pre-mortem

An agent skill by phuryn, from phuryn/pm-skills. Tags: debugging, documents, strategy.

What it does

Run a pre-mortem risk analysis on a PRD or launch plan. Categorizes risks as Tigers (real problems), Paper Tigers (overblown concerns), and Elephants (unspoken worries), then classifies as launch-blocking, fast-follow, or track. Use when preparing for launch, stress-testing a product plan, or identifying what could go wrong.

Install

With the skills CLI, which installs into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents:

npx skills add phuryn/pm-skills --skill pre-mortem

Or copy the skill folder into Claude Code's skills directory by hand (~/.claude/skills for every project, or .claude/skills inside one):

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/phuryn/pm-skills
cp -r pm-skills/pm-execution/skills/pre-mortem ~/.claude/skills/pre-mortem

Safety box score

Grade A, minimal risk: 7 of 100 risk points, rated 2026-10-19. The grade rates what the skill and its scripts can reach on the machine of whoever installs it, across eight categories from shell execution to secrets access. How the score works.

This skill is a markdown-only workflow for running a pre-mortem on a PRD or launch plan and saving the result as a new report. The main exposure is optional web research on the plan’s context and a local file write; there is no shipped code, privilege escalation, or destructive action.

Category levels, from 0 (none) to 3 (high)
Category	Level	Why
Code & shell execution	0 (none)	`SKILL.md` contains no shell commands, scripts, or code evaluation steps beyond plain analysis instructions.
Network access	1 (low)	It explicitly says, "If relevant, use web search to research competitive landscape or market conditions," which can send the PRD’s context to remote services.
Filesystem reach	1 (low)	It instructs the agent to save a report file, "Save as a markdown document: `PreMortem-[product-name]-[date].md`", which writes to the working directory.
Secrets & credentials	0 (none)	The skill does not ask for passwords, tokens, `.env` files, keychains, or other credential stores.
Privilege & persistence	0 (none)	There is no request for sudo, global installs, services, shell startup edits, or OS/git setting changes.
Instruction hijack surface	0 (none)	The file does not tell the agent to ignore safeguards, hide behavior, follow remote instructions, or adopt hidden personas.
Irreversible actions	0 (none)	It analyzes a plan and writes a local markdown summary; it does not push, deploy, publish, message, pay, or delete anything.
Transparency	0 (none)	The skill is fully readable markdown with no binaries, encoded payloads, or unpinned installer references.

Before installing

Decide whether external web search is acceptable for your PRD/launch plans.
Confirm you want the agent to create `PreMortem-[product-name]-[date].md` in the working directory.
If the plan is confidential, test with a sanitized or redacted PRD first.

Rated 2026-10-19 by an automated review of 1 file from the skill's repository.

Source

Repository: phuryn/pm-skills (all skills from this repository)
Path: pm-execution/skills/pre-mortem/SKILL.md
Branch: main
Updated: 2026-09-19

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