working-backwards

working-backwards is a skill for Claude Code from pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management. It costs 80 tokens per session (510 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Amazon's product method of starting with the customer problem and desired outcome before designing the solution. It uses an internal press release and FAQ to describe the product before building it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to define new products, write press releases and FAQs, create customer-focused product requirements, and clarify the problem a product should solve.
Why use it?
It helps teams test whether an idea is genuinely useful instead of starting from technology or an existing capability. Writing for customers exposes unclear value and missing details early.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the pmprompt plugin — 28 skills, 9 commands shipped together

Good fit Use it to define new products, write press releases and FAQs, create customer-focused product requirements, and clarify the problem a product should solve.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management/working-backwards
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 pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management --skill working-backwards
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install pmprompt, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 28 skills, 9 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 working-backwards

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management/working-backwards/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management/working-backwards)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management/working-backwards"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management/working-backwards/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 working-backwards

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management/working-backwards"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management/working-backwards.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 80 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 510 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
  • Socket pass 18 Mar 2026
  • Snyk pass 8 Mar 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 $0.00080 $0.00510
Opus 5 $0.00040 $0.00255
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00102
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00051

Measured 10d ago against content hash 3ba00648987b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

working-backwards 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 10d 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

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/working-backwards/SKILL.md · 52 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 52 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Domain Context

This skill implements a proven product management framework. The approach combines best practices from industry leaders and is designed for practical application in day-to-day PM work.

Input Requirements

  • Context about your product, feature, or problem
  • Relevant data, research, or constraints (recommended but optional)
  • Clear articulation of what you're trying to achieve

Working Backwards

What It Is

Working Backwards is Amazon's product development methodology. The core insight: start with the customer problem and work backward to the solution, not the other way around.

Most teams work forward: "We have this technology/capability/idea — what can we build with it?" Working Backwards inverts this: "What problem does the customer have? What would the ideal solution look like? Now, how do we build it?"

The mechanism: Write an internal press release and FAQ before building anything. If you can't write a compelling press release, you don't have a compelling product.

As Jeff Bezos put it: "We took it as an article of faith — if we served customers well, if we prioritized customers and delivered for them, things like sales, revenue, and free cash flow would follow."

When to Use It

Use Working Backwards when you need to:

  • Define a new product or major feature before committing resources
  • Evaluate competing product ideas and choose which to build
  • Align stakeholders on what you're building and why
  • Force clarity on vague product concepts
  • Prevent building solutions in search of problems
  • Create a shared vision that engineering, design, and leadership can rally around
  • Decide whether an idea is worth pursuing at all

When Not to Use It

  • The work is incremental optimization (A/B tests, bug fixes)
  • You're executing on an already-defined product
  • The scope is too small to warrant the overhead

Resources

Books:

  • Working Backwards by Bill Carr and Colin Bryar
  • The Everything Store by Brad Stone

Read the full file on GitHub · 52 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. 10d ago First seen · 52 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A 3ba00648987b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

working-backwards is a skill published in the GitHub repository pmprompt/claude-plugin-product-management (49 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 510 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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