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Advanced skills · free
Skills I think and build with
Six free skills, three for thinking and three for building. Copy one into any chat, or install it for Claude Code.
These are the skills I lean on every day. Each one runs a loop, holds itself to a quality bar, then stops. Method, not costume. Take them, use them, make them yours.
Six markdown files. Free. No email, no signup.
Thinking
For the calls worth getting right
Before you commit: the hard decision, the pre-mortem, the tangled problem.
deep-thinking
Get the hard call right before you commit.
- Use it when: the question is hard, high stakes or open ended, and being right matters more than being fast. Strategic calls, "should I do X", a failure that keeps coming back.
- Especially when: the obvious answer feels too easy, several answers look plausible, or you can afford a long or overnight run.
- You get: a clear verdict with a confidence level, the next steps, and what would change the answer.
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red-team
Try to make it fail before reality does.
- Use it when: you are about to commit to a plan, idea or decision and want it stress-tested first. Before launching, sending, signing, building.
- Especially when: you are attached to it, it feels obviously right, everyone agreed too easily, or a misfire would be costly.
- You get: a genuine attempt to make it fail. Kill-shots ranked, shaky assumptions named, and a plain verdict: proceed, proceed with fixes, or do not.
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consultant
Structure the mess, answer first.
- Use it when: a problem is messy or tangled and you want it structured and answered the way a top strategy consultant would: the mess broken into clean parts, the real question found, a sharp answer-first recommendation.
- Especially when: you are overwhelmed by a knot of considerations, or a decision has too many moving pieces to hold in your head.
- You get: the recommendation up front, the three reasons holding it up, and the one thing that would change the answer.
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Building
For shipping it without the spiral
Used in order: prd writes the brief, build ships it, the-loop makes it genuinely good.
prd
Write the brief before you build.
- Use it when: you are about to build something (an app, a feature, a tool, an automation) and want a clear brief before anyone, or any AI, starts building.
- Especially when: you are handing the build to an AI coding agent, past builds over-engineered or quietly grew in scope, or "I'll explain it as I go" keeps producing a mess.
- You get: a Product Requirements Document (PRD): a spec clear enough that a builder who has never spoken to you could build the right thing without guessing.
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build
Ship it in slices, without spiralling.
- Use it when: you are about to build with an AI (Claude Code, Cursor, Cowork) and want it to end up working, not spiral into a mess.
- Especially when: past builds went off the rails, the AI over-built or quietly broke things, or it said "done" but it wasn't.
- You get: the execution partner to prd. Plan, build a small slice, see it work with your own eyes, repeat. prd writes the brief, this ships it.
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the-loop
Iterate to a bar, then stop.
- Use it when: you have a draft or output that needs to be genuinely good, not just done, and you want it refined through real cycles instead of stopping at the first attempt.
- Especially when: quality matters more than speed, first drafts are not enough, and "make this actually good" is the job. Works on writing, plans, designs, code.
- You get: an explicit quality bar, the work iterated against it until it clears, and a stop the moment it does. No slop, no polishing forever.
Preview the full skill
How to use them
Two ways in
- Paste into any chat. Copy a skill, drop it into Claude.ai or Cowork, and tell it what you are working on. No setup, it works straight away.
- Install for Claude Code. Drop the
.md files into your ~/.claude/skills/ folder and Claude Code loads them as commands you can call any time.
Want to go further?
I teach this one to one and run workshops for teams. Book a free chat and tell me what you are trying to build. Prefer to say hello first? Connect on LinkedIn.
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