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 that includes specific market research techniques and a unique kill-list approach.
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--764d84