Individual skill
pre-mortem
Use for a pre-mortem, or before committing to a plan, launch or migration: "what could go wrong?", "stress test this plan", "how might this fail?", "risks before we ship". Assumes failure, lists causes, ranks them and sets mitigations. Skip for explaining a failure that already happened.
cli-tool/components/skills/productivity/pre-mortem/SKILL.md
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- Last checked
- Nov 9, 2026
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SKILL.mdcore · 3,528 bytesreferences/example.mddoc · 2,197 bytes
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# Pre-mortem
Gary Klein's technique: imagine the plan **has already failed**, then work backward to explain why. Assuming failure makes it safe to name risks that optimism hides.
## When to use
- Before a launch, migration, reorg, contract, hire, architecture change or any hard-to-reverse commitment.
- "What could go wrong?", "stress test this", "play out the failure".
- A plan everyone likes and nobody has attacked.
Skip: explaining a failure that already happened, or reviewing the logic of an argument rather than a plan.
## Before you start
