yc-default-alive-calculator

yc-default-alive-calculator is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from magnus919/agent-skills. It costs 54 tokens per session (2,018 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A startup finance calculator using the Default Alive / Default Dead test. A startup is default alive when its current revenue path is expected to reach profitability before its cash runs out; otherwise it is default dead.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to examine cash runway, spending, revenue growth, burn multiple, time to break-even, and whether additional funding may be necessary.
Why use it?
It gives founders a simple runway and sustainability check without pretending to be a full budget or fundraising model. It separates the question of surviving on the current path from the question of raising money.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to examine cash runway, spending, revenue growth, burn multiple, time to break-even, and whether additional funding may be necessary.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/magnus919/agent-skills/yc-default-alive-calculator
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 magnus919/agent-skills --skill yc-default-alive-calculator
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin yc-default-alive-calculator/plugin install yc-default-alive-calculator after adding the marketplace above.

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 yc-default-alive-calculator

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/yc-default-alive-calculator/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/yc-default-alive-calculator)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/yc-default-alive-calculator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/yc-default-alive-calculator/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 yc-default-alive-calculator

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/yc-default-alive-calculator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/yc-default-alive-calculator.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,018 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 $0.00054 $0.02018
Opus 5 $0.00027 $0.01009
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00404
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00202

Measured 7d ago against content hash 71f0e2ea5f07, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

yc-default-alive-calculator 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/default-alive.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

yc-default-alive-calculator/SKILL.md · 207 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 207 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Default Alive / Default Dead Calculator

A startup is "default alive" if its current revenue trajectory will reach profitability before it runs out of cash — without additional funding. It is "default dead" if it will run out of money first. This is the single most important financial diagnostic Paul Graham developed at Y Combinator.

This is not a fundraising model. It's a reality check. The answer determines whether fundraising is optional or existential.

When to Load

Trigger Example
"Am I default alive?" Founder asking about runway
"How much runway do I have?" Financial planning
"Should I raise money?" Strategic decision
"What's my burn multiple?" Investor-ready metrics
"How long until we break even?" Trajectory check
"Default alive/dead analysis" Explicit framework request

When Not to Use

  • Detailed financial planning. This is a diagnostic, not a budget. It projects one growth curve with fixed assumptions; it does not model hiring plans, contract timing, seasonality, or capital expenditures. Use a proper financial model for those.
  • Fundraising valuation. The verdict tells you whether raising money is existential; it does not compute a valuation, cap table, or round size.
  • Cost structures the default assumptions don't describe. The model splits burn into fixed and variable components (default 70/30). Hardware, R&D, or manufacturing companies with very different cost structures will get a misleading projection.
  • Unknown or unstable growth. The model assumes a steady monthly growth rate with a small decay. A company in launch mode or product-market-fit search does not produce a meaningful projection.
  • As the only input to a board decision. Treat the verdict as a conversation starter with your CFO or accountant, not as financial advice.

How to Use

Quick Answer (No Script)

For a quick check without running the calculator, use the simplified heuristic:

Burn Multiple = Net Burn / Net New ARR

Read the full file on GitHub · 207 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 207 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 71f0e2ea5f07

Subscribe to this mod's changes

yc-default-alive-calculator is a skill published in the GitHub repository magnus919/agent-skills (76 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 2,018 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-09-05.