Agent skill · product strategy · sickn33
idea-autopsy
Autopsy a business idea before you build it: kill-list check, five hard filters, a free-AI one-prompt test, live ad-market verification, and a verdict with a named kill-pattern.
Why this skill is useful
Provides a structured framework for validating business ideas, including specific market research techniques and filters that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
About 4k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 44,571 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Idea Autopsy Overview Turns the agent into a ruthless business-idea pathologist: instead of encouraging the user, it hunts for the one sentence that kills an idea — before any money or weeks are spent building it. Built from a real founder kill-list of 42 dead ideas (including a 9/10-scored idea and one that turned out to be federally illegal to charge for). Every autopsy ends in a hard verdict: DEAD with a named kill-pattern, or SURVIVED with the one cheapest test that could still kill it. When to Use This Skill Use when the user proposes a new business, product, or side-project idea Use when the user asks "should I build X?" or "validate this idea" Use when the user says "autopsy my idea" Use before any market-research or build-planning task for a new venture How It Works Step 1: Kill-list check If the project contains a REJECTION.md (the user's personal kill-list), read it first. A NICHE match (same niche as a killed row) = verdict DEAD, cite the row, stop. A KILL-PATTERN match alone (new niche, previously-seen pattern) is a strong prior, NOT a verdict: name the matching pattern, then run the specific check for that pattern (the relevant filter or test below) to confirm it actually applies before declaring death. If no kill-list exists, ask the user for permission to create one with exactly this schema — this autopsy writes its first row: Step 2: The five filters Demand evidence, not optimism. One hard NO = dead. 1. Real pain? 2am-problem, or a nice-to-have "vitamin"? 2. Buyer has money? Right now — not after the product helps them. 3. Proven demand? Can the user name a single live competitor ad? 4. Legal to charge for? Regulated, licensed, or illegal in the target market? Name the law if suspicion exists. 5. A moat? What stops the 50th copycat next month? Step 3: The free-AI test Try to produce the idea's core deliverable with one prompt to a frontier model. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills sickn33/idea-autopsy--26e998