before-you-build

before-you-build is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from OneWave-AI/claude-skills. It costs 58 tokens per session (752 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A pre-build check for a product, feature, MVP, software agent, automation, or integration idea. It identifies the biggest uncertainty before any implementation begins.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to sanity-check an idea, decide whether to build, set a smaller scope, choose what to validate first, or prioritize competing ideas.
Why use it?
It helps avoid spending time building something people may not need, buy, use, trust, or be able to access. It points to the smallest test that can reduce that uncertainty.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to sanity-check an idea, decide whether to build, set a smaller scope, choose what to validate first, or prioritize competing ideas.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/onewave-ai/claude-skills/before-you-build
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 OneWave-AI/claude-skills --skill before-you-build
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/OneWave-AI/claude-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 before-you-build

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/onewave-ai/claude-skills/before-you-build/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/onewave-ai/claude-skills/before-you-build)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/onewave-ai/claude-skills/before-you-build"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/onewave-ai/claude-skills/before-you-build/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 before-you-build

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/onewave-ai/claude-skills/before-you-build"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/onewave-ai/claude-skills/before-you-build.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 58 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 752 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 warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • high Anti-Refusal · line 92
    Skill instructs the agent to omit warnings, disclaimers, or ethical commentary. Stripping safety caveats hides risk from the user and is a common jailbreak preamble.
    Fix: Remove instructions that suppress warnings, disclaimers, or ethical commentary. Let the agent surface safety-relevant caveats to the user.
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 $0.00058 $0.00752
Opus 5 $0.00029 $0.00376
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00150
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00075

Measured 12d ago against content hash 4099517062ff, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

before-you-build 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 12d 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.

before-you-build/SKILL.md · 101 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 101 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Before You Build

Use this skill as a short pre-build risk gate.

The goal is to stop implementation from starting before the riskiest product assumption is clear. Stay implementation-agnostic: do not recommend stacks, architectures, tools, or code.

Core Behavior

When invoked:

  1. Restate the idea in one sentence.
  2. Identify the dominant pre-build risk.
  3. Give a short risk verdict.
  4. Recommend the smallest validation step that can reduce uncertainty before building.

Keep the response short unless the user explicitly asks for a deeper review.

Seven Risk Dimensions

Check the idea through these dimensions:

  • Demand risk: Do enough people already feel this problem strongly?
  • Buyer risk: Is there a clear person or team with reason to pay or commit?
  • Distribution risk: Is there a believable path to reaching those people?
  • Workflow risk: Does the idea fit how users already behave, decide, or work?
  • Timing risk: Is this urgent now, or only interesting in theory?
  • Trust risk: Does the product require data, access, behavior change, or credibility users may not grant?
  • Scope risk: Is the proposed build larger than the proof needed right now?

Pick the one or two risks that matter most. Do not turn every review into a long checklist.

Output Format

Use this format:

## Before You Build

Idea:
- [One-sentence restatement.]

Risk verdict:
- [Low / Medium / High risk] because [one concrete reason].

Main risk:
- [The dominant risk dimension and why it matters.]

Smallest validation step:
- [One specific action the user can take before building.]

Build guidance:
- [Build now / Build smaller / Validate first / Do not build yet.]

Validation Step Rules

The smallest validation step should be specific and low-cost.

Prefer steps like:

  • Talk to five target users who already tried to solve the problem.
  • Ask for payment, pre-order, letter of intent, or manual commitment before building software.
  • Run a landing page, waitlist, outbound message, or concierge test around one narrow promise.
  • Manually deliver the outcome once before automating it.
  • Test whether the missing feature blocks payment, retention, activation, or only completeness.
  • Find one repeated channel that can reach the target users before expanding scope.

Read the full file on GitHub · 101 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. 12d ago First seen · 101 lines · 58 tokens per session scan A 4099517062ff

Subscribe to this mod's changes

before-you-build is a skill published in the GitHub repository OneWave-AI/claude-skills (288 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 58 tokens to every session and 752 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 2026-08-30.

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