mvp-scoping

mvp-scoping is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from shawnpang/startup-founder-skills. It costs 33 tokens per session (1,617 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for reducing a product or feature idea to the smallest useful first release. MVP means minimum viable product: a basic version built to test a central idea with real users.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to state the hypothesis, list candidate features, decide what to build first, and cut or defer work based on time, resources, and requirements.
Why use it?
It helps teams separate essential learning from optional work and draw a clear boundary against scope creep.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to state the hypothesis, list candidate features, decide what to build first, and cut or defer work based on time, resources, and requirements.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/mvp-scoping
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 shawnpang/startup-founder-skills --skill mvp-scoping
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/shawnpang/startup-founder-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 mvp-scoping

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/mvp-scoping/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/mvp-scoping)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/mvp-scoping"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/mvp-scoping/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 mvp-scoping

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/mvp-scoping"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/shawnpang/startup-founder-skills/mvp-scoping.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,617 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.
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 $0.00033 $0.01617
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00809
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00323
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00162

Measured 12d ago against content hash a67d23ed2f4d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

mvp-scoping 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/mvp-scoping/SKILL.md · 96 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 96 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

MVP Scoping

When to Use

Activate when a founder or PM has an idea or a full feature spec and needs to distill it down to the smallest version worth building. Trigger phrases include "what's our MVP," "what should we cut," "scope this down," "what do we build first," "we only have 4 weeks," or "help me prioritize what to include." Also activate when a team is struggling with scope creep and needs to draw a clear line between must-have and nice-to-have.

Context Required

  • From startup-context: company stage, team size, runway/timeline pressure, existing product (if any), technical stack and constraints.
  • From the user: the full feature vision or spec, target user segment, the core hypothesis being tested, available timeline and resources, any non-negotiable requirements (compliance, security, contractual commitments).

Workflow

  1. State the hypothesis — Define what the MVP is designed to learn or prove. Format: "We believe that [user segment] will [behavior] if we provide [capability], and we'll know we're right when [measurable signal]."
  2. List all candidate features — Enumerate every feature, capability, and requirement from the full vision.
  3. Apply MoSCoW prioritization — Classify every item as Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, or Won't Have (this time).
  4. Identify risks — For each Must Have, identify technical, market, and execution risks. Flag any Must Have that carries high risk and may need a spike or prototype first.
  5. Define the cut line — Draw a clear boundary. Everything above the line ships in v1. Everything below has a specific trigger for when it gets built.
  6. Estimate and validate — Rough-size the Must Haves. If they exceed the available timeline by more than 20%, force-rank the Must Haves and demote the lowest.
  7. Write the MVP spec — Produce a concise scope document with explicit inclusions, exclusions, and deferred items.

Output Format

Hypothesis Statement

One sentence stating what the MVP will test and how success is measured.

Read the full file on GitHub · 96 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 · 96 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A a67d23ed2f4d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

mvp-scoping is a skill published in the GitHub repository shawnpang/startup-founder-skills (321 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 1,617 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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