pre-mortem

pre-mortem is a skill for Claude Code from phuryn/pm-skills. It costs 79 tokens per session (930 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A pre-mortem is a planning exercise that assumes a product launch has failed and works backward to identify why. This risk analysis groups concerns into Tigers, Paper Tigers, and Elephants, then sorts them by launch urgency.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to stress-test a PRD or launch plan, identify launch-blocking risks, create mitigation actions, and decide what can wait until after launch.
Why use it?
It exposes hidden risks and separates likely problems from exaggerated or unspoken concerns while there is still time to respond. This can make a launch plan easier to challenge and improve.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: $ARGUMENTS substitution.

Part of the pm-execution plugin — 16 skills, 11 commands shipped together

About the project

phuryn/pm-skills is a marketplace of reusable skills, commands, and plugins that guide AI assistants through product-management work such as discovery, strategy, planning, metrics, launches, and growth. It is for product managers and teams using Claude Code, Cowork, or compatible assistants. The catalogue entries are the project's own workflows and extensions.

phuryn/pm-skills · 26,033 stars · on GitHub · productcompass.pm

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/phuryn/pm-skills/pre-mortem
Any agent
npx skills add phuryn/pm-skills --skill pre-mortem
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/phuryn/pm-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install pm-execution, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 11 commands.

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 pre-mortem

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/phuryn/pm-skills/pre-mortem.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/phuryn/pm-skills/pre-mortem)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/phuryn/pm-skills/pre-mortem"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/phuryn/pm-skills/pre-mortem.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 79 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 930 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00079 $0.00930
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.00465
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00186
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00093

Measured 7d ago against content hash 4e5cf10a46ac, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pre-mortem 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.

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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

pm-execution/skills/pre-mortem/SKILL.md · 94 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 94 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Pre-Mortem: Risk Analysis for Product Launch

Purpose

You are a veteran product manager conducting a pre-mortem analysis on $ARGUMENTS. This skill imagines launch failure and works backward to identify real risks, distinguish them from perceived worries, and create action plans to mitigate launch-blocking issues.

Context

A pre-mortem is a structured risk-identification exercise that forces teams to think critically about what could go wrong before launch, when there's still time to act. By assuming failure, we surface hidden concerns and separate legitimate threats from overblown worries.

Instructions

  1. Gather the PRD: If the user provides a PRD or product plan file, read it thoroughly. Understand the product, target market, key assumptions, and timeline. If relevant, use web search to research competitive landscape or market conditions.

  2. Think Step by Step:

    • Imagine the product launches in 14 days
    • Now imagine it fails—customers don't adopt it, revenue targets miss, reputation takes a hit
    • What went wrong?
    • What did we miss or not execute well?
    • What were we overconfident about?
  3. Categorize Risks: Classify each potential failure as one of three types:

    Tigers: Real problems you personally see that could derail the project

    • Based on evidence, past experience, or clear logic
    • Should keep you awake at night
    • Require action

    Paper Tigers: Problems others might worry about, but you don't believe in them

    • Valid concerns on the surface, but unlikely or overblown
    • Not worth significant resource investment
    • Worth documenting to align stakeholders

    Elephants: Something you're not sure is a problem, but the team isn't discussing it enough

    • Unspoken concerns or assumptions nobody is validating
    • Could be real; you're unsure
    • Deserve investigation before launch
  4. Classify Tigers by Urgency:

    Launch-Blocking: Must be solved before launch

    • Example: Core feature broken, regulatory blocker, key customer dependency unmet

Read the full file on GitHub · 94 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. 7d ago First seen · 94 lines · 79 tokens per session scan A 4e5cf10a46ac

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pre-mortem is a skill published in the GitHub repository phuryn/pm-skills (26,033 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 79 tokens to every session and 930 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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