Agent skill · product strategy · sundial-org
pre-mortem-analyst
Imagine the project already failed, then work backward to find why. More powerful than risk assessment because it assumes failure is certain. Use when user says "pre-mortem", "premortem", "imagine this failed", "what could go wrong", "risk analysis", "before we launch", "stress test", "what would kill this", "project risks".
Why this skill is useful
Provides a structured approach to identifying project risks and mitigation strategies that the AI wouldn't generate on its own.
What it needs
About 1k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-03-07. 639 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Pre-Mortem Analyst Why Pre-Mortem > Risk Assessment Risk Assessment: "What MIGHT go wrong?" → Optimism bias filters answers Pre-Mortem: "It's 6 months later. It FAILED. Why?" → Liberates honest analysis Research: Pre-mortems increase problem identification by 30%. The Process 1. Set the scene: "It's [date]. This has failed completely." 2. Brainstorm causes: List 10+ failure reasons (no filtering) 3. Categorize: People, Process, Technology, External 4. Rate: Likelihood × Impact (H/M/L) 5. Prevent: Top 3 get specific mitigation actions 6. Monitor: Define early warning signs Output Format Common Failure Categories Category Common Causes ---------- --------------- People Key person leaves, skill gaps, misalignment, low buy-in Process Aggressive timeline, scope creep, dependency issues Tech Doesn't scale, integration fails, security breach External Market shift, competitor move, regulation change Integration Compounds with: inversion-strategist → Create systematic avoidance strategies second-order-consequences → Project impact of prevented failures first-principles-decomposer → Question hidden assumptions mspot-generator → Validate MSPOT projects before committing --- See references/examples.md for Artem-specific pre-mortems
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills sundial-org/pre-mortem-analyst