mom-test

mom-test is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from lucasheriques/shipmate. It costs 72 tokens per session (2,332 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A customer-interview method based on The Mom Test, a framework for learning from people’s real past behavior instead of compliments or guesses about the future.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prepare discovery interviews, choose a specific customer group, write questions, or assess whether interview feedback is meaningful.
Why use it?
It helps separate useful evidence about demand and willingness to pay from polite opinions or unreliable predictions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to prepare discovery interviews, choose a specific customer group, write questions, or assess whether interview feedback is meaningful.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/lucasheriques/shipmate/mom-test
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 lucasheriques/shipmate --skill mom-test
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lucasheriques/shipmate

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 mom-test

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lucasheriques/shipmate/mom-test/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/lucasheriques/shipmate/mom-test)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lucasheriques/shipmate/mom-test"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lucasheriques/shipmate/mom-test/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 mom-test

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lucasheriques/shipmate/mom-test"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lucasheriques/shipmate/mom-test.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,332 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. 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 $0.00072 $0.02332
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.01166
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00466
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00233

Measured 9d ago against content hash a18879e85d23, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

mom-test scanned grade B with 1 finding 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.

Subtle steeringmediumPrompt injection

Instructions that bias recommendations or shape behaviour without the user noticing.

- Division of labour: they own the problem, you own the solution. Never let them design the product; never tell them what their problem is.
skills/mom-test/SKILL.md · 95 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 95 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

The Mom Test — customer conversation procedure

When to use

Any time you're validating an idea through conversations: drafting interview questions, prepping a discovery call, analyzing what someone said, or judging whether a meeting was a win. Core mechanism: people lie about opinions and the future, but rarely about specific things that already happened. Note the scope limit: conversations validate market risk (do they want it, will they pay, are there enough of them) — they cannot retire product risk (can you build/grow/retain it). Heavy product risk means building earlier with less certainty; live-product questions are often better answered by usage data.

The procedure

1. Prepare

  1. Pick a focused, findable segment first. Slice ("Customer Slicing") until you have a who-where pair: who exactly, and where you can reach them. Slice by who wants it most and why (motivations), then by where they already gather or what workarounds they already do. Choose the first segment by: profitable, easy to reach, personally rewarding. If you can't say where to find them, keep slicing.
  2. Write the list of 3 — with the whole team, the 3 most important things to learn from this type of person. Include at least one question that could destroy the idea; if none of your questions scare you, they're wrong. Prep prompts: "If this failed, why would it have happened?" and "What would have to be true for this to be a huge success?" Minimum viable prep: "What do we want to learn from these guys?" If you can't answer that, skip the conversation.
  3. Desk-research first. Never spend conversation time on anything the internet can answer. 5 minutes of LinkedIn/company diligence before B2B meetings.
  4. If asking for a meeting, frame it — Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask ("Very Few Wizards Properly Ask"): the problem-space vision (not your idea), where you're at and that you have nothing to sell, your specific weakness they can fix, why they specifically can help, the ask. Never "can I interview you" / "can I pick your brain" / "can I get your opinion". Compressible to two sentences.
  5. Keep it casual when possible. The first learning conversation doesn't need to be a meeting — 5 minutes tells you if a problem exists and matters. Video calls are fine (the 2013 "in person only" advice predates normalized remote work); the surviving principle is that formality kills candor. If it feels like they're doing you a favour, it's too formal.
  6. Cap prep at about an hour. More is stalling.

Read the full file on GitHub · 95 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 · 95 lines · 72 tokens per session scan B a18879e85d23

Subscribe to this mod's changes

mom-test is a skill published in the GitHub repository lucasheriques/shipmate (4 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 2,332 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (subtle steering). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.