make-playbook

make-playbook is a skill for Codex from tamdogood/builder-essential-skills. It costs 83 tokens per session (832 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A practical playbook for building and running a solo or bootstrapped software product, from idea through launch, growth, revenue, automation, and exit. Bootstrapping means funding the product through the founder’s own resources and customer revenue rather than outside investment.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose what to build, define a minimal product, prepare a launch, diagnose slow growth, decide pricing, automate repetitive work, or consider an exit.
Why use it?
It helps turn a broad app idea or stalled project into decisions suited to its current stage. It also keeps attention on customer demand, sustainable operations, pricing, and ethical growth.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: agents/openai.yaml present.

Good fit Use it to choose what to build, define a minimal product, prepare a launch, diagnose slow growth, decide pricing, automate repetitive work, or consider an exit.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/make-playbook
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 tamdogood/builder-essential-skills --skill make-playbook
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills

Made for: 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 make-playbook

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/make-playbook/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/make-playbook)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/make-playbook"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/make-playbook/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 make-playbook

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/make-playbook"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tamdogood/builder-essential-skills/make-playbook.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 83 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 832 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 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 $0.00083 $0.00832
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.00416
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00166
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00083

Measured 10d ago against content hash 8ba97f44be9c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

make-playbook 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.

skills/make-playbook/SKILL.md · 80 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 80 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

MAKE Playbook

Use this skill as a stage-specific operating system for solo and bootstrapped software products. It is an original checklist and diagnostic system inspired by Pieter Levels' MAKE: The Indie Maker Blueprint; it is not a substitute for the book. Keep attribution intact when reusing the references.

Stage Model

Idea -> Build -> Launch -> Grow -> Monetize -> Automate -> Exit

Always treat references/ethos.md as the standing frame for bootstrapping, persistence, and ethical constraints. Load it once per session when it has not already been read. Its constraints override stage tactics: no fake engagement, fake reviews, dishonest growth hacks, user-hostile monetization, or selling user data.

Workflow

  1. Identify the app and current stage. If the user has not named the app or the current situation, ask one concise question. If a MAKE.md file exists in the project root, read it first because it may already contain this state.
  2. Load the current stage reference. Load one adjacent stage when the question is on a boundary, such as build/launch for "is this ready to launch" or grow/monetize for "traffic but no revenue."
  3. Apply the reference to the user's specific app. Use the diagnostic questions at the end of each reference to get missing facts, then convert the checklist into a concrete action list for this product and this week.
  4. Push toward shipping. When the user is stuck in abstraction, give the smallest next action that creates market evidence.
  5. Offer to create or update a tracker. For a new app, copy templates/make-tracker.md to the project root as MAKE.md and fill in what is known. For an existing MAKE.md, update the relevant section as decisions are made.
  6. End with action, not advice. Close every response with a short, time-boxed next step unless the user explicitly requested only analysis.

Reference Routing

User situation Load
"I do not know what to build", idea feels broad, niche is unclear references/idea.md
Stuck choosing stack, overbuilding, outsourcing before proof references/build.md
Built something but nobody knows, launch plan is vague references/launch.md
Traffic plateaued, retention unclear, growth depends on paid ads references/grow.md
Users but no revenue, pricing/model is unclear references/monetize.md
Revenue exists but founder is the bottleneck references/automate.md
Acquisition offer, sale timing, valuation, or diligence questions references/exit.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 80 lines

Files

What ships with it

11 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. 10d ago First seen · 80 lines · 83 tokens per session scan A 8ba97f44be9c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

make-playbook is a skill published in the GitHub repository tamdogood/builder-essential-skills (195 stars, last pushed 24d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 83 tokens to every session and 832 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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