discover-problems

discover-problems is a skill for Claude Code from tomzx/agents. It costs 32 tokens per session (559 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A product-discovery process that turns interviews, support tickets, usage data, complaints, or other signals into structured problem statements. It describes who has the problem, what causes it, and what harm it creates without proposing a solution.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to extract customer jobs-to-be-done—the progress a person is trying to make—rank problems by evidence, and record observed versus assumed problems.
Why use it?
It separates evidence about a real problem from assumptions and stops teams from choosing a feature before understanding the underlying need.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: argument-hint in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it to extract customer jobs-to-be-done—the progress a person is trying to make—rank problems by evidence, and record observed versus assumed problems.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tomzx/agents/discover-problems
View source ↗ tomzx/agents
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 tomzx/agents --skill discover-problems
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tomzx/agents

Made for: Claude Code.

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 discover-problems

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tomzx/agents/discover-problems/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tomzx/agents/discover-problems)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tomzx/agents/discover-problems"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tomzx/agents/discover-problems/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 discover-problems

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tomzx/agents/discover-problems"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tomzx/agents/discover-problems.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 559 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 $0.00032 $0.00559
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00280
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00112
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00056

Measured 5d ago against content hash 5b881e11a9c7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

discover-problems 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 5d 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/pdlc/skills/discover-problems/SKILL.md · 53 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 53 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Discover Problems

The divergent entry point of the PDLC. Turns vague signals (a metric regression, recurring complaints, interview notes, support tickets, a hunch) into structured, solution-agnostic problem statements. Stays strictly in problem space: it refuses to solutionize.

Prerequisites

  • Apply the shared PDLC conventions in skills/pdlc/references/shared.md.
  • A signal source: interviews, tickets, usage data, a metric regression, or a stated concern.

Steps

  1. Establish or locate the initiative directory under .pdlc/initiatives/. If none exists, create N-<slug> (issue number if known, else next p<seq>).
  2. Gather the raw signals. Where interviews exist, extract jobs-to-be-done (the progress a customer is trying to make, their situation, and the forces holding them back). Where data exists, describe the symptom precisely.
  3. For each candidate problem, write a problem statement in the form: For [who], [current situation/struggle], because [root forces], which results in [measurable harm].
  4. Rank problems by frequency, intensity, and willingness-to-pay signals. Mark each as observed (evidence-backed) vs assumed (hypothesis).
  5. Capture who experiences the problem and how (stakeholders table).
  6. Record the cost of inaction: what breaks or degrades today, existing workarounds, and the trend (growing / stable / declining).
  7. Write problems.md to the initiative directory using the template.

Output Format

Use the template at skills/pdlc/templates/initiatives/problems.md. Frontmatter:

---
initiative: INIT-N
title: "<topic>"
status: draft
phase: discover
---

Outcome

If $OUTCOME_YAML is set, emit verdict: drafted and a one-line reason.

Completion Checklist

  • Each problem stated without naming a solution
  • Each problem marked observed or assumed
  • Stakeholders and cost-of-inaction captured
  • At least one problem has a frequency/intensity signal (even if weak)

Next Step

Load research-market and analyze-competition (run in either order), then frame-opportunities to convert problems into a scored opportunity tree ahead of the first gate.

Read the full file on GitHub · 53 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. 5d ago First seen · 53 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A 5b881e11a9c7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

discover-problems is a skill published in the GitHub repository tomzx/agents (6 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 559 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 2026-09-03.

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