate metrics (3–5) + selection rationale (evaluation table)
  3. Chosen North Star Metric spec (definition, formula, window, segmentation, owner, data source)
  4. Driver tree (leading input/proxy metrics + guardrails)
  5. Validation & rollout plan (instrumentation checks, dashboard cadence, decision rules)
  6. 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 · 19 tokens per session scan A 9228ff3f30f1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-north-star-metrics is a skill published in the GitHub repository liqiongyu/lenny_skills_plus (52 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 19 tokens to every session and 1,808 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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