define-problem-statement

define-problem-statement is a skill for Claude Code from product-on-purpose/pm-skills. It costs 43 tokens per session (769 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A short document that explains the problem a project is meant to solve, who is affected, why it matters, and how success will be recognized. It provides shared context before a team chooses a solution.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting an initiative, reviewing priorities, explaining a problem to leaders, or onboarding teammates. It helps compare proposed solutions with the problem they are supposed to address.
Why use it?
It prevents teams from building a solution before agreeing on the underlying problem. It also helps teams realign when a project has drifted from its original purpose.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the pm-skills plugin — 69 skills, 11 commands, 6 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it when starting an initiative, reviewing priorities, explaining a problem to leaders, or onboarding teammates. It helps compare proposed solutions with the problem they are supposed to address.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/product-on-purpose/pm-skills/define-problem-statement
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 product-on-purpose/pm-skills --skill define-problem-statement
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/product-on-purpose/pm-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install pm-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 69 skills, 11 commands, 6 agents, 2 hooks.

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 define-problem-statement

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/product-on-purpose/pm-skills/define-problem-statement.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/product-on-purpose/pm-skills/define-problem-statement)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/product-on-purpose/pm-skills/define-problem-statement"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/product-on-purpose/pm-skills/define-problem-statement.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 769 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 23 Apr 2026
  • Snyk pass 23 Apr 2026
  • 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 $0.00043 $0.00769
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00385
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00154
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00077

Measured 8d ago against content hash 494fbd95caea, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

define-problem-statement 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 8d 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/define-problem-statement/SKILL.md · 73 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 73 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Problem Statement

A problem statement is a concise document that frames the problem you're solving, articulates the impact on users and the business, and defines clear success criteria. It serves as the foundation for all subsequent product work by ensuring alignment on what problem to solve before jumping to how to solve it.

When to Use

  • Starting a new initiative or project to establish shared understanding
  • Realigning a drifted project back to its original intent
  • Communicating up to leadership or stakeholders about priorities
  • Evaluating whether a proposed solution actually addresses the core problem
  • Onboarding new team members to provide context

When NOT to Use

  • The problem is already agreed and engineering needs the spec -> use deliver-prd
  • You want to propose and compare solution approaches -> use develop-solution-brief
  • You are capturing customer motivation rather than a business problem -> use define-jtbd-canvas
  • The "problem" is really an unvalidated assumption -> frame it with define-hypothesis and test it before committing a team to it

Instructions

When asked to create a problem statement, follow these steps:

  1. Identify the User Segment Ask who is experiencing this problem. Get specific about the user persona, role, or segment. Avoid vague descriptions like "users" - instead target "mobile shoppers completing checkout" or "enterprise admins managing 50+ users."

  2. Understand the Pain Points Explore what friction, frustration, or unmet need the user experiences. Ask probing questions to understand the severity and frequency of the problem. Look for evidence from user research, support tickets, or behavioral data.

  3. Establish Business Context Connect the user problem to business impact. How does this problem affect revenue, retention, growth, or strategic goals? Why should the organization invest in solving this now versus later?

Read the full file on GitHub · 73 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. 8d ago First seen · 73 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 494fbd95caea

Subscribe to this mod's changes

define-problem-statement is a skill published in the GitHub repository product-on-purpose/pm-skills (647 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 769 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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