Founder Skills

Startup workflows for founders who know the product is only part of the company.

Founder Skills gives your coding agent a simple operating loop for the work around the code: choosing what to build, validating who wants it, shaping the offer, launching, reading traction, and deciding what to do next.

The goal is not more planning. The goal is to help you build a successful company, gain traction, and grow without starting every session from scratch.

Website · Changelog

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Start in 60 seconds

Run this inside your startup repo:

npx --yes founder-skills setup

Or from git:

npx --yes github:gvkhosla/founder-skills setup

That creates universal AGENTS.md instructions, seeds startup memory, and adds native shortcuts where supported.

Then open any coding agent in the repo and run the front-door skill:

$co-founder

Or ask:

Use co-founder to help me decide what to do next.

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Philosophy

Each unit of startup work should make subsequent units easier — not noisier.

Most early-stage work creates scattered notes: customer calls in one place, product ideas in another, launch plans in a thread, PMF signals in someone's head. The next agent or session has to rediscover the context.

Founder Skills inverts that. It turns messy startup work into reusable artifacts:

• customer hypotheses that make validation sharper
• validation reports that make scope smaller
• MVP briefs that make implementation planning easier
• launch plans that make GTM repeatable
• PMF reviews that make the next product decision clearer
• weekly reviews that keep focus from resetting every session

The point is not ceremony. The point is leverage. Your startup memory should compound.

The loop

The core loop is:

1. Ideate / choose a direction
2. Validate the problem and customer
3. Scope the smallest useful product
4. Plan the build and launch
5. Review signals from users and the market
6. Update memory so the next cycle starts smarter

Founder Skills is especially useful before and around coding, when the important question is not “can we build it?” but “what should we build, for whom, why now, and what would prove it is working?”

What you get

Founder Skills is human-first in chat:

• a short verdict
• one recommended move
• up to three concrete steps
• saved .md artifacts for agent memory and follow-up work

The artifacts are the compounding layer. They let future sessions read what happened instead of starting over.

60-second example

You: Use co-founder to help me decide what to do next.

Agent:
## Founder Brief
Verdict: The idea is plausible, but the customer and painful moment are still too broad to guide product decisions.
Do this now: turn the idea into a specific customer hypothesis before building.
1. Pick one exact buyer and use case.
2. Write the current workaround and why it is painful.
3. Run problem-validator before scoping the MVP.
Details saved: recommended-next-step.md, truth-memo.md, founder-context.md.

Install matrix

If you want...	Use this	Verify
Universal setup for any coding agent	founder-skills setup	founder-skills doctor --project .
Quick pi skills only	founder-skills install --agent pi	founder-skills doctor --agent pi
Codex $skill-name invocation only	founder-skills install --agent codex	founder-skills doctor --agent codex
Repo memory files only	founder-skills init --project .	founder-skills doctor --project .
OpenCode/OpenClaw/Hermes beta bundles	clone repo, then npm run os:install -- --host <host> --project /path/to/startup	npm run os:doctor -- --host <host> --project /path/to/startup

Core commands

founder-skills setup                   # recommended: universal AGENTS.md + memory + native shortcuts
founder-skills install --agent codex   # optional: install only Codex skills
founder-skills init --project .        # optional: seed only startup memory
founder-skills doctor                  # survey installs (missing agents are optional)
founder-skills doctor --agent codex    # fail if Codex is not installed
founder-skills list                    # list available skills

Advanced host commands from a cloned repo:

npm run os:gen:all
npm run os:init -- --project /path/to/startup --stage building
npm run os:install -- --host opencode --project /path/to/startup
npm run os:doctor -- --host opencode --project /path/to/startup
npm test

Included workflows

Founder Skills includes 30 canonical skills across:

• Partner — route the next move and compound learnings
• Strategy — problem validation, customer hypothesis, MVP scope, assumptions
• Engineering + Product — implementation planning, architecture, QA, release readiness
• Launch — positioning, landing page copy, pricing, launch plans
• Marketing + Sales — messaging, SEO/GEO, CAC, pipeline review
• PMF — PMF signal, north star, churn, retention, growth loops
• Operations — focus, experiments, weekly review
• Support + Scale — support insights, first hire briefs

It also includes lifecycle sequences for validation, build, launch, GTM, PMF recovery, and weekly operating rhythm. Meaningful cycles close with compound so learnings become reusable memory.

Docs

• Docs index
• Positioning
• Co-founder details
• Startup loop artifact contract
• Host install/export flows
• Legacy compatibility layer
• Changelog

Development

npm install
npm run os:gen:all
npm test

License

MIT